team empowerment…
I will only be sharing three more lessons learned from the “Staff Infections” Conference I attended… WOW, there is A LOT of material here and it’s taking me a while to get through it all, but, WOW is it good stuff… It has been very challenging to me
personally, and as a leader… I have to take a good LOOOOONNNNGGGGG look at ME!!!
– Acts 6
• Young exploding church, a fast start and rapid growth that outpaced any organizational structure or staffing plan – this was the Jerusalem church.
• Acts 2-6 Apostle’s job was preaching, public powerful witness and resource management.
• By Acts 6 the church leaders had become the bottleneck for ministry.
• Successful ministry from Acts 1 – 5 was now unsustainable for the next wave.
• Seven spirit-filled, respected men standing on sidelines, watching it all.
• Stephan & future deacons right there but no one was engaging them yet.
• When apostles moved ministry from piling up, the ministry shifted into high gear.
• Apostles job descriptions focused on mission-centric ideas: praying, preaching, protecting church, developing doctrine.
You can train new leaders to handle ministry, bless them with the laying on of hands and then applaud them as they do the work.
Questions:
• What is your role/job as a leader?
• Are you doing what you should be doing?
• Do all ministry decisions have to come through you?
• Are you bottlenecking ministry?
• Are you a red light, yellow light, or green light for your staff?
• Younger/newer team members may require you to take ministry a little bit slower.
• If some staff are failing, you may need to stop and fix the problem.
Craig Groeschel, “delegate tasks and you develop workers, but delegate responsibility and you develop leaders.”
Are you raising leaders or workers? Are you delegating tasks or responsibility?
together…
This is another teaching I received at the “Staff Infection”…
Collaborate
Collaborative Teams are a vital part of success.
• offices are wide open. • There’s no walls. • We love this because it allows us to collaborate.
Collaboration is when we leverage our strengths that none of us could produce on our own.
Benefits:
1. Collaboration reduces individual work. Example: The Teaching Team works together to prepare messages. Results in at least a 50% reduction in prep time. This leaves more time for relationship building and leadership development.
2. Collaboration recognizes individual contributions. (counter intuitive) Person executing an idea might receive accolades. Because of the collaborative work, that person passes that affirmation on to the team.
3. Collaboration reduces “star status”. The temptation to elevate any one to a star status is reduced because people are utilized in so many ways in so many places.
4. Collaboration results in a better product. Many hands make light work, many hands make better work.
5. Collaboration is more fun. When we collaborate on our work, we reflect God’s dream for His Church.
Do whatever you can together . . . collaborate.
My Point:
Do you collaborate with those around you? If not, WHY??? You’re missing SOOOO Much…
MORE HIM, less me
brent
Be a Lifter…
I had the privilege of attending a 5 hour conference yesterday with the GREAT staff of Capital City Church called “STAFF INFECTION”. Basically, it was a conference about cultivating a healthy church team… It was a good conference, A LOT of information to try an assimilate into my already crazy brain… I have heard it said about other conferences friends have gone to, “it was like drinking from a fire hose..” well, this was like having the fire truck pull up to your face and dumping the whole load… It was intense!!! for 5 hours (with 1-2 minute break) we had 50 leaders (1 every 6-8 minutes) give us very useful information… Over the next few posts, I will be sharing some of the leadership lesson I was able to be a part of… This first one comes from Mark Eiken who is a Campus Pastor @ 12Stone Church in Lawrenceville Georgia..
Encouragement means to inspire with hope, courage, and confidence.
• “Men don’t follow titles, they follow courage.” – Mel Gibson, Braveheart.
There are those people that you always feel better about yourself after having been with them than when you came in.
• We love those people, and we want to be one of those people.
• It is both a gift and a skill.
3 Types of Encouragement:
1. Spiritual – example: Sit down with somebody further in the journey than you, and they speak words of blessing or pray over you. Your spirit is encouraged.
2. Emotional – example: warm words, pats on the back, the smiles of affirmation.
3. Physical – example: show me the money. Gift certificates, a bonus when appropriate. The opportunity to bless somebody with something more tangible.
What does encouragement and positive feed back do for those we lead?
1. Encouragement fuels passion.
• Physical and emotion fuel to reach farther, hold on longer and climb higher than thought possible.
2. Inspires confidence.
• people desire your confidence
• want to know they are doing a good job
• gives inspiration to charge ahead
• brings out the greatness people hoped lived in them
3. Communicates your values
• when team members are accruing wins in areas of high values, recognize their success.
Guidelines for effective encouragement and positive feedback.
1. Be personal. (more effective; Resource – The 5 Love Languages)
2. Be purposeful (be specific, communicate team values)
3. Be punctual (reward as soon as appropriate)
4. Be public (raise them in others eyes)
One Caution: Never use encouragement to manipulate
• Pay attention to the feedback you are giving, and why you are giving it.
• Heb. 10:24 – Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and
good works.
My Point:
A great friend once told me that the difference between motivation & manipulation is as follows:
Motivation – I encourage you to do something for your benefit…
Manipulation – I encourage you to do something for my benefit…
1. Reflect and describe how your stye of encouragement communicates your values.
2. Write a brief description of your team members. From the perspective of encouragement, how well do you know them? List specific steps to improve your knowledge of you team mates. Can you identify their “love language”? Identify 2-4 key ways that encourage or inspire each person.
MORE HIM, less me
brent
“a chain is only as strong as its weakest link…”
“a chain is only as strong as its weakest link…” describes a circumstance where one weak person or a small part of a greater whole causes the whole project or object to fail…
I never want to be the weakest… and I also never want to surround myself with the weakest… Surround yourself with strong links, and BE a strong link…
“down in the mulligrubs…”
I heard a statement the other day during a message that Elena Hart was giving on Mothers Day… She did an AMAZING Job…She said, “If you’re down in the mulligrubs…”
Well, my mind stopped listening for a minute or so trying to figure out what she just said…MULLIGRUBS???? What in the world does that mean, and where did it come from? So, being the “cliche guy” that I am, I decided to look it up:
mul·li·grubs: noun ( used with a singular or plural verb ) Southern U.S. ill temper; colic; grumpiness.
Have you ever had a time when you’re “Down in the Mulligrubs?” – I know I have, I have gone through times in my life when it seemed as though, those “Mulligrubs” would NEVER end… When work isn’t going how you expected, your kids are not living or acted how you want, your spouse isn’t acting like you think they should, etc., etc., etc… My wife looks at me sometimes when I get that way and says, “Are you Mr. Grumpy Gills?” of course, if you do know my wife, you can totally see that… If not, trust me, My wife won’t allow you to have the “Mulligrubs” very long… She doesn’t like being around people that are grumpy… come to think of it, does anyone LIKE to be around someone who’s grumpy?
My Point: Next time you have the “Mulligrubs”, go eat a cookie…
MORE HIM, less me
Toilet Signs…
I was in a class on speaking to a Postmodern world and a story was shared… I loved the thought provoking example so much, I wanted to share it with all 1 of you that read my blog…
“A toilet sign at an airport may have meaning but no relevance if you don’t happen to need to go to the toilet. If you need to go to the toilet, the sign has both meaning and relevance. If you are in Japan or Greece and could not even read the lettering, the sign would have relevance but no meaning. So you would never know how relevant it was.”
This makes perfect sense to me… What a challenge to me…For some that I speak to, the Bible has “no meaning”, they don’t understand it. For others, the Bible has no relevance and is looked at as “not important”. They feel that the Bible has nothing substantial to say to people living in our time. They don’t see the Bible as having meaning or relevance. My job is to help supply both meaning and relevance to people who don’t initially understand or perceive it…
Thoughts?
MORE HIM, less me
What goes around comes around…
This is a statement that seems to hold true throughout history… Its meaning in simple terms is, whatever you want done to you, do it to others… If you want people to take you serious, take them serious, don’t make a joke out of everything they say…
If you want people to treat you fair, treat them fair…and so on… We are facing a situation here in Columbus next Tuesday May 10th… Westboro Baptist Church has decided to picket one of our local High Schools…
They have stated, and I quote: “WBC will picket the worthless brats at Darby High School where the parents and teachers teach Rebellion 101. Your moral compasses have been shattered by this nation’s lies, chiefly that God is blessing america despite her proud, rebellious sin and idolatry. Of course, even high school children can see that there are no blessings for them, only curses all day, every day. Your parents, teachers, preachers and leaders have no answers for you because they have sinned away their last day of grace by failing to teach you God’s commandments and warning you to flee the wrath to come.”
I’ll be honest, my initial response was NOT, “WOW, these guys are full of Love, I’m proud of what they’re doing”, as a matter of fact, I did think they were full of something, but it wasn’t love… I did NOT want the best for them, or wish God’s blessings on them.. I did think of a few things that I would LOVE to say to the Pastor that’s encouraging them to do these things…
An idea from a friend, is that we set up a booth across from the Westboro Baptist group that says something along the lines of “We disagree with Westboro Baptist church” and if you disagree, please donate here” – “All proceeds will be given to Darby High School in the name of Westboro Baptist Church…”
I think we CAN let people know that Westboro Baptist Church DOES NOT represent Christ, or His love…
My Point: Let’s treat people the way we want to be treated…
MORE HIM, less me
brent
ps. I have contacted local law enforcement, and the principal of the high school, it’s legal and they will take any donations we receive!!! I’ll let you know how it goes….
WHY…
As I sat in Church today, the lead Pastor (Shane Hart) made a statement: “It doesn’t matter WHY someone is where they are, it
matters that they need some help getting where they want to be” He spoke the first of 4 message in the “Grey Matter” series today.. It was “How do we respond to HIV/AIDS” …
The statement got me thinking, Do I help people get where they (or God) wants them to be? Am I pointing people in the right direction? As a Pastor, I have people asking advice for MANY different things, I have to make multiple decisions daily if not hourly, but in those decisions, what is the motivation behind those decisions? It should be people, helping people develop into a better them…
My Point: What are you doing to help others in your circle of influence, get from where they are, to where (God) they want to be?
MORE HIM, less me
A blog about my random thoughts... 