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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.  

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.  

Practical Leadership: Part 1 - Organization

Many aspects of leadership are written about, or taught about, from a very high-level perspective.  Things like vision-casting, communicating, coaching, equipping, encouraging, and managing can sometimes be hard to put into practice regularly.  This series of posts contains practical ideas you can implement to become a better leader.

Organization could be considered an aspect of leadership, but I'm really starting with this one because it is involved with every other aspect that I'll mention later.  Many leaders are okay with not being organized simply because it's not their "gift" and they aren't good at it.  Unless you have an assistant, you'll probably need to have decent organizational skills in order to increase your leadership capacity.

Here are some ideas to help you get organized:

• Read the book Getting Things Done:  The Art of Stress Free Productivity.  This book provides a system you can use to organize everything you have to do in a way that helps you not stress about it.  I don't use that system, but I use the principles.  I have places to store everything I need to do, and don't have to worry about "dropping the ball" if I use my system well.  (I put my system at the bottom for you extremely interested folks, all 2 of you).  One part of this system is - if you can do it in less than 2 minutes, do it.  If not, file it away for later.

• Control your technology and don't let it control you.  I'm pretty bad at this, but the idea is that you can turn off your email (work offline), completely silence your phone, and avoid other distractions for blocks of time to focus on specific things.  I learned this from the book Time Traps.

• If you're email inbox is part of your to-do list, be sure that you direct email that isn't work related to another folder, or place "to do" emails in a specific folder and don't mark them "read" until they're done (or you can check/uncheck them if your client has that feature).

• Store your "to do" items somewhere.  A moleskine, rememberthemilk.com, the task manager in your email client, your forearm, wherever you can access it regularly.

• Use a calendar.  That could be Outlook/iCal, Google Calendar, or a hard copy calendar that you write in.  Record all of your meetings, or other meetings/events you need to be aware of. 

• Create a filing system.  Unless you digitally scan in everything you come across, you'll need a filing system to store the hard copy things you want to save.  You could use a portable one but that would probably not suffice.

Bottom line, it's important to be organized in order to lead well.  People aren't interested in following disorganized leaders.  While it may simply be an area you aren't gifted in, it comes across as if you don't care enough to put in the work.  Organized people have a way of thinking disorganized people are lazy.  I'm not saying it's right, but it's reality.

My system:

I use rememberthemilk.com (RTM) for most of my tasks and projects.  I have separate "lists" for bills, personal, work-tasks, work-projects, study, and a couple random ones.  I put deadlines on most of them and RTM emails me when that deadline comes up.  In that way, I also use may email inbox.  If I can reply to an email in under a minute, I do it.  If I can't, I let it sit until I have time to work on it based on how I've prioritized everything I need to do.

I use a moleskine the same way I use RTM.  But, I primarily use the moleskine in meetings where I can't access RTM.  I'll leave some items in the moleskine without transferring them to RTM, knowing that I check the moleskine daily and items on there are a lower priority.

I have a filing system in my desk for anything and everything I want to save.  That could include staff documents, articles I like, project notes, pictures, documents, etc. 

I have a PDA-phone that syncs with my Outlook Calendar which helps me stay organized while I'm away from my computer.  It's great for reminding me to do things I would normally forget because I'm in the midst of something or away from my computer.  It's huge for me on Sunday mornings, when I need to remember to meet people or do things at various times throughout the morning. 

Everything I need to do is placed somewhere in that system, and I don't stress about it once it's there.  Adopt a system that works for you, but without a system you'll probably forget things, do things incorrectly or do them inefficiently. 

NFL & The Church Part 4 of 6

The Church (capital C) is my number one passion after God & family and the NFL is my number one hobby.  Throughout my history with each of them I've noticed some common things between the two of them, but in some cases it SHOULD be common but it usually isn't.  I'll post them all in no particular order.

Great Systems

The NFL has amazing systems.  Systems for how the linebackers will practice on the 8th day of training camp and systems for how expansion teams are added to the league.  Systems for massive things and systems for small things.  Each week during the season NFL teams execute their system for game planning, practicing, conditioning, coaching, critiquing, evaluating, scouting, etc.  I don't think I need to make a strong case for the quality of the NFL's systems.  But, there is a great example.

John Harbaugh showed up to his interview for the Baltimore Raven's head coach position with way more than just experience, a great resume, great references and the pedigree.  He brought a system.  Andy Reid's influence led to Harbaugh coming in with a huge book, that was essentially a detailed plan for how to lead an NFL team from day 1.  John has executed that play book since he arrived and the results have been great so far, especially for a team with a rookie QB and 16 guys on injured reserve.  That book is really just documented systems, and the processes that make up those systems.

The Church neglects systems for many reasons.  Unhealthy schedules, little margin, lack of systems thinking leaders and a general bias against systems are all examples of reasons why most churches have bad systems.  Andy Stanley says that "systems create behaviors" (I think that was borrowed from a book called the Fifth Discipline).  Most churches have serious behavior problems.

Just imagine if every church had a "book" like the one Harbaugh has.  A detailed plan for how everything in the church takes place.  Sure, the plan will change constantly, but documenting it forces leadership to think through the current systems and identify opportunities for improvement.  With detailed systems it's easier to recruit volunteers and develop leaders.....because the play book is already made. 

If you want to have great systems at your church, Nelson Searcy at Church Leader Insights is the first place to look for help.

McChurch?

In a previous blog post I talked about Ed Stetzer's blog posts regarding multisite churches and some questions he posed.  Multisite churches come in all different forms so one can rarely talk about them as a whole and really be able to include every possible model.  Most of the distinctions are in the small things (preaching format, style, location, leadership, etc) but in Ed's article he actually referenced a model that is far less popular than what I'll call standard multisite. 

Standard multisite to me is one church, multiple locations.  One staff, one budget, one eldership, one vision, one language, etc.  Most would fit under that category but Ed called the article "Questions for McChurch".  At the end he said:

"One writer recently wrote about his franchised church--calling it "McChurch--I'm loving it." 

That phrase came from an article in Christianity Today (on their blog here) which was about Eddie Johnson likening his church to a Chick-fil-a franchise.  Eddie is the lead pastor of Cumberland Church - a North Point Strategic Partner.  This method of "multisite" isn't really multisite to me.  Because, it's not one church, multiple locations.  It's two churches, one mission, vision, strategy, values and some of the same preaching on video.  (Not exactly a great tag line).  Each partner church shares all that with North Point but is it's own independent organization with it's own budget and leadership.

The only other church I know of that uses this model as well is Lifechurch.tv (called Network Churches).  If you know of others drop a comment and fill me in.  What do you think about the McChurch model? 

Whiteboard Sessions Tomorrow

David Robinson and I are heading to the Whiteboard Sessions in Reston, VA tomorrow.  It's a one day deal with 8 influential Christian leaders who will each have 30 minutes to speak on 1 topic.  I follow 4 of the speaker's blogs but I'm excited to hear from all of them.  Here's the line up:

John Burke, Ed Stetzer, Mark Dever, Darrin Patrick, Vince Antonucci (he's been to CCC), Mark Batterson, Tim Stevens, & Perry Noble.

You can read their bios on the Whiteboard Bio page.

I probably won't blog while I'm there (I hear there's no WiFi) but I'll Twitter as much as I can.  Twitter has been really flaky recently so we'll see how that goes. 

I'm leaving Thursday morning so it will probably take me 5 hours to drive the 68 miles to Reston because 95 & 495 transform into parking lots during morning rush hour. Seriously, I hope I can do it in 2 hours or less.

Good to Great

I finally got around to reading Good to Great, a book that's been on my bookshelf for a long time.  There's a ton of great information in there and I wanted to share one thing I learned from it.  The book is the result of years of studying companies that went from good to great.  Meaning, they were regular companies averaging profits on par with the market standard, but eventually became great and averaged much more than the market average for years.  The book shares the differences between those companies, and companies that just stayed good, or got worse, that were in the same market. 

One thing they found was that the good-to-great companies all broke through at some point, beginning a steep incline in market share.  But, none of them could point to one event, decision, investment, technology, or anything that produced that breakthrough.  In all of their cases, they said it was years of hard work, consistency, and development.  So, from the outside it looked as if they had a revolutionary breakthrough.  But the truth is, it was really the result of a lot of consistent development for many years.  And, for the people involved in that development, the insiders, it did not feel like a breakthrough at all, because they experienced all of the hard work for many years whereas people on the outside didn't even notice them until they were great.  Like, after the Tipping Point.

I think we all look at other successful people and organizations and want what they have, without the years of hard work.  We want a better lifestyle than our parents had, 20 years before our parents had it.  We want churches as big as other churches, right now.  We want to be financially independent.....now.  We want to be the manager, CEO, director, or whatever, 15 years before the person who currently holds that position was.  We expect more, earlier. 

I'm reminded of the parable of the talents - "You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things."  We want the responsibility without showing faithfulness.  I know I do, so it's a good thing God knows better. 

Systems & Processes :: Quality 4

Portable

Great systems are portable.  They don't just work in one context or environment.  A system that is portable can be used in different contexts or environments - such as different locations, buildings, regions, economies, cultures, etc.  A great system doesn't have to work in every context, but it should be portable enough to work in many. 

Take fast food chains, or any other franchise for instance.  They're basically a system that has been nearly perfected, and then ported to places all around the country and even the world.  They might have different prices, people, settings, sizes, customers, etc. but it's all still the same system.  There are probably tweaks here and there, but the base system is the same and it works because it's portable. 

At CCC we're going multisite.  What that means is that most of our systems need to become portable.  In multisite terms that's usually called reproducible.  We need to be able to reproduce our systems across any number of campuses in order to achieve the goal of becoming one church in many locations.

So, those are my thoughts (probably not even worth $.02) about what 4 qualities make up a great system.  They're effective, efficient, flexible and portable.  I'm sure that's not it, so what do you think?