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Set People Up to Succeed

The other day I was reading in the book of 1 Chronicles in the Bible, and came across this verse:

"Kenaniah the head Levite was in charge of the singing; that was his responsibility because he was skillful at it." 1 Chronicles 15:22

It made me think about how often in the Church we don't put people in a position to succeed because they serve where they aren't skilled.  Here are some scenarios that come up:

• People don't know where they are skilled - In this case it's best to let them serve wherever they would like to at first, or even where you need them, but it's important to evaluate how that role fits them and try to help them learn what their gifts and abilities really are.
   
• People want to do something they aren't skilled at - This is one of the most difficult because it means having a hard conversation to let them know they should probably serve in a different capacity that utilizes their true gifts.  Interestingly enough, like the verse in Chronicles, music is where we find this happen a lot.  
   
• People don't realize how skilled they are - Some people are more skilled than they realize, especially when it comes to leadership.  We have to recognize that and encourage them to reach their full potential by giving them opportunities.

The team, the mission, and the Church has to come before any individual and if everyone has that attitude, and we work hard to set people up to succeed, great things can happen.

Catalyst One Day Coming to Baltimore

Catalyst One Day is coming to Baltimore, MD (Fulton, specifically) on Monday, November 16.  A bunch of people from CCC will be going, including staff and volunteers.  I'm thrilled about an event like this coming to MD (or anywhere in the northeast) and I'm excited that some of our volunteers will be attending.  

If you lead anything, you'll want to attend this event.  It is specifically geared towards church leaders but the principles would apply to any leadership context.  The theme is momentum.  

Grace Community Church is hosting the event.  Check out the website to sign up.  

Free Resource About Church Systems

Nelson Searcy and his Church Leader Insights website is probably the best resource for learning about church systems.  Andy Stanley says that "systems create behaviors".  As a pastor of a large church he knows how important systems are.  But, systems are important for any size church, they just become increasingly more important as the church grows.

Nelson has released the next version of the Church Systems Report on the CLI website.  I would encourage any church leader to download that free report and glean everything they can from it.  In there, Nelson highlights what he believes are the 8 primary systems of every church and ways every church can improve them.  

Famous Failures

Below is a video that highlights some famous failures in history.  They're famous because the people are famous, not because their failures are.  That's what is so great about them, they took risks, failed at times, but succeeded in the end.  

I don't think their success would have come without failure, probably more than we even know.

Message Application & Spiritual Gifts - Part 2

In my previous post I talked about the CCC message from 2 Sundays ago and the two thoughts/ideas I had coming out of that.  I talked about the first idea in the previous post and in this one I want to talk about something cool I learned from Darrin Patrick at the Exponential Conference this year.  

Darrin referenced something he learned from David Fairchild, that I will summarize here but can be found in better detail in David Fairchild's post.  In talking about spiritual gifts, and abilities, David talked about the 3 "offices" that Jesus held:

Prophet, Priest & King

In looking at those, Darrin was sharing how we all probably lean heavily into one area, partially in another, and not at all in one.  Here is how you can think of those 3 offices:

Prophets- Communicate God to people.  They are teachers and vision casters.  Prophets tell us where we need to go.  Their struggle is they idolize knowledge, the power of authority & take pride in it (which can lead to legalism).

Priests- Communicate to God for people & bring people to God.  Priests make sure we feel God’s presence & loving concern while we go there.  They care about people above all else.  Their struggle is they seek approval from other people.

Kings- Bring the reign of God to the church & this world.  Kings know how to get where we need to go.  They care about plans, systems and organization.  Their struggle is with control and comfort and caring for people.

I clearly fall in the prophet & king camps, while lacking in priest gifting.  I think I am naturally more of aa king but must move to more of a prophet as our team and church grows.  I may always be more of a king than a prophet but my ability to teach and cast vision must grow as our children's ministry grows.

How about you?  Where do you lean?

Message Application & Spiritual Gifts - Part 1

At CCC we're in the midst of the CCC at the Movies series, where we take some popular movies and look at the truths about God they communicate, whether on purpose or not.  Two Sundays ago David shared a message based on the movie Kung Fu Panda - which is a totally awesome movie. 

In the message David talked about spiritual gifts, and how in the movie the panda (Po) had to figure out how he was gifted and how to best use that.  Two thoughts came out of that message for me.  One, I'm thinking about adding something to my blogging rhythm.  I'd like to post each week about how I'm going to apply what I've heard in the message at CCC on Sundays.  Reason being, messages should move us to action because simply knowing more about the Bible makes us more proud, not more like Jesus.  I hope to start that this week.

It also reminded me of something cool I learned from Darrin Patrick at the Exponential Conference this year.  But, that will be in tomorrow's post.

Story....of Great Importance

I've heard more about the topic of story recently, particularly with Ben Arment's new project called STORY.  In following his blog I've heard a lot about the topic of story as he has blogged about it and as he has included links to other sources talking about the importance (or lack of) of story.  

Recently I watched the Q & A from the Advance Conference with Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler and Bryan Chapell.  In that video, the question came up about how to transition an old church that isn't reaching new people well.  Mark had a great insight that involved story.  He said that churches need to do a good job of celebrating birth and new birth.  What he meant was churches should celebrate newborn babies and new Christians and the life change they experience.  In doing so he believes "old" churches who are resistant to change would be more willing to change and sacrifice their preferences because of the power of the stories they hear.  The stories would compel them to move beyond their personal preferences.

Most great leaders will say that great leaders also need to be great storytellers.  I definitely need to be a better storyteller and whoever pays my way to the STORY event will help me do that :)  

(totally kidding, don't buy me a ticket because I can't go anyway......I know you were thinking about it)

Church Surveys - Extremely Helpful

Our church was started to reach people who are not a part of any church.  We are constantly trying to evaluate how well we are doing in light of that vision.  Last month we had a church-wide survey that had a ton of questions that helped us evaluate how well we are doing in a number of different areas.  Here are some of the interesting things we found:

• Our attenders are 60% married & 40% single (that's adults & students responding) 
• Our most common age brackets are 28-35 & 23-27  
• Since we launched, 55% of new attenders have been from another church and 45% have come from an "unchurched" background.  That is much better than the national average for churches and we have actually gotten better recently (it's 50/50 in the last year specifically)
• 71% of people came to CCC because they were invited  
• Our Starting Point environment is extremely helpful for getting people connected in small groups (twice as likely to connect) and contributing on ministry teams (three times as likely to serve)  

We also learned there are some things we can improve on:

• Communicating what Starting Point is and why it's valuable to newcomers and long-time attenders. 
• We can communicate about membership more clearly and regularly
• We can improve on how well we track assimilation on an individual, and church-wide level

The survey was a bear to analyze but it provided a lot of great information, only a portion of which I mentioned here.  It will probably be a yearly thing for us and should go a long way towards helping us constantly get better at everything we do.

Does your church do surveys?  If so, could you send me a copy?  If not, why not?

Training Volunteers Using the Web

I recently had an idea about how I could possibly leverage the internet to help train and develop CCC Kids volunteers.  The web technology I plan to use is primarily WordPress Multiuser.  

Basically I want to create a website for volunteers that will be the central place for communication and training.  The communication would replace a big part of our current system of communicating (email) with blog posts.  But, the key would be subscribing all volunteers to the email service of the blog so nothing really changes for them.  The benefit though, is that the blog post will stay up so it can be seen after it's read in the email if needed, and volunteers can comment on it.  Hopefully it will be a great way to have discussions and clarify things when needed.

The other huge part is the training.  This falls in two realms:  orientations and ongoing training.  The website could be used to help new volunteers learn everything about CCC (vision/strategy), CCC Kid's strategy, environments, volunteer roles, and the Orange Strategy we use.  With it being online, they can learn it at their own pace (within a specified time frame) and interact with different elements along the way, including articles, podcasts and other downloadable elements.  

The ongoing training would essentially be in the form of articles and podcasts that would be available on the site to volunteers (who have a login).  Discussion would be facilitated through the comments to allow people to process what they're learning.  

The biggest challenges are:

• I don't know much about in-depth WordPress coding
• Making time to work on it  
• Doing it in such a way that I could reproduce it for other churches quickly and in a way that would allow them to get full use of the system without needing to know WordPress coding.  

I really want to make this reproducible for other churches because I think most churches would benefit from something like this.  If you would like to check it out when it's done, leave a comment and I'll be sure to contact you about it.  

Staff Retreat Thoughts - Dealing in Reality

Something else we do at our staff retreats is evaluate.  Now, we evaluate everything and we evaluate every week, but staff retreats and extended times of meeting like that are when we really get the chance to evaulate the big picture things, particularly things that aren't events or programs but more like systems and strategies.

In evaluating, it's critical to deal in reality.  In the book Good to Great Jim Collins talks about it as the willingness to "confront the brutal facts".  In the book Breakout Churches (modeled after Good to Great) Thom Rainer calls it the "ABC Moment" (awareness/belief/crisis).  

One thing I love about CCC is our desire to know the facts (reality) and how hard we'll work to find them.  Fortunately none of them right now are brutal (or probably even close).  But, we always find ways we can improve and that wouldn't happen if we just assumed everything was perfect rather than dealing in reality.