Catalyst so far...

So far, so AWESOME!
Very worth my time to come down to Granger, experience this church, and listen to these speakers.
Here are some quotes of things they're talking about which have stuck out for me...

"Minor improvements to things that are broke are usually still broken."
~ Andy

"Make Sunday better on Sunday" (meaning, don't wait until Monday to evaluate- if something can be improved immediately, then improve it! But of course, evaluate the worship service in detail on Monday!)
~ Andy

"Chaos comes with momentum, and it must be managed. But don't manage away the momentum."
~ Andy

"The helpless church throws up it's hands and says, 'Why won't our people....?' The empowered church asks, 'How can we lead our people to...?"
~ Craig

"Don't hire for today. Hire for tomorrow."
~ Craig

And by far my LEAST favorite quote:
George, to Andy and Craig,

"Can I treat you guys to lunch?"

Craig to George, after a moment of silence...

"Well, we have plans already."

Oh well, you gotta try. At least they know my name now.

Next session about to start, later!

Catalyst

I'm getting ready to head to Indiana for a conference at Granger Church with my friend Mike. It's gonna be great. I'm hoping to hunt down the speakers tonight- Andy Stanley and Craig Groschel. I'm praying that they are staying at the Super 8. We could meet in the hot tub!

Of the many conferences out there here's why this one interests me: technology. More than any other churches these guys are leading the way. Communicating the gospel in the current languages of technology. They have something to teach me.
They are also many steps ahead of Connections. I want to hear how they got from the vision, to the first steps, to the amazing movements they've become.

• What did they do right?
• Where were their mistakes?
• How did they transition to staff?
• How did they transition to multi-services, multi-site?
• How do they get so many volunteers engaged?
• How do they get so many enrolled in home groups?
• How did the grow their media and worship elements?

OK, I'll just stop there. I'll never get all my questions answered, but I'll try to get at least three ideas to implement.

I'll let you know what I come up with.

The E Word

I must confess something- I throw the word "empower" around way too much. I throw it around because I want it to characterize my life, the lives of others, Connections, etc. But saying it, like so many things, is not the same as doing it, experiencing it, and growing it.

A lesson I learned a long time ago was the difference between asking somebody to do something, and giving them something to do. More often it is better to give someone something. By this I mean you walk along side of them, show them what you are doing, or what you hope will be done, and when the time is right, you give it over to them. You pass the baton, so to speak.

But there is another step- actual empowerment. When someone can take that task, that job, that thing, and truly own it. Then grow it. I found this list online that helped be think through the importance of true empowerment:

Empowerment is obviously better. But it can be overwhelming. There is a time to delegate and things to be delegated. But as the job/ministry/relationship matures, so should the level of empowerment.

Let me know if you have any great insights, articles, examples of empowering people for serving God. I'd love to grow in this area.

Getting Excited

Are you getting excited about church? If not, something is wrong.
With the church.
With you.
Or a combination.

The church should be a source of the most exciting, inspiring, engaging things in your life.

We think that by creating committees and congregational meetings people will feel a part of the church. They'll feel "ownership." And accordingly, they will be excited.

Let's follow that line of thinking:
I own car.
A Ford Taurus. A good, reliable, economical car.
But I've never once been excited about my Ford Taurus.
In fact owning the car, while practical, useful, and ultimately worth the time and trouble, is more of an excitement killer than excitement producer.

A lot of things we hope will create ownership and excitement about church really end up creating frustration and resentment. Committee's for example, are usually just one more meeting, one more argument, one more belabored decision making process that didn't really have to happen.

A committee doesn't need to decide on the bulletin. 2-3 people need to work on it.
A group doesn't need to a review web designs- 2 people should stay on the cutting edge.

I would rather have fewer people working in more specific areas in which they actually exercise their gifts and decision making.

But I'm left wondering where we can get a lot of people feeling empowered in the church? Right now, at our size, we still have more needed jobs to be done than people to fill them. But I'm trying to think ahead.

One thing has been on my mind lately in this area- I get so excited about upcoming series. I think about them, pray about them, study for them. So I'm bursting at the seams before they start.
How can I share this excitement?
By more collaboration.
I want to get more people contributing more ideas to our series.

Imagine the excitement generated if just 50 people feel a part of the upcoming series- they've contributed ideas, art, music, video, drama or other insights. They each have 5-10 people that they share this excitement with.
We have 250-500 people getting excited about a series before it even starts.
Because they were a part of forming it, or know someone intimately who has shared their excitement.
That's the power of actually getting excited about church.

Team Leadership- from Lifechurch

I agree with everything he writes...

Team Leadership

Posted: 04 Nov 2008 04:13 AM CST

I don’t like committees. Big groups of people rarely make the best decisions and often slow things down.

When I talk about leading as a team, I am NOT talking about ministry by committees.

On any good team, there is a head coach. Someone must be in charge. But if the coach is wise, he’ll build a team of coaches.

In any ministry, I suggest the following:

• One leader who is ultimately responsible for the direction of the ministry.
• Three to seven people who become some sort of a leadership team. (Two is not enough. Three drastically improves the dynamics. More than seven becomes bulky. For some reason, I like odd numbers.) This could be an advisory team, executive team, leadership team, directional team, or whatever suits your purposes.
• When possible, the people on the team should be a diversified group.
• Each person has an equal voice—but the leader reserves the right to make the final call. (On our team, it has been years since I have overridden the wisdom of the team. I still reserve the right at any time to make the hard call.)

Questions I'm Asking

• Why does replacing an oil pan gasket cost $400? I should have used the money to by a lift and do it myself.

• Instead of thinking, "How do we respond to growth?" I'm asking, "How can we prepare for growth?" What should be be doing that will pave the way to the next stages of Connections?
• What is the next big move for Connections?
  

1. Should we go two services back-to-back on Sunday's? This means negotiating a deal to get in at 7am, running services at 9am and 10:15am, and deciding where to put child care.
2. Do we go simulcast- running a live video/audio feed into another theatre on site, running at the same time? This would be a pretty straight forward step in techonology.
3. Do we go to another site when the theatre fills up? A school, a community centre, an arts centre, another church building?
4. Do we go "mulit-site" and what does that even lookj like?! Do we run it like a branch of Connections? Is that crazy audacious to "branch" a church our size? Is that relevant for our context of ministry? Do we become a church-planting church at that point?

To answer this question I'm going to need a lot of feedback from people. If Connections continues to grow, then I beleive we must respond by creating a larger space and more opportunity for growth at Connections. If we seem to be leveling off, does that mean we need to focus our sights on becoming a "sending" church.

Either way, growth is not an option. We have to keep growing. It's one of our values- growing in size and maturity. This that aren't growing are stagnating, or worse, dying. Ouch, harsh, but it really is that simple.

I also don't think it's too premature to be asking these questions. We should be looking at this stuff now so that we can make prayerfully informed decisions in the future. I also need to ask these questions because I tend not to be a long-range planner.
I like to live in the moment.
But the reality of life is that planning and preparation is required.

Maybe something will come along that is totally unplanned. A God-thing that just falls in our lap. But you can't count on that. You just praise God if it works out that way.

So that's what's on my mind this morning, between trying to get the car fixed, and trying to plan ahead!

T.E.A.M.s

T.E.A.M.s

I was invited to join up with a group of fellow pastors. Mostly guys in church plants, or other "progressive" (for lack of a better word) churches. Connections is definitely the baby in the group.
It's nice to be invited to the group as it appears that these guys see something they like in Connections.

Anyways, the point is to share some of the valuable learning I gleened from our time together yesterday. The most fruitful portion was a discussion on the real need to foster a volunteer culture through ministry or service teams. Essentially, we all agreed that you need to create numerous "sticking points" in your church for people to be involved. We actually challenged our churches to create a ratio where 50% of your attenders can always find a ministry team to be a part of.

Two points of clarity- this doesn't mean you volunteer every day or week. But it should mean you voluteer at least once a month. This means some people need to stop doing so man things, and it means others need to take on a role so they really feel like a contributor to the church.

Second, this doesn't mean the ministry teams become more complex. We don't need to create all sorts of new roles. It means the more people we have, the more greeters, ushers, children's ministry volunteers we need. Growth for Connections will not mean becoming a more complex organism.

But finally, in our discussion, we talked about the things that are essential to leading a successful team. We boiled it down to four things, and I put them into the TEAM acrostic, just to help me remember this stuff. SO these are 4 essentials qualities to leading a team...

T. Task- know, understand, and complete your ministry task, whatever it may be.
E. Empower your team to understand their role on the team, to own it, and to do it.
A. Adore what you do, Adore who you do it with. It's really about caring for each other.
M. Multiply- always add to your group! Recruit like mad!

So there you go- my new BIG thing for our ministry TEAMs. It's kind of messy, some words are nouns, others are verbs, but hey, serving in ministry is kinda messy too!

Public Speaking

I always try to keep my eyes open for good articles/advice on three things:
Leadership
Public Speaking
Parenting
I could add more, but those always catch my eyes.

I thought this one on public speaking was good, so go ahead and read if communication interests you as well...

11 Public-Speaking Pointers

A successful speech should always end with a standing ovation--here's how to get yours.

By Guy Kawasaki | Entrepreneur Magazine - October 2008

URL: http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2008/october/197100.html

When I started public speaking in the mid-1980s, I was deathly afraid. It's taken me 20 years to get comfortable. I hope many of you are called upon to give speeches--it's the closest thing to being a professional athlete that many of us will achieve. Here are 11 tips for giving great speeches:

1. Have something interesting to say. This is 80 percent of the battle. If you have nothing to say, you shouldn't speak--end of discussion. It's better to decline the opportunity so no one knows you don't have anything to say than it is to make the speech and prove it.
   
2. Cut the sales pitch. The purpose of most keynotes is to entertain and inform. It's seldom to provide you with an opportunity to pitch. For example, if you're invited to speak about the future of digital music, don't talk about the latest MP3 player your company is selling.
   
3. Focus on entertaining. Many speech coaches will disagree, but the goal of a speech is to entertain the audience. If people are entertained, you can slip in a few nuggets of information. But if your speech is dull, no amount of information will make it great. If I had to pick between entertaining and informing an audience, I would pick entertaining, knowing that informing will probably happen, too.
   
4. Understand the audience. If you can prove to your audience in the first five minutes that you understand who they are, you've got them for the rest of the speech. All you need to understand are the trends, competition and key issues facing the audience members. This simply requires consultation with the host organization and a willingness to customize your introductory remarks.
   
5. Overdress. My father was a politician in Hawaii. When I started speaking, he gave me this advice: Never dress beneath the level of the audience. That is, if they're wearing suits, you should wear a suit. To underdress is to communicate, "I'm smarter/richer/more powerful than you. I can't take you seriously, and there's nothing you can do about it." This is hardly the way to get an audience to like you.
   
6. Don't denigrate the competition. By denigrating the competition, you're taking undue advantage of the privilege of giving a speech. You're not doing the audience a favor. The audience is doing you a favor, so don't stoop so low as to use the opportunity to slander your competition.
   
7. Tell stories. The best way to relax when giving a speech is to tell stories--any stories: stories about your youth, stories about your customers, etc. When you tell a story, you lose yourself in the storytelling. You're not "making a speech" anymore. You're simply having a conversation. Good speakers are good storytellers; great speakers tell stories that support their message.
   
8. Precirculate with the audience. Here's how to heighten the audience's connection with you: Talk to them before the speech--especially the ones in the first rows. Then, when you're at the podium, you'll see these friendly faces. Your confidence will soar, you'll relax and you'll be great.
   
9. Speak at the start of an event. The audience is fresher. They're more apt to listen to you, laugh at your jokes and follow your stories. On the third day of a three-day conference, the audience is tired, and all they're thinking about is going home. It's hard enough to give a great speech--why increase the challenge by having to lift the audience out of the doldrums?
   
10. Ask for a small room. If you have a choice, get the smallest room possible for your speech. If it's a large room, ask that it be set classroom style (i.e., with tables and chairs) instead of theater style. A packed room is more emotional. It's better to have 200 people in a 200-person room than 500 people in a 1,000-person room. You want people to remember, "It was standing room only."
    
11. Practice, and speak all the time. This is a "duh-ism" but nonetheless relevant. My theory is that you have to give a speech at least 20 times to get decent at it. You can give it 19 times to your dog if you like, but it takes practice and repetition. There's no shortcut to Carnegie Hall. As renowned violinist Jascha Heifetz once said, "If I don't practice for one day, I know it. If I don't practice for two days, the critics know it. If I don't practice for three days, the audience knows it."

Part of the reason it took me so long to get to this point is that no one explained to me the art of giving a speech, and I was too dumb to do the research. Now I love speaking. Every time I get up to the podium, my goal is to get a standing ovation. I don't succeed very often, but sometimes I do.

Guy Kawasaki's mantra is "Empower people." He is co-founder of Alltop.com, a managing director at Garage Technology Ventures, former chief evangelist for Apple Inc. and author of eight books--most recently The Art of the Start. Visit smallbusiness.alltop.com.