Dec
11
2009
Leadership By leanchurchguy | No comments yet

Customized Leadership Development?

A custom course designed specifically for each leader. How can we have the time for that? I thought this was about developing leadership at a church plant, not a mega church.

But what will waste more time, asking someone to spend time working on things in a way that does not help them or taking the time on the front end to identify what is needed along with the best way to meet that need? Sure, there will be some common things you ask leaders to do but wouldn’t it make more sense to start with the individual’s needs and work from there? I believe it would take less time.

The coaching method for leadership development is especially suited to this approach. It has the ideal combination of the individual working on their needs with the outside push and perspective of their coach. When you tie the work done in coaching into the other methods to customize an individual’s plan, things really start to happen. For me, coaching has been one of the most time effective things I have done when you consider my coaching sessions take an hour a month.

Now that you are convinced of the need for customization, let’s consider the various groups of people that need to be developed so we can capture some economy of scale. Because we will have limited resources, some groups should get more help than others. The risk to an organization of less effective leadership in some roles is just not as great as it is in others. A staff member who is required to lead a large number of volunteers should have access to more development resources than a volunteer who leads a small number of other volunteers. We have to recognize our limits and operate within them.

Three typical development groups come to mind for a church plant.

Staff – Paid full and part-time staff that make the trains run on time should be the top priority. They should require the most planning time and be fully involved in the development efforts that are designed for them. How can they be expected to develop other leaders if they are not fully engaged in the process?

Elders/Advisors – These critical role models need to understand the organization’s values and be able to cast the organization’s vision by living it. Hopefully they are already mature in many areas but their leadership abilities need to be certain. Custom plans are essential here. Overlooking this group would be easy but dangerous. Many of these leaders are also in the next group.

Key Volunteer Ministry Leaders – Some of these individuals may be functioning in roles that many churches hire professional staff to do. That means some segmentation is likely needed inside this category as well. Some of these folks may need access to as much development work as a staff person if they are leading a large number of volunteers.  Developing plans for these folks requires customization and creativity because they are usually successful in activities outside of church so they have many abilities but limited time.

So what do you think? It will help when we post more about the methods, the how to part. Things should start to come together then. Patience grasshopper.

Nov
16
2009
Leadership By leanchurchguy | No comments yet

Developing Leaders Within a Church Plant

For the next few posts, we’re going to focus on the process of developing leaders in a church plant. Several of us that post for this blog are charged with putting in place the leadership development process at our new church. As part of our work we are writing down our best thoughts and posting them for your comments. We feel strongly that getting this development process working is one of the most important things we can do for the Kingdom. Growing spiritual leaders is a key way God will plant more churches that He will use to reach more people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Please share your thoughts with us along this journey.

This post provides an overview of our current thinking. It describes the “bones” we believe must be put in place to grow leaders in an environment with very few paid resources. Developing staff and volunteer leaders will require getting the development methods right, targeting each leader with the right development plan, instilling the right values in the people doing the development and in those being developed, and providing the right skills. Complementary to these efforts must be the effective selection processes to determine who to invest in as well as some type of process to manage and track the things that are happening. And all this has to cost very little in the way of time and money. Sound impossible? It may be but it is also essential. Let’s look at some of these bones individually.

Development Methods are the “how” component of leadership development. Our most critical method will be requiring the people involved to build relationships with one another. Whether it’s a supervisor, coach, teacher, peer, or the person being developed, they must be actively engaged in understanding the key people in their life and ministry and building trusting relationships with them. Our second most important method will be leadership experiences we direct our leaders to participate in. Learning by doing is often the most effective way to learn and we plan to make full use of it. To gain maximum benefit from relationships and experiences, clear constructive feedback on each individual’s performance is essential. This feedback needs to come not only from their supervisor but also from their peers. Coaching is also a critical method that relies on consistent input over time to keep the process on track and finally the classic method of discussing leadership principles and practices with a variety of people rounds out our methods.

We also believe identifying the specific leadership values or traits that each leader should live out is important. This is especially true for a church’s top leaders–its staff and elders. These ways of living will only be incorporated into someone’s life if they are constantly seeking them through the power of the Holy Spirit. Agreeing on what they are and living them with other believers is a powerful part of this process.

The last thing our process considers are the skills a leader needs to have to execute their responsibilities. These skills are learned using the methods mentioned above. This typical development approach is needed to round out the person and make sure they are equipped with the tools they need to lead.

Please check back for future posts as we address each of these areas in detail.

Oct
5
2009
Focus By leanchurchguy | No comments yet

Coaching, Church Planters, and Focus

My coach recently paraphrased another leader when he told me that passion and focus are two key ingredients for success. If you put this in the context of applying our human abilities to something that God wants us to work on, then this becomes a powerful piece of advice.

My problem is that I can easily loose focus. There are always many forces at work to cause us to not stay the course on whatever task we are attempting. Even more likely is the emergence of a lot of other tasks that seem very important at the time and that quickly and easily drain energy from a leader and their team.

So what does this have to do with coaching? The most critical items for us to apply our focus and passion to are those that have the highest overall priority in our lives. A good coaching process will involve an individual spending significant time in prayer, Bible study, and meditation to discern what God wants their priorities in life to be. A coach should know and understand those key life priorities as well as the person being coached.

The more an individual is able to stay focused on these God-ordained priorities, the more fulfilled their life will be and the more likely they are to achieve their ministry goals. A coach’s unique understanding of someone’s life and ministry priorities allows them to be a significant contributing factor to helping someone stay focused on their Ephesians 2:10 works.

A coach should have permission to ask the hard questions and to challenge the person they are coaching on a regular basis. This constant involvement over a long period of time is where the real value of being coached pays off. We have all seen it. Someone does not have to vary from the original plan very early in the process for you to end up way off course several years down the road.

No one wants to wake up late in life and figure out that the things that really matter are possibly out of reach because of the normal drift that occurs when we loose focus on what really matters. This concern about maintaining focus is even more critical for a church planter. It does not take many missed opportunities for a church planter to find they are behind and that they don’t have enough resources to catch up.

Because a coach’s job is to make sure their client stays the course on all their self identified priorities, these priorities have a much higher likelihood of being accomplished than if life “just happens.” Few people can maintain the level of concentration that is needed to plant a church. It is not cheating to have help; it is essential.

Sep
23
2009
Collaboration By leanchurchguy | No comments yet

Coaching, Church Planters and Collaboration

Planting a church is a team sport. Sure, there may be some circumstances where the church planter only has to involve a few other people in a leadership role for a new church to become sustainable and effective but those cases are few and far between.

The need for a great team becomes even more important when the church is determined to be externally focused. God will and can work powerfully with a few people in leadership but generally the effort required to offer something to people that have given up on the church requires more time and effort than a handful of people are capable of sustaining, especially if a church is determined to be a Great Commission church and disciple the new and/or young Believers.

The number and quality of teams required for an effective externally focused church represent a significant challenge for any church planter. Failing to create and manage those teams effectively is one of the most likely traps a church planter can fall into causing them to be at a greater risk of burn out and experience far less effectiveness than they are capable of producing.

So how does a coach factor into a church planters need to lead a number of well running teams? The key words are insight and position. A coach will know how well a leader is delegating and managing their church by how they are spending their time and how well they are accomplishing their goals. A coach will also know the church planter’s personality traits that can help their ability to lead teams as well as hurt their ability to lead teams.

A coach will also know how to ask the right questions to challenge the church planter to not settle for less delegation than what a situation calls for. A coach should also help the church planter diagnose and problem solve his team effectiveness issues on a real time basis, encouraging the church planter to work from their strengths.

Effective teams are a critical resource for a church plant. Having help to assure that their teams are effective is an excellent investment for a church planter.

Sep
16
2009
Faith By leanchurchguy | No comments yet

Coaching, Church Planters, and Faith

God is not your co-pilot. He never has been and He never will be. He is LORD of your life, if you are a Christ follower, and He is the source of everything you need. This is especially true if you are a church planter. You will not crack the culture if God does not show up in a big way at your new church. Are we clear about how I feel about this?

So if God and I are planting this church, why do I need anyone else to help me? If I have the Holy Spirit at work in my life, shouldn’t that be enough? Won’t I be demonstrating that I don’t have enough faith in God if I have to ask someone else, like a coach, what to do? I know these questions about using a coach represent extreme views but some part of this has to have crossed your mind when you considered what you must have to plant a church and what you can get by without.

I believe it takes a lot more faith for us really to want to know God’s will for us. It is easy for me to make up my mind using the limited facts I am comfortable with and then go for it. It is much harder to seek another’s perspective when I know they will be truly independent. A coach is not the only source for God honoring input but my experience is a good coach’s input over a long period of time can be very useful to a church planter.

Because a good coach has invested significant time in understanding you, they know your blind spots (we all have them) and they are obligated to not let you overlook them. Because a good coaching relationship will cover many years, the consistent input and current understanding of who you are and where you are going that you get from a coach can be an excellent way for God to speak to you.

Finally because your coach has hopefully guided you through a process of establishing your life’s priorities, the coach is uniquely positioned for strategic input and to help hold you accountable. When your coach has worked with you through a process where you spent significant time reading the Bible and searching for God’s purpose for your life, they have a critical role to play that few others are positioned to play.

The real act of faith is saying I want that kind of influence in my life that God can use in addition to my spouse, my elders, and my staff. It takes a lot of faith to say I am willing to give someone the right to ask the hard questions that can only be asked by someone who knows me and my life’s goals.

Your coach is not your co-pilot either. If your coaching is done well, the coach will be an essential instrument for your flight through this life.

Sep
12
2009
Leadership By leanchurchguy | No comments yet

Coaching, Church Planters, and Leadership

Have you ever experienced something and you just knew it was the right thing for that situation? This may seem obvious to many but I am convinced that coaching and church planters are one of those “You just gotta” things.

Over several posts, I want to provide some thoughts on why this is such a great fit for leaders who are called to plant a church.

Leadership is lonely. The loneliness is there whether you are leading a church, a business, or a Scout troop. Several factors are at work assuring the loneliness. It might be people’s reaction when the decision is unpopular or it could be just the shear weight of the decision on the leader.  Using your team to help you examine issues and make decisions will help (that is one reason we talk a lot about collaboration) but there will always be a time when the call has to be made by the leader and the isolation is guaranteed.

Church planting is just hard. There is no other way to say it. Cracking a local culture and helping people see the need to break away from the world’s way of living has never and will never be anything but hard. Difficult tasks always require our “A” game. I can’t imagine anyone consistently bringing their “A” game without a knowledgeable coach and a coaching process built for the roller coaster ride called church planting.

The stakes are high. In the USA alone, the opportunities to present the gospel to people who have given up on the church but not on God is gigantic. Externally focused church plants are breaking through. It can be done. God is still in the business of changing lives. I believe He desires for more churches to fulfill the Great Commission by offering something other churches in the area are not. Many times the best way to do that is a new start with no baggage.

Coaching takes time and has a cost. So do a lot of other things that church planters recognize as essential. But how valuable is the consistent input that a coach can give you as you are working through those difficult decisions? What is it worth to know you have the ear and heart of another Christ follower to help you take an independent look at a situation? How can you put a price on persistent input on spending the right amount of time with your family so neither you nor your family burn out?

Will coaching guarantee success for a church planter? No. Will it be a vehicle God uses to keep a church planter engaged and energized during bad times and good? Yes it will. I know it in my heart.

Sep
9
2009
Focus By leanchurchguy | No comments yet

Evaluating Your Sunday Service, part 3

Who sets the standard for determining if your Sunday worship experience was on target? Who are the best people to ask about your service if you are serious about evaluating what you have done (and I hope you are very serious about it, otherwise why did you invest the time and resources to do it)?

My opinion is that the best evaluation is from the people you are trying to connect with at your service–your target audience. Sure, staff members and volunteers will have opinions and they should be encouraged to voice them. But when it really counts, when you are ready and willing to make significant changes if needed, what is the best source of information on how well your service met the expectations of your target audience?

Some of the technically trained planters are thinking that it is impossible to get a reasonable random sample from visitors that comprise your target. I agree, that would be very difficult for a church plant, especially one that starts small. So why not just default to staff and volunteer opinions? In my opinion, the stakes are too high not to ask people who are your actual target.

If your church plant is externally focused, you realize how critical it is to make the right first time impression on someone who has never been to church or is back for the first time in many years.  We may only have one shot and it better be good.

So how do you get feedback from that unchurched guy? Aren’t you likely to run him off by asking some questions? In fact you will run him off if you do it wrong, but we still have to try. LifeBridge has had some favorable results with using simple and brief evaluation forms. We even use Google forms links within emails sent to people that we identified as new guests who might meet our target. We also try to verify they are our target from people we believe invited them.

We know it is not scientific but we have learned from this feedback and it has been important for us in making course corrections in several areas. Will we miss something, sure. Will we make a mistake, that is guaranteed. But we can rest knowing that we have tried every thing we know to do to understand how our target audience feels about our service.

We prefer to make mistakes trying to understand our target instead of making mistakes by guessing what our target thinks based on our church experience (which is usually corrupted).

What about you? What kinds of mistakes are you willing to make to know that your Sunday service will connect with the people you are trying to reach?

Sep
9
2009
Focus By Greg Miller | No comments yet

Evaluating Your Sunday Service, part 2

I played offensive tackle on my high school football team. Each week our game was taped (actually filmed…it was a long time ago!). The coaches met over the weekend to review the film and graded each player. The coaches knew every play that was called, so on every play they watched to see if each of us did what he was supposed to do. It was a humbling experience–my “grades” were never very high because sometimes I failed to block my man or more often I blocked the wrong man!

It was easy for the coaches to evaluate my performance in a football game. They knew what I was supposed to do and compared my performance to the standard. But how does a church evaluate its “performance” each week. (I realize we don’t think of worship as a “performance,” so it might be better to ask, How does a church evaluate its Sunday service each week?)

That’s a good question, but we’ve got to start with a different question: What’s the purpose of your Sunday service? This is a crucial question for every church planter (actually every church pastor) to answer. It’s important because without knowing your purpose, you won’t know if you’ve achieved it or how well you’re progressing toward it.

So what is the purpose of your Sunday service? Perhaps you think of this in terms of PRIORITY (not priorities). What are you trying to do with and during that service? Help people who are far from God move a little closer to Him? Bring healing to people who have been wounded by other Christians or churches? Grow people who are already Christians? Some churches try to do all of these (and more) and don’t really seem to be effective in any of them. That’s because they don’t focus.

When you define your priority–the main thing you want to do with your Sunday service–you have a basis from which to evaluate your “performance” each week. For instance, say your priority is reaching unchurched people and helping them move a little closer to God. You can begin your evaluation by considering if you are actually connecting with unchurched people and getting them to attend your Sunday service. Then you consider the elements of the Sunday service–music, teaching/preaching, visuals, etc. Do those elements help accomplish your purpose? (In other words, do they help move the unchurched person along in his/her journey toward God?) Often churches say they are focused on the unchurched, but many the elements of their worship service say otherwise–perhaps the music relates more to a passionate follower of Christ, or the teaching/preaching is more oriented toward those who are already believers.

At LifeBridge, we use two different surveys to help us evaluate our Sunday services. One is a “Guest Survey,” which is online (thanks to Google docs) and can be completed anonymously and the results are compiled online. Another survey is completed by selected persons inside our church–some of the staff and a few select people who understand what we’re trying to do. This survey is also available online and can be submitted anonymously. (For more on getting feedback, see the next post, “Evaluating Your Sunday Service, part 3.”)

These surveys help us consider how we’re doing related to our “wins.” For us, the first win is getting an unchurched man to come to our service once; a second win is getting him to come back. Then we consider if and how he is connecting with other people (perhaps on a motorcycle ride), participating in the church (perhaps on a setup team), and if he is attending regularly. Down the line is whether the man is investing and inviting and ultimately getting plugged in.

These elements relate to the vision of our Sunday service–to be a place where unchurched men want to attend. And while it’s not an easy task to fulfill, we have a standard with which to evaluate how we’re doing. And this evaluation gives us feedback we can use to make corrections in what we do, with the hopes that we will be more effective in our mission.

Sep
8
2009
Collaboration, Focus By leanchurchguy | No comments yet

Evaluating Your Processes

Nerd Alert! Nerd Alert! Churches are about ministry and people. You can’t go all business on us and get away with trying to tell us that we have to be analytical. The Holy Spirit isn’t analytical!

Do you feel better now? Did I get most of your or your friends reactions to being so boring as to suggest that it would be God honoring for a church planter to consider their churches key processes. Well, get over it. I am not going away and you can choose to stop reading this post but I dare you to finish. What have you got to loose? Only a few more minutes and possibly a few brain cells to store more information.

I know it is dangerous to attempt to apply worldly wisdom to spiritual things. But I also know that God is a God of order and He encourages us to plan. I also know that God gave His best for me, so I should offer my best to Him, and that includes the best “human” thinking I can muster. God deserves my full attention and best effort, nothing else should be acceptable.

So why wouldn’t it be prudent for me to take a little time and see how things flow around our church and if there are any opportunities to eliminate waste? Isn’t that what stewardship is, not wasting any resources? If you don’t spend some time looking at this, how do you know you don’t have waste? If you don’t take a systematic approach to looking at how things connect or don’t connect how will you know the state of your vineyards?

It really isn’t hard. It is best done with one or two other people who know how things are done and who are willing to be open minded when looking at them. It can be as simple as identifying the steps required to get something done and seeing how they fit together. It might involve asking a few new folks how they ended up where they are, assuming you want people to get where they are and asking a few people who ended up where you did not want anyone (like gone) how they got there.

It is really called common sense. But it is surprising how few times we stop and use it at our church. By the way, I think the Holy Spirit is analytical. How else could He keep all our spiritual gifts sorted out?

Wish you had stopped reading earlier? Want to really be challenged? Go to the new “Lean” practitioners’ sites for churches and ministries; http://theleanchurch.com/ and  http://www.leanministry.com/ . Both these sites are excellent resources for people that are serious about understanding and improving their church or ministry.

My challenge to church planters is to start simple and see what you learn. If you find some opportunities, dig deeper. What church plant doesn’t need more resources and less frustration? Improving your processes provides both.

Aug
21
2009
Focus By Greg Miller | 1 comment

Words That Cause Us to Cringe

If you haven’t heard it yet, you likely will. And it always comes from “seasoned” Christians–those who came from another church to your church plant to see if it would “meet their needs” (though they don’t acknowledge this).

What do they say?

“It’s just not deep enough.”

They may be talking about your sermons or the content of your small group studies. Perhaps both. And what they mean is crystal clear: You’re not much of a preacher or this isn’t much of a church.

But what are they really saying?

Maybe your messages don’t have enough points (with rhymes or alliteration). Perhaps you don’t give enough emphasis to the biblical content (you don’t show your knowledge of the literal meaning of the Greek and Hebrew). Or it’s possible they don’t have enough blanks to fill in on their handout (or that you didn’t provide a handout!).

Basically they aren’t getting enough information. And in their minds, more information = deeper Bible study.

Consider a normal week for “CC” (the committed churchgoer) in many churches in the USA. CC gets a lot of information in Sunday School class (even if the teacher has to rush to “get through all the material”). CC then gets more information (something different) during the sermon in a worship service. On Sunday evening CC gets more information (different again) from the sermon in the evening service. If CC goes to some type of discipleship study mid-week he or she gets even more information. And perhaps in an accountability group (or a men’s or women’s weekly study) CC gets even more information.

When you compare what’s provided in your church to the information available in the “normal” church in the USA, it seems like an appetizer compared to an all-you-can-eat buffet!

The “deeper” comment often comes from someone who has been involved at your church plant for a while–serving, giving, and helping in a variety of ways. But often they are on their way out–they are looking for another church. Thus it makes their comment even more gut-wrenching, because it leaves you wondering if perhaps you should cater to their wishes so that you will have more “committed” Christians who can help you continue to develop and support the fledgling church.

Don’t give in! Don’t fall victim to the “deeper” trap.

Why not?

Because information alone is useless to change lives. There’s no lack of information for any of us; in fact, most of us suffer from information overload. That’s especially true in many churches, where many Christians think God is pleased with what they know.

But just knowing means nothing. (Disagree? Consider James 2:19.) God is only pleased with what we DO with what we know. Jesus said it a number of times: In the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 7:24, “everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice…”) and in the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20, “Make disciples…teaching them to obey…). Jesus’ words are echoed by others in the New Testament–Paul (Eph. 2:10); Peter (1 Pet. 2:12), James (Jas. 1:22), John (1 John 3:24).

This is the “less is more” principle. It means in your sermons/messages or in Bible studies, you stick with one main point. Not that you only teach for 5 minutes, but that you keep finding ways to illustrate and emphasize the main point. (To understand this better check out Communicating for a Change by Andy Stanley and Lane Jones.) Not that you don’t offer other groups or studies beyond your worship service; but that you think about and coordinate the information “portals.” (Did you know you can develop small group discussion questions based on your weekly sermon? Or what about developing and sending out daily devotional thoughts that follow up your weekly sermon?)

What we do with what we know is God’s greatest concern. For instance, when Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39), the most important thing is not understanding what Jesus meant. Rather it’s actually getting outside our comfort zones and showing love to others–accepting people when they are unacceptable, forgiving them when they don’t deserve it, providing for them when they are in need (even when they “made their bed”), and so forth.

That’s application that comes from information.

And that’s really deep!

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