A church leader must balance two things: 1) working IN the church and 2) working ON the church. Working IN the church refers to doing the tasks that keep things going. If the teaching pastor doesn't work IN the church on a given week, there will be no message for Sunday. If the director of finance doesn't work IN the church the offering doesn't get deposited. Working ON the church refers to doing the tasks that keep things growing. If you don't work ON your department, you'll never come up … [Read more...]
How to Prevent Staff Burnout in Ministry
A couple years back I was on a tele-coaching call with Nelson Searcy and I asked him what he does to prevent his staff from burning out. With our volunteers we rotate people one month on then one month off. That's our strategy to not burnout our volunteers but currently we don't have any strategy to not burnout our paid staff. And since I love my staff and don't want them to get burned out I asked Nelson how I go about doing that. I was suprised at his answer. Here's what he said: It is not … [Read more...]
The Benefit of Teamwork
The purpose of teamwork is synergy. Synergy is the state in which the output is greater than the sum of the inputs. One plus one equals three, four, even five! Let me explain... In the 1885 world series of mule team competition, held in Chicago, the winning team pulled 9,000 pounds, the second place team a little less. Someone suggested that they see what the two teams could do together. The result was 30,000 pounds, much more than the sum of their separate loads. Or take geese for … [Read more...]
How to Stay Fresh in Ministry
I received church planting and senior pastor coaching from Kerrick Thomas and Nelson Searcy of The Journey Church for five years. Here's one of the best things I learned from them. Nelson used to say that the way to stay fresh in ministry is to: Divert daily, withdraw weekly and abandon annually. If you're going to stay fresh you have to take breaks, you have to rest, you have to do something other than work. And you have to do this daily, weekly and annually. Here's how this fleshes out in my … [Read more...]
Quarterly Reporting to Your Board of Directors
At New Day, each board of director is a pastor that does not attend New Day. Since they serve from a distance I work hard to keep them informed of what's happening at our church. If they don't have the right information, they can't properly help us succeed in our mission. One of the ways I keep them informed is by sending them a report at the end of each quarter that summarizes some of our key metrics. Here's the last one I sent for January through March of 2015. Sean, Bill & Daniel, The … [Read more...]
Dealing With Underperformance
If you have a low performing staff member (or volunteer) on your team, you basically have three options: 1. Train them. You may have failed to properly equip them to do their job well and if that's the case you need to take a time out and spend some time training them properly and thoroughly. 2. Transfer them. Jim Collins in his book Good to Great points out the importance of both having the right people on the bus (a metaphor for your team) and having each person in the right seat on the bus. … [Read more...]
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