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A Large Multisite Church in Phoenix is Hiring a Small Group Pastor

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

I’m pleased to announce a new Staff Search. Sun Valley Community Church, the church I have the honor of serving at, is beginning a national search for a Small Group Pastor to serve on our Tempe Campus. Sun Valley began as a church plant in 1990 in Chandler, Arizona. Over the years Sun Valley has grown into a large mult-site church in the Phoenix area. Currently there are four campuses located in Casa Grande, East Mesa, Gilbert, and Tempe and with a fifth campus opening in the fall of 2016 in Queen Creek. Together nearly 7,000 people attend a Sun Valley Campus each weekend. The Tempe campus was the result of a merger in the Fall of 2011 with Bethany Community Church. In the merger, Sun Valley acquired a 16-acre, 8-building campus with over 100,000 sq. ft. under roof. At present, the campus attendance averages more than 1,200 people a week, but when fully utilized, the campus capacity will accommodate more than 6,000 people. Sun Valley has been featured in a book by Leadership Network about church mergers: Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work, and has been named by Outreach Magazine as one of the 100 fastest growing churches in the nation. To learn more about that story click here Part-1 and Part-2.

Interested in learning more? Continue reading below: Continue Reading…

Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation, Staffing

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3 Expectations that Young Church Leaders need to Change Today

Sunday, March 27, 2016

A lot has been written in recent years about the Millennial Generation and young leaders; most of it negative. At the risk of sounding like the old guy in the room, I’ll admit, it does seem like the expectations of young leaders are a little off the mark. In fact, here are three expectations in particular that I think young leaders need to change today if they want to be successful in the future.

1. Mentoring & Development

Most talented young leaders are looking for someone to invest in and develop them, and rightly so. The only problem is leaders aren’t walking around looking to invest in people. They’re too busy leading big stuff. If you’re a young leader looking for development then don’t wait for someone to come along and take you under their wing. Chase someone who has what you’re looking for until you catch them.

2. Timeline

Most young leaders expect to be placed into significant leadership positions with great influence very quickly. Unfortunately landing that dream job in the church is probably going to take you longer than you think. Yes, you’re probably talented, and yes the church could probably benefit from your leadership influence. But trust is built up close and over time. And trust is the fuel that leadership runs on. Build trust and you’ll accelerate your leadership timeline.

3. Work Ethic

Most young leaders underestimate the amount of sheer work it will take to get where they want to go. Church leadership is not for the faint of heart, or for the lazy. Successfully pastoring in a growing local church setting isn’t a 40-hour a week; punch the time clock kind of a gig. It’s going to take real work, hard work. You’ll have to endure moments of hurt and disappointment. And you’ll have to have the tenacity to not give in. And keep working.

Interested in learning more about leading young leaders in the church today? Check out these 10 Articles that will help your church develop young leaders.

Posted in Leadership, Staffing

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Managing the Tension between Culture and Control in a Multisite Church

Sunday, March 20, 2016

One of the greatest challenges of leading a Multisite Church is maintaining alignment across campuses. Regardless of how proven your ministry model may be, many campus leaders still desire space to make it their own. While this drive can be evidence of their leadership capacity, it can also create tension and disunity on your team. How can you keep a diverse group of leaders in different communities focused on the same mission and ministry wins?

When you break it down, there are only two core approaches to multisite alignment. You can either lead through culture or you can lead through control. Which approach is best for your multisite team? Understanding their five differences can help you decide:

1. Approach to Decision-Making

Culture: Campus leaders are developed to make decisions
Control: Centralized decisions are leveraged across campuses

In a multisite church that is led through culture, campus leaders understand how to make decisions. Values are clear and shared at every location. Each leader knows what should be considered important when they are at a decision point.

In a control-driven approach to alignment, everyone understands how decisions get made. Campus leaders regularly take issues and ideas to centralized leaders for approval.

2. Focus of Central Leaders

Culture: Driving the right questions
Control: Providing the right answers

In a culture-driven church, central leaders focus on communicating values and asking the right questions. They spend their time developing the organization’s mindset for ministry. For example, at NewPointe, I worked hard to focus campuses on one driving question: “What is the absolute best thing for the unchurched family in our community?” I knew if that was always in the minds of our leaders, we could trust them to move forward and make great decisions.

Control-driven central leaders focus more on policies and standards. They spend their time developing the right plans to get the results they desire across locations. They lead with answers more often than questions.

3. Leadership Empowerment

Culture: Empower growing leaders
Control: Equip new leaders

Culture-driven churches empower growing leaders to develop. As long as they operate within the mission, values, and strategies of the church, campuses have the opportunity to develop and implement plans. This gives them greater ownership and experiences for growth.

Control-driven churches equip new leaders with clear plans. They can more quickly involve younger ministry leaders, knowing they’ll be set up with proven approaches in every area.

4. Operational Pace

Culture: Requires slower pace
Control: Allows faster pace

Culture-driven churches require a slower pace. Because each leader has more flexibility, it takes them more time to develop and implement plans. Additionally, organization-wide decisions require greater input from campuses, leading to more conversations and meetings.

Control-driven organizations can move at a faster pace. With every campus utilizing the same plans, leaders do not spend time reinventing them. Campuses can also be launched at a faster rate because the approach is not being adjusted for each new location.

5. Rate of Innovation

Culture: Creativity at campuses
Control: Innovation at the top

Culture-driven organizations encourage creativity at the campus level. This widens the number of people trying new approaches and gives entrepreneurial leaders faster ground-level feedback. With that, innovation may take place at a faster rate.

In a control-driven church, innovation primarily takes place at the top. Central leaders develop new approaches for all campuses. This can decrease the number of new ideas and increase the amount of time it takes to get ground-level feedback. However, it also reduces the amount of staff required at each campus.

While each approach to alignment has advantages, it is critical to lean toward the one that supports your vision as well as the wisdom of the moment your church is in. If you’re trying to launch new campuses at a fast rate, control will often be required. If you’re more focused on developing your current locations, leading through culture will likely be a better fit. In either case, be clear with your campus and central leaders about how you are staying aligned. Otherwise, they will always be on different pages.

This is a guest post by Ryan Stigile. Ryan is the Director of Strategic Resources for The Unstuck Group. Previously, as Director of Expansion at NewPointe Community Church (NE Ohio), Ryan led the launch and development of new multisite campuses. With Mount Paran Church (Atlanta, GA), he guided the leadership team through a strategic change initiative to simplify and align its ministries. Ryan has a Master of Business Administration from Kennesaw State University and degrees in business administration and discipleship ministry from Lee University.

Photo Credit: kevin dooley via Compfight cc

Posted in Leadership, Staffing

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10 Articles that will Help Your Church Make Better Hires

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Recruiting and hiring a new team member can be exciting! Hire the right person and the whole team benefits. When you invite the right person to join your team not only is there an infusion of new talent, but also new ideas, fresh eyes, and a new well of experiences to go to. One new hire can literally improve the performance of the entire team. On the other hand, hire the wrong person and the ministry at your church could be set back for years. Over the years I’ve written quite a bit about hiring and building staffing strategies in a church setting. Here are some of the more popular posts.

You are Who You Hire

The reason that a new hire is so powerful and pivotal is because people lead out of who they are and the organization or church always takes on the personality of the leader. In other words, you are who you hire. No matter what their skill set, abilities, experiences or personality is; people always lead through the filter of their unique identity.

You Just made a Great Hire…Now What?

Churches are notorious for racing to the finish line of a hiring process, getting the newly hired candidate in the room and breathing a collective sigh of relief. The typical church basically says, “Congratulations, you’re hired! Here are your keys. Now go figure it out.” Once the new hire is made you’re not done.

6 Reasons your Church should use a Search Firm to Make Your Next Hire

Hiring a new team member can be exciting because it means there is going to be fresh eyes on old problems and status quo ministry, new ideas, and a new well of experiences to go to. But sometimes the best move that you can make is to enlist the help of an Executive Search Firm.

5 Reasons I would Never Hire You

While at first pass this post may come off as negative, the goal I can assure you, is to be helpful. I’ve had to say no to more people than I’ve said yes to. My hope is that this post will help move you in the direction where you’d hear me, or someone else, say yes to you in the near future.

5 Common Hiring Mistakes that Churches Make

Churches are notorious for making well-intentioned bad hires. At most churches the hiring process usually goes wrong for one of the following 5 reasons.

6 Principles of Building a Staffing Strategy at your Church

Great teams don’t happen on accident. Over the past 15+ years of working with churches the best hires I’ve seen have always come through a well thought out staffing strategy. Based on that experience the following are 6 principles that I help churches think through when it comes to building a staffing strategy.

4 Steps to Making the Right Hire

Success is rarely stumbled upon, and great teams don’t just happen. They’re intentionally built with a keen understanding of where you are going, and not just what, but whom it’s going to take to get you there. That’s where making the right hire comes into play. The problem is that churches are notorious for making the wrong hire, and the usual culprit is a lack of any semblance of a hiring process.

When a Volunteer should become a Staff Member at your Church

In growing churches it’s not uncommon for high capacity volunteers to serve as and function like paid ministry staff members. Instead of paid staff members I’ve seen volunteers oversee entire ministry segments in a church even attending weekly staff meetings and staff retreats. But when is the right time to hire that person and move them from a volunteer to a paid staff member?

When to Hire from the Outside

In making your next hire the best place to begin is by looking for existing talent that is already inside the church or organization first. For more on that, check out part-1 of this post “When to Hire from the Inside.” But an inside hire may not always be the best hire. In fact here are three overarching principles that will help you understand when it’s time to go outside to make your next hire.

Why Hires go Wrong

When a hire goes right it fosters synergy, movement, and momentum. But when a hire goes wrong there are setbacks, losses, and ultimately the mission suffers. Below are the 2 most common mistakes made by churches, which lead them to making the wrong hires.

This next post is a little extra bonus to follow up on that last one: “What a Hire Gone Wrong will Cost You”

Posted in Staffing

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5 Steps Young Leaders can take to Advance their Leadership

Sunday, February 7, 2016

Most churches struggle to attract and develop young leaders. There are a lot of reasons for that. But instead of writing a blog post encouraging the church to take ground in this area (like I’ve done before) I wanted to take a different angle and speak to the young leaders who might be reading this. Not sure this is actually going to be super popular with younger leaders but if you take this advice to heart I promise you it will help you get where you want to go. So at the risk of sounding like a grumpy old codger (not sure that’s really a word) here are a couple of things that will help young leaders advance in their leadership.

#1 Come to Work on Time

This may sound a little elementary, but I’m telling you, if you show up on time or better yet, get into work before your supervisor gets there things will go well for you.

#2 Follow Through

Again this isn’t rocket science. But if you do what you say you’re going to do you, when you say you will do it, you’ll stand out. Consistency and follow through are rare in the workforce among young leaders and this will differentiate you from your peers.

#3 Over Deliver

The old adage is still true today, “Under promise and over deliver.” Do this, and you’ll turn heads. People will begin to learn that they can count on you to get stuff done.

#4 Learn New Things

Don’t be afraid to ask your supervisors for help or input. Offer to take other more experienced leaders in your organization out for coffee or lunch (on your dime) and ask them good questions about what they’ve learned over the years (write the questions you want answered down ahead of time).

#5 Push Yourself

Jump into the deep end of the pool. The best way to learn to lead isn’t in a classroom but by leading. Sink your teeth into something big and see what you can do. Don’t be afraid to fail. Ask your supervisor for extra work and side projects that you can help with.

At the end of the day as a young leader you’ve got to build trust with those in authority over you. Do these five things and you’ll be well on your way!

Interested in learning more about developing young leaders in the church? Check out these “10 Articles that will Help Your Church Develop Young Leaders.”

Posted in Leadership, Staffing
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