Tag Archive - staff

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Tearing Down Leadership Idols in the Church

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

A quick Google search on “Church Leadership” will turn up literally over 170 million links. That’s a lot of content to dig into on church leadership. For all of the talk about church leadership out there today it sure seems that the church is pretty leadership poor. I know some folks down in Texas that would say that churches have a bad case of “big hat, no cattle.” Another way to say it would be that churches are all talk and no action when it comes to leadership.

With that said, there really are some leadership idols that many church leaders buy into that need to be torn down.

“Leadership is Influence”

If leadership was simply influence than my kids are the best leaders in my house. They’ve influenced the kind of car (or land yacht) I’ve purchased, the house we live in, our grocery budget and so on. While influence is a part of leadership, it’s not leadership. The Bible doesn’t define leadership as influence; it defines leadership as a spiritual gift. Not everybody has it.

“We need to Hire more Staff”

The church of America has been lulled into this idea that they have to hire more staff to do the ministry at their churches. Hiring another staff member may be the worst thing you can at your church this year. Your church most likely doesn’t need more staff to do ministry, rather your existing staff need to learn how to delegate, empower, and develop your church body to stop just coming to the church but be the church. Your church is full of competent and highly talented people who actually get paid to perform complicated jobs. Chances are they have a lot to offer at your church too. 

“Preachers are Leaders”

Just because you’re a gifted communicator doesn’t mean you’re a gifted leader. It means you’re a gifted communicator. Young church leaders are taught (more by the prevailing church ministry model in the U.S. than by the Bible) that if you want to lead in a church then you have to do it from a stage, and if you’re not a gifted communicator then your not a gifted leader. That’s simply not true. Leadership is not just about inspiration and instruction (what happens from a stage). It’s also about being up close and over time with people and taking them from where they are to where they need to be. There’s more to that than stage. And frankly I’ve seen some fantastic preachers who can’t lead themselves or anyone else out of a wet paper bag.

“Leadership is Power”

Great leaders don’t simply amass and wield great amounts of power, rather they have the uncanny ability to share power and give it away to others. Barking out orders doesn’t endear people to you. You get more when you give, even in the economy of leadership.

What are other “leadership idols” you’ve seen in churches? Leave a comment, I’d love to hear your insights!

Photo Credit: Pondspider via Compfight cc

Posted in Leadership

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Church Leadership and the Illusion of Control

Sunday, September 11, 2016

Church leaders are supposed to be the best kind of leaders, right? Caring, humble, courageous, strong, and selfless. The term controlling probably wouldn’t make a top-10-list of attributes to describe the ideal church leader. Now I know you’re not a control freak, I mean you’re way to godly for that. But if you’re on a church staff I’m sure you’ve served with a control freak at some point. And control freaks are dangerous, especially in the church.

The other day my 11-year-old daughter was asking me about a group of people she perceived to be controlling. With the innocent insight that only a child seems to have she said, “In the books I read people who are controlling are usually the bad guys.”

So here’s to hoping that you never turn out to be a “bad guy.”

Control is an Illusion

I’m about to say something that’s going to be difficult for some of you to hear. You’re not in control. I know you think you are…but…you’re not. Control is an illusion. I know all of you’re calendaring, budgeting, planning, organizational charts, and administrating tell you that I’m wrong. But I’m right. Those things lull you into thinking you’re in control and provide the illusion of control. It’s comfortable, like a warm blanket. But don’t be seduced into becoming a control freak. You’ll be in for a very rude awakening one day.

Jesus isn’t a Control Freak

Jesus is a gentleman. If you want to go down a path that isn’t good for you or others around you, He’ll actually let you do that. He may be sad for you because the choice isn’t the best for you, but He’s not going to freak out or fret about your choice. He most likely isn’t going to rescue you from the consequences of your decisions but He’ll let you make them. Even when He knows how life is designed to work and you choose your own way.

Your Policies can’t Control Outcomes

I know that you think your policies will make everybody behave the way you want them to and make everything run like a predictable well-oiled machine but unfortunately they won’t. I know that statement is hard for some of you to read, I’m sorry. I really am. I wish it weren’t true, it be easier if it weren’t true. But it is. Your policies might help you mitigate some risk, they may help you institutionalize the culture you’re trying to build, but they won’t control outcomes. No matter what policy you have in place, if someone wants to do something stupid, they will. Oh, and when you do try to control everything with over policying (I don’t think that’s a word) things, you’ll actually drive your most talented team members away.

Your Team needs to be Unleashed not Controlled

I know you think you’re pretty special, truth is you are. But Jesus has gifted your team with some pretty incredible gifts too. In fact I bet they have gifts that you don’t have. Controlling leaders stifle fun, innovation, and ultimately production. Your team needs to be empowered and unleashed to be who Jesus has created them to be. That’s when they’ll have the most fun and you’ll get the greatest results. The sad, and very dangerous, thing is controlling church leaders actually stifle personal growth in others and the expansion of the Gospel.

The Only thing you can Control is your Attitude and your Effort

The good news is there is something you can control, and that’s you. You are responsible for what happens inside of you, how you respond to life, and the actions you take. Every moment of every day you have the incredible opportunity to control your attitude and your effort. There’s not much that you can actually control and change, but you can control and change you. Truth is, that’s probably enough. Much more and it would probably be a bit overwhelming.

Photo Credit: fishbulb1022 via Compfight cc

Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation, Staffing

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The Art of Execution

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

August kicks off a new ministry year at Sun Valley, the church I have the privilege of serving at, and that means it’s time to get the team in the room and talk about the new year. Through out the ministry year we get the entire staff team from all campuses together once a month to worship together, celebrate wins, communicate stuff that everyone needs to know and provide leadership training. This month Chad Moore, who serves as the Lead Pastor at Sun Valley, shared about bridging the gap between vision and reality. The art of execution. Here are some of the best highlights.

  • Leadership is one of the most talked about and least understood spiritual gifts in the Bible.
  • David submitted to the vision God had for his life not the vision he had for his life (the calling on David’s life wasn’t to build the temple, but to defeat the enemies of God).
  • Solomon didn’t dream up the idea he executed the idea and the idea wasn’t general or generic it was VERY VERY VERY specific.
  • Vision isn’t mystical it’s specific, it’s a dream with a deadline “build the temple.”
  • Define reality, Dream a preferred future, and Design a pathway to get there.
  • Any time you are serving God it is going to involve serving people.
  • Inspiration and motivation don’t actually make anything happen, discipline does.
  • People who actually do the least get celebrated the most (public figures).
  • You make touchdowns yard by yard, down by down as you move down the field.
  • Discipline is the missing art of leadership.
  • The only way to hike the Grand Canyon is to go do the bleachers again, and again, and again.
  • You don’t follow Jesus in the spotlight but in the everyday mundane stuff that nobody sees.
  • The more specific the plan the better the plan.
  • The “science side” of the plan = what is written down, budget, etc.
  • You have to “embrace the stupid” if you’re going to learn and grow…i.e. “I don’t want to look stupid to do something new I’ve never done or learned before.”
  • Effort = “Work as hard as we can”
  • Excellence = “Work as well as we can”
Posted in Leadership

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Why People Volunteer at some Churches but not at others

Sunday, August 7, 2016

Ever notice that a lot of churches feel like a spectator sport? You know, the kind of place where people sit around watching the paid staff do everything. The average church in America engages around 45% of their average adult and student attendance in some kind of volunteer role (check out the Unstuck Group Health Assessment for more info like this). But there are those churches that are above average. The top 10% of churches somehow seem to break all the normal statistics and engage more than 70% of their average adult and student attendance in some kind of volunteer role. Here are a couple of things they do different.

#1 High Challenge

They don’t just make an announcement, they don’t just ask, they don’t simply provide the opportunity to serve, these churches challenge people to serve. What comes natural to us is ourselves and these churches combat self-oriented thinking with a high challenge to put faith into action by serving others. They know that you can not serve God without serving people.

#2 Flexibility

Ever notice that people are busy? Most people don’t have hours and hours per week to volunteer at your church. Churches that engage the most volunteers understand this and they are flexible. They don’t’ require volunteers to be involved in everything, instead they invite them to be involved in what they can be.

#3 Fewer Paid Staff

These churches actually have fewer staff, not more staff. Instead of paying people to do ministry they pay staff to lead volunteers. Churches that get stuck loading up on staff end up dealing with the unintended consequences of having staff doing everything and church attenders watching them instead of joining them.

#4 Say Thank You

It’s so simple to say thank you, but so few churches actually do it. I’m not talking about saying thank you from the stage (although that’s not a bad start), but in a personal face-to-face conversation, a handwritten note, or even walking through the kids ministry area during service and popping your head into each kids ministry classroom and saying thank you in the moment.

Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation, Volunteers

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8 Keys to Defining your Multisite Strategy

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Currently there are more than 8,000 churches across America that consider themselves to be multisite churches. These multisite churches vary in denominational affiliation, theological persuasion, size of attendance, physical location and facilities, teaching (video or live), ministries, and style of worship. Churches are proving that there are a lot of ways to do multisite. Many churches are just jumping into the deep end of the pool and figuring this multisite thing out as they go. While you can do that, I’d suggest that a stronger way to launch and continue launching campuses is to nail down your strategy as much as you can ahead of time. While there a lot of models and variations of models to choose from there are 8 keys to developing an effective multisite strategy that I’d encourage you to wrestle with before you launch your first multisite campus.

1. Teaching

Are you going to deliver teaching via video or live in person at every campus? Are you only going to hire Campus Pastors who are also good communicators? Will teaching be done by one primary communicator or by a teaching team? Will the same message be preached everywhere or will you allow different teaching on each campus? Early on in the multisite movement video was the way many multisite churches were delivering weekend preaching. That number has shifted and now it’s at about a 50-50 split of multisite churches that use live teaching and churches that use video.

2. Campus Pastor

One of the most important questions you are going to answer before you go multisite is, “Who is going to be the Campus Pastor?” Not only do they need to be a cultural fit, after all culture is transferred through people not systems, but they need to be a leader. They need to be able to turn followers into volunteers. Here’s more on “What Makes a Great Campus Pastor?”

3. Staffing

What is your staffing model going to look like at the new campus? What will the Full Time Staff to Church Attender ratio be? What roles are most important to fill at the new campus? What roles could be part-time or contract employees? Are you going to staff with a few people to get it going and add staff as it goes or are you going to staff more robustly for what you plan on attendance begin at the 1-year mark?

4. Facilities

If you’ve ever purchased a home before you know that location matters. 55-80% of your church lives within a 15-minute drive time of your existing church. The rest pretty much live within about a 30-minute drive time. That 15-30 minute drive time distance is the sweet spot. Build on an island of strength by identifying a location where you already have a high number of people driving from. Are you going to purchase land and build a ground up facility? Are you going renovate existing space? Are you going to have consistent environmental design standards so each of your facilities look and feel similar?

5. Launch Strategy

How are you going to identify a location, a staff team, a core team of volunteer leaders, build a communication for your church, and marketing strategy for the new community you will be in? It’s better to be strong in one location than weak in two. The average size of a multisite campus is 360 people. When launching a new campus ask yourself, can we send 200-400 people from our original campus and still be strong enough to keep moving forward and not cripple our sending campus?

6. Decision Making

What is going to be identical between all of your campuses and where will each campus have the opportunity to exercise a bit more independence? And better yet, who is going to make that call? What decisions will be made by the Central Service Team and what decisions will be made by the individual Campus Teams?

7. Financial Model

What is the plan for the new campus to be financially viable? How much are you going to plan on investing in each site to get it started and why? Most multisite campuses become financially self-sustaining within 3 years. But how much will it cost to get there? A lot of that is determined by your facility choice, the equipment you resource the new campus with, your staffing strategy, the economy of the new community you’re going into, and how many givers are going to move from the sending campus to the new campus, and of course the growth rate of the new campus.

8. Ministry Model

Before you launch determine how consistent your ministries will be between campuses. Will the new campus do every ministry that the sending or original campus does? If you’re not going to reproduce it than is it something that should be eliminated?

Posted in Leadership
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