5 Articles to Help Your Church Make Vision Real

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Thank you for helping make November one of the best months ever here at Helping Churches Make Vision Real! It’s great to connect with you on this blog and through social media. I’m always glad to hear that the content has been helpful. You made these the top 5 Posts from this last month. If you missed out on any of them, here they are all in one place for your convenience!

#1 8 Reasons Why People Don’t Volunteer at Your Church

I’ve never worked with a church that has said they don’t need more volunteers. But I’ve worked with a bunch of churches that have trouble getting people to volunteer and stay engaged volunteering. This is a critical issue for churches to figure out. The reason why this has to be a front-burner issue is because at the heart of it, volunteering is an essential component of the discipleship process in someone’s life. Plainly put, volunteering is discipleship. Understanding that, here are 8 reasons people aren’t volunteering in your church…and subsequently aren’t growing in their relationship with God.

#2 Early Warning Signs Your Church is in Trouble

Many churches have a tendency to measure attendance and money as their primary indicators for success, and not necessarily always in that order. There are a lot of other indicators that churches can measure to understand if they’re winning or not (baptisms, 1^st time guests, and how many people are in bible studies just to name a few). Early indicators that a church is in trouble are often more difficult to detect however. Similar to the way many life threatening diseases behave a church can look healthy on the outside while wasting away on the inside. And like a life threatening disease it can be very difficult to detect. Here are a few early indicators your church should be paying attention to:

#3 3 Reasons Why Big Churches Keep Getting Bigger

Recently Leadership Network published an article in which they shared the following research about megachurches (a Protestant congregation with 2,000 or more weekly attendees – both adults and children):

In 1970 there were less than 25 megachurches in all of North America
In 1983 there were less than 100 megachurches in the United States
Today there are more than 1,650 megachurches in North America (roughly 1,625 in the United States and 25 in Canada)

All of that means this past weekend of those who went to a Protestant Church in North America, 1 out of 10 went to a megachurch. The megachurch phenomenon of recent history doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. In fact it seems to be growing, even outside of North America big churches are getting bigger. But why?

#4 Why Churches Refuse to Change

In the “real world,” change is normal, it’s expected, and it’s even celebrated! When your team wins the Super Bowl no one ever looks around and complains about the stadium being too full. When your business takes ground and expands no one ever complains about experiencing success. When a new child is born into a family no grandparent complains about having to buy more Christmas presents. Change like this is celebrated. So much so, that we go around and show pictures of our new grandchild to everyone, we leverage the success of our business, and we buy t-shirts and other paraphernalia from the winning football team.

In the church it’s different. Even if it means growing, reaching more people, planting a new church, taking a risk, or even simply making the right change so that the church can be more effective with it’s mission; most churches avoid change like the plague. Here are a few reasons why:

#5 How to Keep Your Team When the Game is Changing

In any growing church or organization there are going to be moments where the team that got you where you are, will not have the ability to get you where you need to go. This usually becomes an incredibly painful and difficult moment. In fact many churches get stuck here because they refuse to address the issue in an appropriate manner. What do you do when staff members begin to hit a leadership lid? Do you have any other course of action to take besides replacing them? How do you navigate these moments? The options below should help:

Posted in Leadership

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How to Keep Your Team When the Game is Changing

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

In any growing church or organization there are going to be moments where the team that got you where you are, will not have the ability to get you where you need to go. This usually becomes an incredibly painful and difficult moment. In fact many churches get stuck here because they refuse to address the issue in an appropriate manner. What do you do when staff members begin to hit a leadership lid? Do you have any other course of action to take besides replacing them? How do you navigate these moments? The options below should help:

1. Clarify Expectations

I’ve never met a church staff member who wants to do a bad job at work, but I’ve met plenty who don’t know what’s expected of them at work. Have you taken the time to set clear performance expectations and measure results over determined periods of time and evaluate the results together? Sometimes as the church grows and changes expectations change.

2. Recast Vision

As the church goes through different phases of growth there are natural seasons where team members may simply need to “re-up” for the next season of ministry. Have you recast vision to team members and given them the opportunity to “re-up” for this next season?

3. Provide Training

If the team member understands and reflects the culture that you’re trying to build and they relationally fit the team, then they’re probably worth investing in. Have you determined if there are new skills that the team member needs that you can provide through training?

4. Deal with the Facts

People don’t always believe the truth about themselves (newsflash). Some of your team members don’t know what they’re brilliant at and what they should be avoiding. Part of your job as the team leader is to help your team take a soberminded approach to their role in the church. Here’s a tip: when you have these conversations focus on facts, not feelings.

5. Right People in the Right Seats

As the church is growing and team members hit lids one of the first issues to consider is do you have the right people in the right seats on the bus? Instead of removing the team member could you move them to another role or hire someone over them?

6. Honest Conversations

In the process of these conversations I cannot overvalue the need to have consistent, honest, real-time conversations with your team. If you want to coach your team members through seasons of change and leadership lids it’s going to take candid conversations.

If your church is stuck and needs help moving into the future consider partnering with The Unstuck Group to help guide you through a staffing and structure review. We’d be happy to help you develop a plan that will move you forward!

Posted in Staffing

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Global Leadership Summit 2013: Patrick Lencioni

Monday, August 12, 2013

As always Patrick Lencioni delivered! He is consistently one of my favorite speakers on leadership. This year he spoke on ‘How to Lose Your Best People.” You can follow this link to get a copy of “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job,” his book that this talk was based on.

Leaders are CRO’s Chief Reminder Officer.
People need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed.
Studies show that people don’t leave their job based on what kind of job it is. It’s not about a good job or a bad job.
People leave their jobs because they’re miserable.
3 things that cause job misery
- #1 Anonymity: the people that we worked for didn’t know us and didn’t have an interest in getting to know us. People hate their jobs when their bosses don’t know anything about them…because they don’t feel like anyone cares about them. It’s your job as a leader to get to know your people and care about your people. Nobody wants to be anonymous. Good people don’t leave jobs where they’re known. Really good people want to work at a place where they’re known.
  - Sometimes we don’t do it because we’re busy
  - Sometimes we don’t do it because we’re embarrassed (because we haven’t done it before)
  - If you aren’t interested in people that’s fine, just get a job as an individual contributor you shouldn’t be managing or leading people.
  - If you’re in a job where you’re not getting this from your boss, give it to them, lead up, they’re probably not getting it from their boss.
#2 Irrelevance: If you don’t think that your job matters to someone you cannot love your work. You’ve got to remind them because they forget. If their job truly doesn’t matter then reorganize the job.
#3 Immeasurement: Everyone wants to be able to assess if they’re doing a good job. If they don’t know if they’re doing a good job they’ll eventually leave. There’s a higher job satisfaction among sales people because they know if they’re winning. People want to know if they’re winning:
- When we give others the ability to measure their performance we lose the power/control
Money is a satisfier these 3 things are motivators

Posted in Leadership

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Embracing Conflict in the Church

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

There’s an unhealthy presupposition in a large majority of churches in America that conflict is bad and should be avoided at all costs. After all if we’re all Christians shouldn’t we all just somehow magically get along? When conflict is avoided all kinds of negative things happen. But when it’s handled well, even properly encouraged it can be a team leaders greatest asset.

Healthy Conflict is a Pathway to Intimacy

When conflict is pressed into instead of shied away from, the team learns to address issues in an honest and straightforward manner. Attacking the problem, not the person. The best ideas are allowed to surface, unhealthy behavior is corrected, and the mission of the church takes ground. The best byproduct of healthy conflict is it provides the opportunity for greater depths of trust to be built on the team. By the way if you’re looking for a healthy model for Biblical conflict check out Matthew 18.

Unhealthy Conflict is a Pathway to Dysfunction

Unhealthy conflict leads to politics, posturing, and silos. Among other things a culture of enablement is built, problems get bigger, passive aggressive behavior is more common, and rumors abound. Ultimately the unity of the team is at stake and the advancement of the mission of the church slows to a crawl at best.

Posted in Leadership, Staffing

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6 Steps to Creating a Church that High Performers Love to Work At

Sunday, July 21, 2013

In Church-World you may not have the ability to purely attract and keep high performers based on pay. While you should do your best to pay high performers what they’re worth, they aren’t just in it for the pay. Check out this link for more on how much you should be paying your staff. After spending the last 12 years on the Sr. Leadership Teams of some of the nations leading churches here are 6 observations I’ve consistently seen regarding creating a church where high performers love to work.

#1 A Healthy Organization

High performers don’t have time for politics, posturing, and organizational dysfunction. They’re looking for a strong culture that goes beyond mission, vision, values, etc. that are written on a piece of paper but rather lived out in the hallways of the organization. For more on building a healthy organization follow this link.

#2 High Challenge

It’s fun to be a part of a church that’s winning and taking ground! A place where people are meeting Jesus, lives are being changed, and there are real challenges to lead through associated with growth. If you’re not taking big enough risks, and making a real Kingdom impact it’s going to be tough to keep high performers. High performers desire big challenges and big opportunities to lead through.

#3 Incredible People

High performers want to be around other high performers. Great people naturally gravitate towards great people…you attract who you are. High performers are looking for people who have the skills to get the job done but also an environment where there is real openness and trust between team members.

#4 Buy In

One of the statements I’ve consistently heard through the years from high performers who love their churches is, “I would go to church here if I wasn’t on staff here.”

#5 God is Moving

High performers want to be where God is moving and if He’s not moving they’ll jump ship in a minute. Having a front row seat to real life change is the fuel that keeps high performers going. It’s the fruit of meaningful work.

#6 Responsibility and Authority

High performers aren’t just looking for a lot of responsibility, but authority that goes along with the responsibility. Nothing is worse than being responsible for something that you don’t have the authority to change, influence, and lead. High performers are looking for real influence and the ability to make real decisions that carry real weight. They want the ability to shape their future.

Posted in Leadership