Patience & Leadership Go Hand in Hand

leadership, patience

If you are anything like me, you are not a patient person.

Patience is hard.

I always hear people joke, don’t pray for patience.

Why?

We want things now. We are an instant culture. We want fast food. We want to post pictures instantly. It’s even called Instagram.

Patience is hard when it comes to leadership as well, not only because of the reasons just mentioned and the way we are wired and how our culture operates but because of how long things take in leadership.

Let me explain.

Leaders are future oriented people. One of the things that separates leaders from followers is the ability of leaders to see a desired future and move people towards it. Because of this, by the time things become a reality, leaders have lived with them for months, sometimes years.

When a church launches a new initiative, ministry, program, a building campaign, buys land or hires a new staff member, the leaders have anticipated this moment for months or years.

Patience is hard. And crucial.

For leaders, because change feels like an eternity to them, it is easy to forget how whiplashed our followers can feel when a change happens. For a leader, they have read books, prayed, talked to mentors and other leaders, listened, and waited for months to launch something. When their followers give pushback, they think the problem is with the followers (and it may be), but often they are not giving their followers the same time to process the change as they had to think about the change.

If you are in a spot as a leader who is about to make a change or launch something, here are some ways to handle it:

  1. Be patient. Yes, you may need to wait a little longer. The time may not be right, the funds may not be there, the momentum may not be in your corner. You may need to have a little more patience.
  2. Give people time. If you took weeks or months to research and process this decision, give your followers at least some time to sit with it. Let them ask questions. Just because someone has questions or gives pushback does not mean they are being divisive or are not on board. They are processing.
  3. Be honest about the loss, not just the excitement of the future. When discussing a change, talk about the loss. With every change there are gains and losses. Leaders see the gains, followers see the losses. Leader, look at the losses and talk about them, let your followers know you hear them, but help them see the gains.
  4. Be excited and decisive. At some point the time for patience and waiting is over, and it is time to be decisive and move forward. When is that time? It depends on the situation, but you are the leader, so you’ll know.

Get out of the Way

Why Personal Leadership Growth Matters

In his book The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster: Why Now Is the Time to #Join the Ride, Darren Hardy quotes a leader:

The only constraint of a company’s (or church’s) growth and potential is the owner’s ambition. I am the constraint. The market, the opportunity, everything is there. It’s up to me to set the pace, clear the obstacles, get the resources, and create the conversations to grow the company faster. As CEO, the most important thing I manage is myself. Do that right, and everything else falls into place.

Yet, this is one of the hardest things for a leader to do, to look in the mirror.

At every stage of a church’s growth, one of the main barriers to its growth and health is the lead pastor.

Yes, buildings get too small, you run out of kids’ space, ministry ideas get stale, but what often happens is a church grows past how a pastor is leading.

Every time a church grows, a ministry grows, a team or staff gets larger, you need to change how you lead, what you do, and what you don’t do. If you don’t make those changes, you will find yourself treading water, and ultimately you will stunt the growth of your ministry.

If you’ve gone through the barriers of 50, 100, 200, 400 and beyond, you know this to be true. What I did when the church I lead was 100 was not what I could keep doing at 200. And now that we are moving toward 500, I’m finding that how I lead, what my hands are in and what decisions I make, are changing again.

As a leader this is painful.

For those connected to you as a lead pastor, this is painful and exciting.

It is painful for some because the meeting they used to have with you they will now have with someone else. The decision you used to give feedback on, someone else will give feedback on.

It is exciting because they get to lead in a way they haven’t before. Right  now I’m handing more and more decisions off to other leaders and I’m making less and less daily decisions about my church.

This is exciting for everyone involved, but it feels weird for the leader who used to be involved with more things.

Yet, for a church to grow a leader needs to get out of the way so more leaders can play and use their gifts.

Your Goal for Parenting Makes all the Difference

parenting, babywise

I posted last week about how many Christian parents fall into the trap of parenting out of what is easier instead of what is biblical.

I get it.

We have 5 kids and life gets hectic. Many times you want your child to just listen to you, stop doing what they’re doing and get their act together. Correcting, late nights, explaining yourself, engaging in why they did something, all takes effort. After a long day, that is often the last thing I want to do.

It is important for parents, in the midst of all the advice, books, blogs and hearsay, to take a step back and ask, “What is our goal as parents? What are we hoping to do? What kinds of kids do we want to send out into the world?” The answers to these questions will impact the way you parent.

Many times Katie and I will be asked about parenting styles; things like love & logic, baby wise, child directed feeding, parent directed. All kinds. Should you spank a child, ground them, put them in time-outs?

As parents, there is a sense of desperation. There is so much information out there, so many opinions, and we often feel at a loss. We hear successful parents talk about what they did, but what if your child is different than theirs?

One question has been running through my head recently as it relates to parenting (and I think it is one every Christian parent needs to think about). This question should shape how you communicate to your child, how you discipline, if you let them cry it out, etc.

The question is this: Does my parenting reveal the heart of God?

Let me explain.

God is a parent. He identifies himself as Father in the Bible, writers talk about his attributes as a parent (disciplining, communicating, loving, holding, cherishing, etc.). I think most Christians can agree on this point: God is our Father, we are children of God. I am a parent to a child, so therefore one of my hopes as a parent is to reveal to my kids what God is like.

Take a step back from your parenting for a second.

When your child thinks of how you discipline, communicate, connect, talk to them, interact with them, are they getting an accurate picture of what God as a Father is like? (And this isn’t just for men.) Your kids are connecting you to what God is like because they hear him called Father. They do that on their own. You are just revealing to them what God is like. 

How you interact with them says to your child, “This is what God is like.”

Let me give an example about discipline. The question often comes up about time-out’s, spanking, grounding, etc. Often as a parent, I fall into the trap of handing down discipline out of frustration or wanting it to move faster. What does discipline look like when we think about the heart of God? Does God disconnect himself from his children? Or is he with them? Does he leave them or go to them? Does he send his kids to their room? Think about Luke 15 and the Father running out to meet his son, the search for the lost sheep, the lost coin. Many of our kids fit those descriptions, and yet the heart of our parenting is nowhere near the heart of God as seen in Luke 15.

I have a hard time picturing God telling us to go work it out in our room, landing the boom on us or letting us “cry it out.” (As a caveat, there is a big difference between a child asking for space to process something they did and you making them have space in their room for something they did.) Instead, I see a God who pursues relationship and connecting. God is there in the muck, doing the hard work of loving a broken person, pursuing, taking the first step, not waiting on a child.

Your parenting reveals something about God; you are communicating to your children and to those around you what they should believe about God from your parenting.

So the questions every Christian parent needs to ask are not what is easiest for me or what works for my schedule. I understand those questions and desires, but those aren’t questions that should enter our heads. Instead, we have to ask: Is my parenting a true picture of the heart of God?

I don’t think this question gets asked enough about parenting. We look for tips and tricks and I’m all for those. At the end of the day, your goal (at least one of them) as a follower of Jesus with kids is to reflect the love of God to your kids and show them a true picture (as best as you can through the power of the Holy Spirit) of what God is like.

Why Parents Struggle with Connection

Let me take another step back, because I believe every parent wants to be connected to their child. We struggle to do it, it is difficult, we often don’t know what to say, but deep down there is something else happening.

Many of us don’t feel connected. We have skeletons in our past that whisper lies to us that keep us from engaging with our kids, that keep us from sharing our hurts, that keep us from being alive in Christ. And because we aren’t sure what the heart of God is like, we don’t know how to communicate that to our kids as a parent.

All we remember from childhood is abuse, broken promises, absent parents or parents who hovered and put us in bubble wrap. Connecting wasn’t a goal, authority and discipline were. Keeping things in line, looking and acting a certain way, projecting a certain persona.

And since we’re being honest, connection takes time and effort. When I need to discipline my kids, I want to shout and tell them to go to their room instead of taking a deep breath, sitting on the ground and hearing why they did something and talking with them about the power of sin and the power of Jesus over sin. I want to push them away in my sinfulness so they’ll go to sleep at night and I can have some down time. But my down time and my comfort are not the goal of parenting.

But many parents (and I fall into this trap more than I like to admit) have their comfort, ease and down time as a goal.

I know what you’ll say: “I don’t have any adopted kids. My kids don’t come from a hard background.”

The truth is, because of sin, all our kids come from a hard background. Whether that is being in a foster care system, experiencing abuse, struggling to meet standards at a suburban school, hard backgrounds are everywhere. The background of a child isn’t even the point because the heart cry of your child and every child is connection. How do I know? Because it is the cry of my heart with my heavenly Father, and it is the cry of your heart. 

We are just good at being adults and suppressing it.

The Most Important Leadership Skill in a Church

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What is the most important leadership skill in a church? For a pastor of students, kids, worship or a lead pastor to have?

Is it vision casting? Strategizing? Team building? Shepherding?

The choices you make in the recruiting process are, in effect, determining your future. -Darren Hardy

The most important leadership skill in any church is recruitingWho you surround yourself with, who you put on a team, who you hire, who you make an elder. Nothing else matters or makes more of an impact on the life of your church than this.

You might wonder, isn’t it prayer? Prayer isn’t a leadership skill. Prayer is a Christian skill. Prayer and the Holy Spirit makes or breaks your ministry.

What I’m talking about are the things you as the leader can control and do.

Why does recruiting matter?

Who you place on a team, in roles will decide your success.

When you look at the culture of your church, the people make up the culture. You can’t decide what your culture will be. You can’t sit in a meeting and decide you will be a welcoming, prayer-filled, evangelistic culture. You have to find people with that and put them on your team.

A company consists of one thing, really. If I buy a plane from Boeing, it’ll be exactly the same plane that BA [British Airways] will buy, which will be exactly the same plane that United [Airlines] will buy, exactly the same plane that Air Canada will buy. So what is a company? A company is the people that are working inside that plane, the people that are working on the ground. They’re the people that make up a company. They either make this company exceptional or average. -Sir Richard Branson

The same is true for your church.

Three problems happen in many churches as it pertains to recruiting and hiring:

  1. Most churches see it as the lead pastors job and only the lead pastors job to recruit. From the stage.
  2. In hiring, many lead pastors give away too much because they’d rather not read resumes, sit in interviews or talk to references.
  3. Churches don’t think they can be great so they don’t hire great people.

Both ideas are rampant in churches and are why many churches are mediocre at best.

If you look at any growing, healthy effective church, do you know what you will find? Talented, hard working people who love Jesus. Somehow, they all ended up at the same church.

Coincidence?

Nope.

The answer to the first problem: recruiting is everybody’s job. Whenever I hear someone at Revolution say, “We need more people serving in ____, can you make an announcement from the stage? I know we have a problem. And that problem is not a lack of people.

In fact, the best people to recruit are the people doing it. Not the person getting paid to do it.

There’s something that happens when someone who works with middle school students tells someone else, “I love the chance I get to influence the lives of students. Its my favorite hours of the week. Hey, why don’t you come with me next week and check it out?”

Recruiting in a church is everyone’s responsibility.

The answer to the second problem: the lead pastor has to be more involved in hiring

In most churches, hiring is done by a committee that the lead pastor might be a part of, but often he has nothing to do with it. This is the biggest mistake churches make and accounts much of the mediocrity in churches.

If you are like me, hiring, reading resumes, doing phone interviews, in person interviews, talking to references, reading personality tests is that last thing you want to do. It is draining, un-exciting and yet the single determinant to what your church will be like. Three years ago we hired a staff member that I didn’t put a lot of effort into. I let others do that and it cost us in people, time, energy, my stress level and money. We lost momentum, families, excitement. This person was on our team for a little over a year and it took us close to 18 months to get back to the level of momentum and size that we were when we hired this person.

Can one person do that?

Yep.

According to Darren Hardy in The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster: Why Now Is the Time to #Join the Ride, a bad hire can cost a company or church six figures. Now, a church is not a business or all about the money, but if that’s true and I think it’s at least close, that’s incredibly poor stewardship. And that is a spiritual issue.

The third problem is one that many pastors don’t talk about in hushed tones. They would never say it on stage, but when pastors grab coffee together, they talk jealously about the big church down the road and the things they can do that they as a smaller church can’t do. And it all boils down to the people they have. While the jealous pastors would say they can’t hire or recruit great people. They can’t find talented musicians, great kids teachers, passionate student workers, off the charts community group leaders. They would say it is a matter of money, but it boils down to what the pastors think they can do. Most churches don’t think they can be great so they don’t hire great people.

Sadly, in many churches the leaders have succumbed to the myth that only large, cutting edge megachurches can get the best people and they are stuck in the 1990’s when it comes to technology and talent.

Not true.

How do you find and hire great people?

First, know what you are looking for. If you don’t, you will never find it. If you want someone great, pray for it, look for it, believe you can find that person and you can vision cast that person into your team. Most people make recruiting and hiring mistakes with staff and volunteer positions because they’ll take anybody. Often, this means you will wait to do things as a church because you don’t have the leader yet. That’s okay.

Second, look for talented people. If you are afraid of talented people (and many pastors are because they’re control freaks) then that’s a sin issue on your part. If you have to micro-manage someone, you didn’t find a talented leader, you found a lackey to do your bidding and you don’t want that.

Third, they have great character. You can’t teach character, what someone’s character is, is what it is. Yes, the Holy Spirit can change people, but don’t hire or recruit someone to a key role with that hope and prayer in mind. Character is not a given in a church interview process, don’t assume it.

The best way to check for character is to hire from within your church. When this happens, you know exactly what you are getting. What their marriage is like, how they treat people, their giving and generosity, if they fit, if you like them.

The last thing that matters and this comes best from people within your church, they love your city and your church. Not everyone loves your city or loves the people in your church. You want people who do. There are unique things that make up your city and church and it doesn’t fit everyone. That’s okay. I get nervous when I get the spam email of guys looking for a job anywhere God will send them. My question is, “Where do you feel like God has called you?” Most of the people in the Bible had a place God called them to, not a paycheck, but a people, a city, a place, a neighborhood. Are people looking for that when they send out 100 emails? Yes, but often and I can speak from experience when I was in my 20’s, they are often looking for someone else to the heart and calling work for them.

If God has called you to a city and a people, he will provide for you there.

The reality is great people find other great people and great people want to work with other great people. 

Once you find someone great, others follow along. It can be slow and sometimes feels like you are moving backwards or letting momentum slip through your fingers as you try to rebuild a team or restart a culture. But you as the lead hold the keys to building it.

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How to Think of Blog Posts

blog posts

I always get asked, “Where do you get your ideas for blog posts?”

Blog posts like sermon ideas, article or book ideas are everywhere. They are in conversations, quotes, questions, your devotions and prayer time.

Here are a few places I find them:

  1. A question I have or someone else has. My opinion has always been, if one person has a question, others have the same question.
  2. Conversations after a sermon or in a missional community. 
  3. Book quotes. This is a great way to get a blog post. When a book or  quote makes you think of something, write it down. Many of my posts start that way.
  4. Other blog posts. Maybe you read something that makes you want to respond because you disagree, or you think you could write it better. Go through you old posts from time to time to see if you’d update something or if you can write something that is more helpful.

If none of those work, try these ideas from Ready to Be a Thought Leader?: How to Increase Your Influence, Impact, and Successat the end of the day or each week, could you set aside fifteen minutes to write down the highlights of what happened? What were the painful moments, the funny experiences, or the most challenging decisions you made? Here are a few more questions: What have I learned from this experience? What did I do well? What could I have done differently? Is there a universal lesson here that others could apply?

If you put these into practice, you will always have ideas for sermons, blog posts and books.

3 Strikes and a Good Idea

book

In Leadership Blindspots: How Successful Leaders Identify and Overcome the Weaknesses That Matter author Robert Bruce Shaw talks about the 3 strike rule used by Mark Ronald, former CEO of BAE Systems, Inc. The idea comes that not every decision needs to be resolved right away. Even in a fast paced environment like our culture today, you can sit on ideas.

For me, whenever someone says, “I need to know now” my response is almost always, “Well if you need to know now, the answer is no.” I don’t like to feel backed into a corner and wise decisions are rarely made in a rush.

According to Ronald, “any concern that affects the whole organization should be given 3 opportunities for a hearing by the leader and his or her team.” He goes on, “Each time the same issue surfaces, the individual advocating the position has a responsibility to either present new date or analysis that has not been heard before – or to cultivate further support from others who were not present or supportive in earlier discussions.”

One of the things people often do when advocating an idea is bring the same stats, data, passion, etc. to a discussion. Not new information.

According to Ronald, after 3 times though, the idea is dead in the water and not discussed again.

If you can’t get buy in from the people above you after 3 tries, you either didn’t do your homework, the organization isn’t ready for it, or the church will miss an opportunity.

If you aren’t in charge though, you can only control the data you bring in your 3 tries.

Let’s say you are not the lead pastor at your church and you bring an idea to the elders or lead pastor and they shoot it down. Instead of walking away frustrated, saying they have no idea what they are talking about or how they are irrelevant and just don’t get it. Ask them if you can do some more work on the idea and present it again. If it is a valid idea, they should say yes.

The next time you see a problem that you bring to your boss’s attention, also bring a solution with it. Your boss does not want to solve your problems, they want you to. You are the leader of your area, act like it.

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Figuring Out Who Attends Your Church

book

Recently, we did a church-wide survey to get an idea of who attends our church, how they found Revolution, how involved they are and how clear our steps as a church are. I got the idea from Luke Simmons and found it to be incredibly enlightening. It is one thing to say you are reaching a certain demographic or talk about diversity and how many people have taken a next step (and how clear that next step is), it is another thing to read it in hard numbers.

After reading through the results, I’m excited to see how things change and compare over the next year(s).

Some of the things we asked about were age, how long they have attended Revolution, if they had attended a church before Revolution, their ethnicity, stage of life and what next steps they had taken at Revolution.

Here are some of the things we learned:

  1. We are reaching a younger crowd. We have said before that our target demographic is 20 – 40 year old men and currently, 75% of our church is under the age of 45. I was excited about this number for two reasons. One, it means we are reaching our goal of men who are under 40, but also to see the percentage of those over 45 was also exciting. Many younger churches lament not having older adults in their church who are mature and able to provide some stability and mentorship and to see 25% of our church being over 45 was exciting. Our church is also 46% male and 54% female. My guess has always been close to 50/50 and I hope that always continues. On top of that, 32% of our church is single.
  2. We are reaching people who haven’t attended church. 29% of those who attend Revolution did not attend a church for 3 years prior to coming to Revolution. I would love to see this number go up over the coming year and #3 tells me there is a chance it will.
  3. People are reaching out. In the past year 82% of Revolution has invited someone who does not attend church anywhere to join them at Revolution. In fact, 36% have invited at least 4+ people in the past year! This was one of the most exciting numbers on the whole survey to me.
  4. People are taking their next steps and getting connected. Over 50% of those who attend Revolution have attended a newcomer’s lunch, and over 57% are on a serving team. This is good but I would love to see this number grow. Serving means ownership and a sense of belonging. As well, 92% of our church is plugged into a missional community. I am soaking that in and loving what that means. Care, community, discipleship, living on mission in community, accountability in life.
  5. Clarity for guests. For those who have attended less than 5 times, 60% of them know what the next step for them is and they are interested in taking it. I think this is huge because often people want to take a next step but don’t know what it is. However, 18% of our guests are interested in taking the next step but don’t know what it is. This gives us something to get better at and making sure that next steps are clear all the time, not just in seasons.

While this was our first year and have only guesses to compare it to, doing this in coming years will be incredibly helpful. It is nice to see what is clear and unclear about our church, what we are doing well and areas we need to make stronger. All in all, well worthwhile.

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3 Essential Values for Strong Teams

strong teams

Every leader and team have different values. Things that determine how they live and work with each other.

For each team I lead, I give each person 3 promises and ask them to make the same to me. If everyone on the team fulfills each of these to each other, it is amazing what the team can accomplish and how much people enjoy being a part of it.

Here they are:

1. Never surprise me. There is nothing worse as a leader than being surprised. Most leaders know this conversation, someone comes up to you and says, “Did you hear what is happening in the kids ministry, or my missional community or _________?” You didn’t know, and depending on the situation, you might have to defend it, put your name and reputation on the line for it, or look like you have no idea what is happening. This is why honesty and being up front is so important. If you don’t surprise me, I can be behind you always and make sure I throw all my leadership change behind you. Don’t make me have to pick by being surprised, let me do so privately beforehand.

2. Always make me look good. When people first hear this one, they usually pushback as if this is selfish. It isn’t. It is a value that each team member will do whatever they can to make the other members of the team look good. Put them in the best light, believe the best about them, speak highly of them in public and in private, to set them up to succeed instead of fail. This means, you are willing to make yourself look poorly so that someone else can look better. This is humility and no effective team can make it without this.

3. Always have my back. This is loyalty, plain and simple. Teams can handle many things, but when loyalty is lost, the game is over. I can walk with a leader through many things, but if I’m not convinced they are loyal, I’m not that interested in riding the storm out with you. For the people that work under me, they want to know I will have their back. That I will be on their side, get what they need to succeed and do their job and that I will be there.

How to Know Your Vision is Clear

If you are a leader, you might wonder if your vision as a church is clear. How do you know if you are accomplishing it? Often, leaders can be so hard charging they never stop to ask the question of whether they are hitting their target. Or, they are so complacent that they don’t care.

Here’s a simple way to know if your vision is clear: Are people coming to your church and leaving your church because of it. 

vision

Is anyone attending your church because of your vision?

You will know this is true by talking to new people at your church. What drew them to your church? What excites them the most about your church? Why did they get plugged into a missional community, small group or serving team?

Listen to the stories people tell about your church, what they say when they baptized.

Are you seeing new people attend? New people stick?

If what people say is not part of your vision, you either have the wrong vision or it is not very clear.

Has anyone left your church because of your vision?

This will sound unloving and I understand.

As a pastor, you want as many people as possible to attend your church. I want everyone in Tucson to come to Revolution Church, love it and stay. I want them to be on board with our vision, our target and what we feel like God has called us to.

Everyone won’t though.

As much as that hurts, it is okay.

Every city needs lots of churches to reach all of the people in it.

Recently, I talked with two families that left our church and as I talked with them about the reasons why one of them articulated, “We just don’t agree with the vision.” When I asked him to clarify. He told me, “Revolution focuses too much on people who don’t know Jesus.”

He’s right. That is our vision.

If no one has left your church in the past year because they don’t agree with the vision of your church, it is either not clear, not bold enough or you aren’t actually doing your vision.

People don’t leave passive churches because of the vision.

People don’t leave visionless churches because of the vision.

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Systems Trump Hopes & Intentions

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Everybody has hopes, dreams and good intentions.

Everyone wants to lose weight, get out of debt, get a degree, start a business, or start a hobby.

Churches want to grow, reach new people, see people start following Jesus, see new givers take that first step, see people get connected into community or serve.

W. Edwards Deming said, “Your system is perfectly designed to give you the results you’re getting.”

Put another way: systems trump hopes and intentions. 

This is true for every system.

The systems you have in place as a church are why you have the number of first time, second time and third time guests that you have. It is why you have as many people giving. Why you have the number of people serving or in community.

None of this is accidental and none of this “just happens.”

For Revolution, this is one reason we transitioned from small groups to missional communities. We found that small groups would give us a certain result and it wasn’t the result we wanted.

Think about it personally. What if you want to lose weight, get out of debt, get a degree or start a business. None of that will just happen. You have to have a system for it. Just hoping to lose weight won’t cut it. You can’t have the intention of getting out of debt without a system for it.

The reality of Deming’s words ring true in our businesses, churches and homes. We are getting the results our systems are designed to give us. It isn’t an issue or hope, wishes, intentions, but of systems and strategy.

At this point, once you realize this, the next step is having the patience for it to take root.

One of the reasons I see people not lose weight or get out of debt is they expect it to happen as quickly as they gained the weight or got into debt. 

That isn’t a reality. In the same way, after 10 years of unhealthy communication in a marriage, it will not change over night. It will take time.

What happens for many people is they put a system in place, that moves slower than they would like, so they give up and settle for the results they don’t want.

And then we are back to square one.