How do we engage experts in a volunteer setting? That is to say, how do we get the best people for the job in the right place?

For the most part, we tend to to put presence as the highest virtue that a volunteer can have, skills and gifts come second. Most leaders are scrambling between one project and the next and we usually rest at ‘good enough‘ out of pure survival rather than strategy.

I’m starting to see that this tactic, or lack thereof, while not bad or evil in any way, tends to alienate potential experts.

Here are some of my thoughts:

• Experts are really busy and can’t be bothered with the peripheral tasks that often come with serving, or just lack the skills to administrate them. This is because the are consumed with being really good at that thing they are an expert at.
• I find that people who are exceptionally gifted at something tend to wear weakness in other areas right on their sleeve. Experts are typically not the well rounded cookie cutter type people.
• Experts don’t get all excited about your big vision about ‘X’, especially when it relates to that which they are an expert. This is because you think your vision for them is big when to them its just more status quo and they have seen it one hundred times.

These characteristics usually mean more work for the leader. You may have to shape your work flow around the expert. You may need to find more people to help fill in the peripheral gaps around the expert. You my have to trust someone who knows more than you, that’s often the hardest pill to swallow. You will probably have to let the expert in on vision shaping. You will have to learn to love someone who has quirks and eccentricities.

Help me process this thought

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I was reading an article in Business Week, Trust in a Time of Turmoil, where the author was commenting on how our nation’s leadership was reacting to the financial crisis and a line from the article jumped out at me.

But we’re not suggesting leaders can’t build trust in mid-crisis. They can—by taking strong action, provided that action is taken quickly, openly, and straightforwardly. Together, speed, transparency, and simplicity form a “trust screen”—the closer any leadership move comes to meeting all three, the more trust it will create.

Times of crisis present incredible opportunity for those in leadership positions to build trust and the three points, speed, transparency and simplicity could hold the key to a lot of success.

So I ask you, how would speed, transparency and simplicity look during the handling of a crisis in a church setting?

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In business the thing has always been work hard-make more money. That’s cool, and I think it works. As a church planter I run a small business on the side and the harder I work, the more money I make…mostly.

This energy, this attitude is highly prevalent in the church these days. I encounter pastors all the time who are running at the red line all week, every week. Let me qualify by saying, yes, there are seasons and weeks where you need to hammer down and get it done, but seriously, take it easy people.

When was the last time you got a call from someone and you were able to connect with them right now without consulting your calendar?

Common sense says that you should have some savings in the bank for when you need it. Should we not also have some spare time for when we need it?

Two facts:
Sunday is coming, and it always will be.

People are the most important thing.

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I love hanging out with ministry people that are in different situations than I am. It really adds a different perspective to what I am doing. I sat with a friend who recently took on what could be considered the total opposite of what I am doing. He is the youth pastor at a large church that has been around for a long time and is chock full of tradition and sacred cows. Where as, I am at a little upstart church just barely learning to walk.

We have the benefit of being free of traditions and sacred cows that might slow us down. But the more established church has the security and stability that come with that.

All in all I like to see the different tools that others are working with and to see what might work for where I am. I don’t think one is better than the other they are just different. I believe a lot of church planters will tend to think they have the answer and all the churched that came before them were wrong.  At the same time I believe a lot of established churches write church planters off know that a lot of them will end up failing.

At the end of the day we are all trying to do the same thing, and the more variety in method, the more people we can impact.

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Needless to say, I am anxiously awaiting the release of phones running Google Android and from the sound of things, T-Mobile should have an offering by holiday time.

I have been a fan of open source stuff for quite some time. It is interesting to see the advancement of open source products versus copy written stuff. Like browsers for instance. Anyone who spends significant time online knows that Firefox is the best browser ever and the add ons built by individuals are the icing on the cake.

We are starting to see the open source model trickle into other areas off line. Like Life Church Open. It is really cool to see the ideas being shared through the blogs in this community of churchie bloggers. I have really enjoyed picking up cool ideas for doing church and ministry and also the great feedback from ideas I have shared. The Impact Church Sermon Notes was a big hit. I ended up sending PSDs and fonts all over the country to people wanting to pull it off.

What ‘open source’ ministry ideas have you implemented lately?

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We have all been to that friends house that you sort of know how to get to. You don’t really know the street names and house numbers, but you can ‘feel’ your way there without a problem. The problem comes when you try to tell someone how to get there, and you can’t.

A lot of people have the same hitch with their faith. They know what they believe, but maybe they cannot articulate chapter and verse of what they believe. The problem is that this shouldn’t be a road block.

Get in your car and drive to where your friend is, and have them follow you on the path that you took to get there.

That’s evangelism.

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I was sitting and talking with some friends yesterday about a trip they recently took up to the mountains with their kids. It was their 9 year old sons first time sledding and I was captivated by the description of how much fun he had. I can picture the look in his eyes as he flew down the hill, snow kicking up all around. As a nine year old boy he had tapped into his calling in that moment…to play.

Then it happened. A bump. A crash. A flip. A scrape.

(more…)

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We have all been there. You’re sitting in church having a great worship experience and really connecting with God and others, and then it happens. Some dude gets up on stage and starts telling bad jokes and passing on insider information that you can’t decipher what he means. It’s like he is speaking in code. Announcements, they suck. I can’t for the life of me figure out what to do with them.

At Impact Church one of our cherished tenants is to ‘protect the worship’. The creative team really takes this seriously and we are always having to shoot down ideas because they just have nothing to do with worship.

But at the same time, the weekend service is the one time when we have a lot of people in the same place and it would be nice to pass on some information that we think is important. I simply cannot figure out a way to do this and still, ‘protect the worship’.

We have tried videos, slides, like ten different people, and they all either fail to communicate the message or they disrupt the worship. Which is worse?

Should we abandon the dreaded announcements all together? What do they do at your church?

worship,church,creative

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