Archive for September, 2007
· Categories Personal
It is a little overwhelming to find out that so many people are now visiting my blog. I apologize for not posting this week. It has been a crazy 7 days. We took about 20 of our high school volunteer youth leaders on a retreat to a cabin in Helen, GA last weekend. It was an amazing time of refreshing, encouragement, dreaming, planning, and FUN!!! I am so blessed to work alongside such great people. I hate the rest of our team couldn’t join us, but maybe next year.
Then we got home in time for me to lead Crave, our College and Career ministry last Sunday night. Monday was my dad’s 50th birthday and we traveled to Chattanooga, TN to celebrate with him and about 40 of his closest friends. Then we got to Tuesday…
I haven’t mentioned it on here yet, but I am participating in a broadway style musical called Deliverer that our church is putting on. We actually open tonight at the Cobb County Civic Center’s Theatre. It is the story of Moses and the children of Israel. I play Rameses (Pharoah). It is a scary sight as I wear makeup and a bald cap with a little ponytail on the side of my head (i may post pictures later…). We have had rehearsals every night this week and we have 4 shows this weekend.
I will conclude the series of Preaching CEO posts on Monday, and catch you up on other thoughts that I have been storing up for our daily interaction. Thanks again for the comments, and emails. Talk to you soon…
September 28, 2007
· Categories Church, Leadership
I missed posting yesterday…my sincere apologies. And thanks to those of you that are reading and commenting or emailing, it makes blogging fun, and the dialogue is thought provoking.
Today we look at structuring for growth. In Michael Gerber’s book “E-myth Revisited” he looks at the fact that there are 3 kinds of people at work in everyone. From the business perspective they are the Manager, the Entrepreneur, and the Technician. Most people have spent their lives as Technicians completing some type of task, creating some new widget, etc. Then one day they have an “entrepreneurial seizure” and decide that they want to work for themselves, after all they are the ones that do the work anyway, why not be the boss too. The problem arises when they start their own business and get so busy still making the product that they don’t step back and manage their business (ex. market, bookkeeping, customer relations, etc). Nor do they take on the role of the entrepreneur and dream about the future and plan and structure for the growth that they want to take place.
Here is how this correlates to the church, in my opinion. As we dealt with on Monday, many pastors and church leaders end up doing a lot of jobs themselves. They preach on Sunday morning, Sunday night, teach the Wednesday night class, lead a Sunday School class, visit every member and their extended family members, paint the children’s hall, go to Sam’s and pick up the toilet paper for the lobby bathrooms, etc. Not only is this increasingly tiring to the pastor or ministry leader it is counter-productive to the growth of the church over the long term. Structuring for growth requires two steps. Just two.
First, you have to step away from the technician mindset of completing a task and dream about the future. I don’t mean in some kind of fantasy land kind of way. I mean, spending time with God…not just for Sunday’s message, but for next year’s ministry initiatives. What do you want your ministry to look like 12 months from now? Will their be a new ministry started for college students? Will the nursery be big enough for all the new babies who’s mother’s are pregnant right now? Through prayer and a little dreaming I believe you can come up with a great picture of what things are possible in the future.
Now with that picture in mind, step two is to begin to structure your ministry in that direction. There is no need to wait until all of those babies are born before you set up a rotation of nursery workers, or add another room. Why wait until next year to begin looking for a leader to oversee that college ministry? Take the next 12 months to pour your vision into that person and allow them to dream and plan for ways to get it started right. If your church or business or family for that matter were to grow tomorrow to twice it’s size what things are you currently doing that you could no longer do? You might not be able to visit everyone on your own. Maybe you look for a retired minister to share those duties with you. Maybe you couldn’t teach the Sunday School class, so you look for someone that could co-teach it with you for 3 months.
In 7 Practices of Effective Ministry by Andy Stanley, Reggie Joiner, and Lane Jones they discuss this same principle that took place on their very first staff retreat. They had launched North Point Community Church and had several hundred people attending. So they took a staff retreat to plan for the future, and Andy led them in an activity where they created a flow chart of their ministry. But the flow chart was not for a church of a few hundred. It was a chart for a church of thousands. Then he had them write their names in the boxes for the tasks that they either did now or would have to do to make that chart function. Then he gave them this instruction, “Now replace your name.” It’s the 6th Practice, and it is a profound theory. If we are going to grow, we can’t do it alone. We have to be a leader, which implies that others are following us somewhere.
I am the world’s worst and looking at a task and just saying, “I’ll do it, don’t you worry about it.” And in the end I have hurt myself by taking on to many things, I’ve hurt the other person by not allowing them to use the gifts that God has placed within them, and I’ve hurt my church or organization by falling back into the technician mindset and not dreaming about what the future could hold.
Next we will look at marketing your product.
September 21, 2007
· Categories Church, Leadership
No doubt, the ultimate goal is to bring people into a relationship with God.
But why is it wrong to set other goals in the church? I believe one of the reasons is because we are afraid they won’t come true. I am guilty of this. If I were to say, I want to set a goal of 500 kids in my youth group in a year and it didn’t come true, how would that look? Would that mean that I didn’t hear from God? Would that mean that there is something wrong? I don’t think so, but if we don’t set goals how do we know what we are working to accomplish.
In business, companies and analysts set goals regularly in a variety of categories. Sales, profit, new customers, referrals, new leads and the list could go on. They determine the health of the company by how close they came to hitting their mark. Some of the goals are purely estimates of continuing trends that already exist while others are intended targets for new growth and expansion. Do you know what happens when a company doesn’t reach a goal? They evaluate the reasons they didn’t hit the mark and adjust for the next designated time period.
I don’t think the church should be intimidated or fearful to the point that we lose sight of the core principle. Give yourself a target. Do the people at your church know where you are headed as a church? Do they know what your main ideas are? What is the vision of the church? Give them something to shoot for. It could be breaking a record in Sunday School attendance. It might be a higher percentage involved in small groups. Maybe an increase in the number of giving units for one quarter of the year. What this tells your people is that Sunday School, or small groups, or giving is important to the church. So much so, that you are all going to work together to improve that area of ministry. Set goals that are attainable, identifiable, and easy to record. If you don’t meet your goal, evaluate the reasons, and set a new goal. If you do meet your goal, celebrate the accomplishment and allow your people to get excited about what the church is doing.
If you are uncomfortable setting a goal for salvations in a year or baptisms, don’t set that goal. Maybe stick with attendance or tithing or service projects, but set a goal for something. Give your people something to work toward. If not, you might not realize that you are going down until it’s too late.
Tomorrow we will look at Structuring for Growth.
September 19, 2007
· Categories Church, Leadership
Today I want to look at a very simple principle that wouldn’t take that much effort but might make all the difference. That is the idea of rewarding good performance or hard work.
I visited a local Chik-fil-A restaurant not too long ago, and saw something really cool. Right next to the front door was a parking spot with a sign that read “Reserved for our Hardest Working Employee”. I walked in the door and next to the register on the wall was a plaque with a picture of a young man who couldn’t have been older than 17. Next to his picture was a name plate with his name and the inscription “Our Hardest Working Employee”. Now I don’t know if he is the hardest working employee they’ve ever had, or if he was just the employee of the month. I don’t know if the parking spot and the plaque are the extent of his accolades or if he was also given free Chicken Sandwiches for a month. What I do know is that specific Chik-fil-A goes out of their way to appreciate hard working employees. I think this does three things. One, it lets all their employees know that they are watching. Two, it lets all their employees know that they are appreciated for what they do. And three, it puts a little pressure on the winner to live up to his award.
What if the church did this? How hard would it be to honor one of our volunteer leaders in the Sunday bulletin once a month? What if they had a special parking spot near the front door? What if we gave them a gift certificate to a restaurant? Would $25 or $50 be worth that Sunday School teacher knowing that we affirm their efforts? What if we presented the award to them on stage one Sunday? I once heard Doug Fields, former youth pastor at Saddleback Church, make the following statement, “any action you want to see duplicated, affirm it in public.” He was talking about affirming a student in his youth group who stayed after service and straightened the chairs. One Sunday he just mentioned from the stage, “I want to thank ‘Susie’ for staying every week and helping us straighten the chairs back up.” The next week there were 3 kids that stayed. I think the principle is that people want to do something, and if they know it’s something that you need and appreciate they will dive in.
Another thought is that I believe it’s good stewardship of the people God has entrusted to our ministries. If they are faithfully serving week after week, why shouldn’t I commend them every once in a while? I want people to notice what I’m doing. And I personally believe that if we are consistently appreciating our leaders, and regularly thanking them for their effort, we won’t have as much difficulty finding people to serve in the places of need within our church. This is such an easy principle, but one that we overlook so often. What do you think?
Tomorrow we will discuss setting goals.
September 18, 2007
· Categories Church, Leadership
I have been asked to teach a class in February to pastors and church leaders at a state meeting. I am very excited about this opportunity, and I was given the chance to pick my own topic. I have submitted a proposal for a class entitled The Preaching CEO which will look at some principles the church can learn from the business world. I would like to take the next few days and present those here. I encourage you to comment on what you read, because I am truly seeking feedback and input on these topics.
I believe that the truth of Christ as it is delivered in the church should never be compromised. However, I also believe that we as the church can look outside our 4 walls and gain knowledge and understanding from other sources when it comes to structure, intentionality, the way we present ourselves to others.
The first principle that I believe we can learn from business is the idea of delegating authority rather than responsibility. It is easy to delegate responsibility, and it happens a lot in the church. If I don’t want to do a certain task or project I will find someone that I can pass it off too. But in the end if it doesn’t get done it falls back on me, and ultimately I am still held responsible for the outcome of that task. In businesses what we see is a chain of command. Every supervisor oversees a certain number of departments who in turn oversee several supervisors who oversee workers. While the President of the company expects results, everyone within the pyramid of power understands what they are responsible for and who they are accountable too. If a worker doesn’t complete a task, his supervisor has the authority to handle the situation. If a department needs to buy new stationary that decision is handled within that specific department, because they have the authority to do so. Are there decisions that have to be made by the president? Absolutely, but there are also decisions he doesn’t have to be involved in.
In the church there are two things that need to be done to be able to delegate authority. First, you are not in business where you can hire and fire for every position. So, you must ensure that the people you are delegating too can be trusted with authority. Jim Collins in “Good to Great” says that the first principle in taking a company from Good to Great is “who” not “what”. You have to get the right people on the bus and the right people off the bus. Then you can figure out where to drive the bus.
Once you have the people in place that can handle authority, give them opportunity to use it. This frees the leader/Pastor to complete tasks that only he can, and it empowers the staff and/or volunteer team to help accomplish the goals. They know that not only are they responsible for the job they are accountable for its outcome.
In ministry there are jobs that require the Pastor to complete them or at least attend, but if you want your church to grow you are kidding yourself in believing that you can continue doing everything. For example, in a church of 50 the Pastor can probably visit everyone in the hospital, but what about when the church gets to 500. Is that still possible? Maybe so, but what others areas would lack if the Pastor was at the hospital 6 days a week. When would sermon preparation take place? When would leadership training happen? I am not living in a fantasy world assuming that every church has the staff or volunteers in place to teach every class, lead every ministry, and visit every person that a Pastor needs done. However, I do believe that if we want our churches to take the next step in growth we as leaders need to release control and delegate authority.
Tomorrow we will look at how we can learn from the business world in rewarding good performance.
September 17, 2007
· Categories Church, Leadership
This morning since Pastor Mark was in South Africa, we had a guest speaker, Tim Elmore. He is the President of Growing Leaders which is committed to training emerging leaders. He was an excellent communicator, and spoke this morning on Life Sentence. What is the one sentence that people will use to sum up your life 20 years after you have passed away? They won’t stand around and talk about some of the mundane things, but you will be remembered by one sentence…what a let down that everything you are running around like crazy doing gets boiled down to one sentence. He used the story out of Esther 4:13-14 to relay 4 truths to us. I thought they were great, and I asked his permission to share them here.
1) If I don’t step out and take a risk…my fate will not differ from the rest of the crowd. (v.13)
2) If I don’t step out and take a risk…God will bless someone else who will. (v.14a)
3) If I don’t step out and take a risk…I may lose more than an opportunity. (v.14b)
4) If I don’t step out and take a risk…I could miss my God-given mission in life. (v.14c)
He also talked about the fact that our job and our work were not necessarily the same, and our vocation actually deals more with our calling.
What are you doing with your life? What has God given to you that you could use to impact others? Where has He placed you that you can be used? I was challenged today by Tim’s message, and I challenge you today to evaluate your present circumstances and step out and take a risk.
September 16, 2007
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