Leadership

Yesterday on this post I was raving about a book I am still finishing called Church Planting Movements. One of the thoughts it has stirred in my mind is the training we offer and help people grow through as local churches. It is crazy to read how many lay-leaders consistently showed up in powerful church planting movements, and to realize how easy it is to sell our lay-leaders short in the local church.

A lot of times it seems that the basic offerings of studies for “members” in a local church are based on a book of the bible or a small group study, which is great and necessary! But it would also be good to have ministry classes, leadership classes and biblical training on how to lead in the church (which maybe there in your setting, which if it is talk about it and the impact below!)

In every congregation there ARE church planters. Whether that church is a small group of 12 people or a mega-church on the other side of town or the world - everyone of our faith communities have people that need ministry and church leadership training.

I think it is very easy for us to sell lay-leadership way short, and reduce people to just volunteers - honestly. The commissioning and the great commands of Jesus to us are the most egalitarian in history, and as churches it would be awesome if we took our training and investment in people to the same depth as Jesus did - with some ordinary dudes that were just fishermen.

This is a very interesting video where Malcom Gladwell (author) speaks about the process of discovery by a man studying people’s tastes in the food industry - specifically speghetti sauce. Watch the whole video - but do so in mind of the variety of ministry methods that exist from Mega Church Contemporary, Emergent Acoustic, to Hillsong Concert or Midwest Traditional. Think about different styles of preaching, different doctrines in preaching and different sizes of church.

[UPDATE: The way I said this initially caused confusion, like the different styles of church are different brands. In my head, and what I suggest is that all these styles are varieties of the same "brand" - Christ's body the Church.]

<<<Seriously - watch the video first and then keep reading>>>

As I watched this video and those things were coming to mind the light popped on that every church I’d ever been a part of always used absolutes in regards to methods, styles and processes. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been a part of conversations about how we are going to “get the 20s and 30s more interested in church.” Maybe it is because we shape church to be “right” in our own eyes. We are building church that works for the masses - but only gives them 60% satisfaction in what they are looking for.

And that satisfaction isn’t shallow - it is 60% satisfaction in how they are growing, what they are learning, how they are serving and experiencing God as a part of a faith community.

What if instead we realized the diversity of humanity and the danger of “sameness”? That no congregation wants everything the same.

Think of it another way. When you order pizzas for a big group what type of pizza do you typically land on? Pepporoni and Cheese. It is the pizza everyone can eat. But is the pizza everyone that everyone receives the most satisfaction from? NOPE!

The point? The search for and application of the mentality “one-size-fits-all” is dangerous. This isn’t just for the diversity churches in a town, but for diversity to have a place within a local church. Here are the questions it brings to my mind, and some are disruptive, and some we might know answers right away - but take a moment and think of new possibilities in how we do church understanding within a community of any size people are in a variety of clusters in regards to preference and satisfaction of experience.

Questions to ponder:

• If a church has multiple services, why are they all the same (beyond it being easier)?
• What would be the clusters of preference within your local church?
• Is it possible for a local church to be united as a body but grow through several different church expressions or experiences?
• Does unity mean sameness in the church, or is unity the celebration of diversity?
• Why couldn’t there be two (or more) preachers for the same church? (think outside the ego of leadership and pride of position)
• Can a church have a unifying mission with a diversity of worship communities? (Young Adults in Cell Groups, Families in House Churches and Seniors in Sunday School?)
• Have you ever listened for the preferences or tried to see the clusters?
• How does your staff react to members of your community suggestion different expressions of worship, discipleship or ministry beyond the “chosen path?”

I think that the growing commodities of modern life that are being ushered in by technology and the ability to scale on a global perspective create tremendous possibility to help people find Jesus, live a testimony to his glory and enjoy Him better than ever before - but I think the key is listening…

What are your thoughts on this?

This is a defining moment in the ministry of 722, but I am wildly impressed by their hearts and that they followed through on what they heard God telling them. It takes a lot of guts to listen to God, instead of sticking to the way things have always gone - especially when it has been going good. Keep your eyes on 722, God is up to great things there.

This was a great comment to a blog post on the topics of “knowledge management” & “command and control” methods:

I’m a CEO of a smallish company of about 300. We don’t call our leaders managers. Why? I believe it’s disrespectful. Call it trivial, but language matters. My awareness the language became heightened by a couple of books. Clotaire Rapaille’s book The Culture Code, and Frank Luntz’s - Words that work.

Management implies that one requires ‘managing’ which implies a deficiency of sorts. People generally don’t need managing. They need framework, guidelines and good leadership. However, ‘management’ often creates a command and control environment where management is ‘needed’. Hence the circle.

Leadership is respectful - and the language is a constant reminder of the culture. It won’t create culture, but it’s one of a multitude of small steps which make great companies.

Management of knowledge or other inanimate objects makes sense. When people are involved, they require leaders.

- Posted by JamesP
July 15, 2008 3:31 AM

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Over the past several days I have finally had enough with my little swirling world of digital chaos, interruption and distraction. I promptly jumped in my Getting Things Done and 4-Hour Workweek books to see the best practices I need to adopt and then I started peeling away all the bad habits and tools and time management I’d been allowing. Here is a list of what I focused on:

1. Reduce your Distraction by Planning Your Inputs.

This is not original to me at all, but I am saying a little different intentionally. David Allen would say that you need to only have as many inputs (or inboxes) of information as you need. Timothy Ferris is all about wildly reducing your inputs beyond the bare minimum - with a focus on only allowing yourself to interact with “results based information.” My middle ground is that there are inputs that are the connection to online communities I value, so I need to interact with them, but not at the whim of a notification or new message. Here is what I’ve done:

• Email 3 times a day: I check email at 12pm, 5pm and 9pm. This is extremely difficult but it is where you will find one of the most significant boosts in simplicity and concentration in your work day. I have to say this has actually irritated me because I have the terrible habit of letting email distract me into random (and lazy) action.
• RSS 1 a day: This is purely input for my benefit, it makes no difference how quickly or often I respond to this. I may even push this back to 2-3 times a week only.
• FriendFeed and Twitter with Email: I will post to both of these services through out the day, but when I look to go and comment, reply and interact is during the 30-45 minute segments when I am also processing email.
• TURN OF OUTLOOK AND EMAIL POP UP NOTIFICATIONS. The only reason you would have this up is to distract yourself. It isn’t healthy to have your attention so suspect to the whim of everyone who has the possibility of demanding your attention at any moment. I explained it to a friend like this. Image playing baseball, but at any moment any of the potential batters on a team could have a pitch thrown to them - and they would need to be ready. To make it like email, any of the opposing team or fans could be the ones through the pitches. Doesn’t make for a very good batting average does it? Batters warm up, settle down and focus on the job at hand - email is just the same.

2. Automate your Folders.

There are a lot of people who in their email and digital information drag files into folders. This is not only ultimately ineffective, it takes to long to place the file and then retrieve it. It is way better to set your organization structures towards action or action based roles - or archives. Here is what I’ve done:

• Inbox Zero - google for this video and method by Merlin Mann - it will change the way you deal with email. With this you have 4 email folders that you move emails to - @defer for emails that take action later, @delegate for emails that require someone else’s action (usually emails here are ones you’ve sent), @respond for emails that need a response, Archive - where emails that have been acted on or that are reference information get put into. That’s it, no giant structures because…
• SMART / SEARCH FOLDERS! On the pc these are called search folders, but they are very powerful, they will search and sort for you and you would be stupid to not be using them. On the mac this is very easy to get used to. You can create a group in Address Book of people by social (friends) work (Bridge Project) or topic (Bloggers), and then a smart folder that has all the emails from the people in that group. It is okay if a person is in a couple of groups because the information is likely to be relevant, and you don’t have to worry about duplicated emails cause you are just seeing an always update search on certain parameters. Group Smart Folders like this take care of 90% of the structure you’ll ever need for your email information. Smart Folders are part of Mac’s operating system as well so you can do similar things with files on your computer - but it is a little more complicated there. On the computer I just…
• Organize My Reference files by role or format. This is obviously up to you but I take out as many hierarchies as possible in my file structures. For instance I have on large pdfs folder for all the ebooks, manuals, receipts and other pdf materials I’ve collected. Search is always faster at finding it than if I had placed it somewhere - and filing is all to just one folder. But do what you’re comfortable with.

3. Reduce your Tools, go for Speed.

You really only need a couple of applications to work with. This is more of a problem on the Apple platform where there are so many amazing third party writing, research, collection and productivity software that has been written. For me, I’ve gotten about all of them and as cool as their features are - I’ve spent more time working on how I would work on them - then doing work that got results. Here is what I’ve done:

• Native Mac Productivity Apps: iCal, Mail, Address Book, iWork, iLife. All of these are more than capable of helping me to stay productive, and they are very fast applications. They are native to the OS and have connected integration. Time saving all around.
• TaskPaper (untried but TodoPaper by Widefido for windows). This is a task app that using tagging just as you type it. Very simple, very fast, but with a Gmail type labeling for your tasks. This means I am basically using on text document for all of my tasks, but I can tag/label each on, and then use simple searching to see tasks in the groups, projects or contexts that I want. This isn’t as much mouse clicking joy-gasm as other apps - but way stinking faster, and more focused on getting towards results.

4. Think about Names - Prose your World.

This is a short tip, but the reason we usually have to put everything into a super-structure hierarchy of folders is because we are so terrible at naming things well as digital content. Tasks are the king of this abuse. How many times have you written a task that says something like “Call Judy about Form.” Two days later you get to your list and see this task and have no stinking idea what form you needed and why Judy was the person to call. Whether the task needs to be done in 1hr or 12 months, write it out so that it is clear and complete.

This is the UPS style of naming and framing your actions. UPS has a rule that once something is picked up it isn’t set back down until it is full processed and all that can be done with it is finished. Because picking it up again, having to evaluate it, figure out what is going on and getting it to the right place it lazy and stupid waste of time. When you are confronted with something you need to do, think it through, frame and name it so that when you see it again you can just do it.

(Getting Things Done Rule: if it takes 2 mins or less do it immediately applies here. Don’t write it down, especially if it takes you longer to get it onto a list than it would to actually do it).

5. Priorities are the Key - REVIEW.

I have been working under the Getting Things Done productivity method for a couple of years now and I can tell you that I am an expert at the collection of information. I write down and place any potential actions that come my way in to lists, by project and context swiftly and elegantly. Here is the problem I’ve run into - I have thought that just that process would lead me to the right things to do. Here is what I’ve done:

• Collected Info / Action stays in the Inbox, unsorted, until I review it. When you put tasks onto lists right away you are accepting the fact that it is important enough for you to do - and is important in keeping that project moving forward - which is a false assumption. I’ve realized that it is I need to take a better perspective on what keeps a project moving forward - not collecting all the random thoughts or potential actions that could fall underneath it. So, as I collect throughout the day I have gotten very ruthless with what will actually make it into my inbox, and then I wait until an end of day review before I place it anywhere. I delete a lot of tasks now, or reshape instead of mindlessly adding them.
• End of day Review. The review you do at the end of your day is the only way tomorrow’s work will have an ounce of intentionality to it. Timothy Ferris has a great point when he says that every day you need to get the most important things done before 11am. Unless you do a review at the end of the previous day, you aren’t really going to know what those things need to be. This little disciple (it is quite hard) of 15 minutes at the end of every day will save redundant work, distraction and increase your productivity by 100%.
• End of Week Review. This is the typical Getting Things Done Review - but it is important to step back and gain a little perspective on what you’ve accomplished during the week, what projects you have and what is going to keep them moving forward.

6. Remove the Random - Be Intensely Intentional.

The previous sentence is all you need to remember from this long blog post. The road to simplicity is built with the discipline of becoming intentional. If you are going to facebook - do so because you are going to catch up on news, interact in groups, send messages and then leave to the next thing. Casual web browsing must be eliminated from your life - it creates the most distraction and is evidence of a weak and aimless mind. Simplicity doesn’t mean easy, it means clarity and giving yourself breathing room. To do this you will have to move with a determined intention both on what you are doing and aren’t at a given time.

Good luck!

I am as big of an idea guy as you will ever meet. Many of my conversations eventually turn towards new ideas for web services, or innovation in the church or the combination of how technology is bringing innovation and opportunity to the church. I think it is very good to imagine, to brainstorm and to be creative. At the same time I love the quote from David at 37 Signals below - that without execution ideas are vapor. Even worse, when someone actually starts executing on an idea we often criticize them and the idea - even though we never have any intention of getting involved. How do you move forward on your ideas? Have you even tried to take that next step to seeing of you have what it takes to transition something from idea to reality? Because that is where the real genius lies, and where credit and value are due.

Ideas on their own are just not that important. It’s incredibly rare that someone comes up with an idea so unique, so protectable that the success story writes itself. Most ideas are nothing without execution. [From I had that idea years ago!]

This is a brilliant post about the positive side of failing, and that the best failure is one that happens sooner rather than later. What are your thoughts on the role of failure in the positive development of your abilities and opportunities?

So what did I learn? Every company, every website, and every individual is going to make mistakes and fall. What matters is to quickly learn from those mistakes, and improve that it doesn’t happen again. It’s important in the web industry (a rapidly changing one) that we work in environments that accept mistakes as long as they are not repeated again through hard lessons. [From Fail Fast]

Great article from the guys at Lifechurch on finding and reasons for removing the wrong people on your staff/team.

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Here is a video of James Dyson, the Dyson vaccumer cleaner company with the “Apple-ish” commercials and CEO. In it he talks about how if a company makes a product the CEO shouldn’t be able to break it, and then he goes into dropping and punishing one of their vaccum cleaners on the spot, and he doesn’t break it.

So, this interests me specifically in regards to churches. Does your weekend message hold up to you? Do you see gaps and “balls being dropped” in your experience? Would you sit through your own assimilation classes? (The last one I went through on spiritual gifts was 4 hours - way too long!)

I love what the guys at Off the Map have championed with hiring non-believers in their community to come and check their church services out like “mystery shoppers” - and then they get an honest review back from their experience. What does that look like for you? Can you “break” or find “brokeness” in the way your local ministry loves on people, cares for volunteers or communicates the teachings of Jesus?