Empowering the Church
We just passed Easter weekend. It's the time when churches pull out all the stops. They spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning and preparing the facility. New technologies are implemented, the choir practices just a little longer than normal, and the pastor prepares just a little more. It's the Sunday when nearly every church has to ask attendees to squeeze in just a little tighter to make room for the guests.
Typically, churches look at Easter Sunday as a sort of open house. It's the time when we all put on our best face, and we are even nice to the guests who took our normal seats! It's that moment when pastors think, “At least they came in the door!”
Now there is nothing wrong with this perspective. The guests are coming whether we invite them or not. So we might as well make good use of their time. We should share the gospel story with them, and we should do our best to engage them since they are there. Cool lights, awesome sound, and powerful video can all be a part of this. The pastor should deliver a powerful message, and spend time sharing the gospel message. And if the regular attendees want to dig out their best outfits, I think that's perfectly fine.
The problem comes when pastors encourage their members to simply invite people on Easter weekend (or any other weekend for that matter). When they do this, it takes all the pressure off of the Church (with a capital C, meaning the people) to really minister to those they interact with on daily basis. As long as all the followers of Christ need to do is invite people to church (small c, meaning the building), the real Church is off the hook. If guests don't convert, or don't come back, or fall away after conversion, it's not really the fault of the Church, right? I mean they did their part by inviting the guests to service, so if the pastor didn't deliver an awesome message, or that one background vocalist was a little off, the Church can't be the one to blame. Can it? Didn't they do their part?
No. The Church is not off the hook. And the Church must learn to take responsibility for what happens inside of the four walls of the building. Pastors, do not be the sole minister of your Church. The effectiveness of a pastor is not measured by the number of people that come through the church doors, but rather by his ability to partner with Holy Spirit in empowering laymen to become ministers. It is impossible for a single pastor to meet the needs of the entire body. That's why followers of Christ are called to minister, not vocationally, but just as intentionally. When pastors take upon themselves the expectation to be the sole minister and evangelist, no one wins. Instead, the Church loses influence and the pastoral staff begin to burn out. God gave the command to go and make disciples to the Church as a whole, not just to the pastoral staff. The Church must begin to take this command seriously.
In reflecting on Easter weekend services, it's easy to critique our own presentation. And it's probably a good thing to spend time doing. But we shouldn't put too much pressure on ourselves to plan a great service. Instead spend some time figuring out how to empower the Church. The spiritual payoff will be greater than you can imagine.
What the Justin Bieber Movie Taught Me About Mentoring
Honestly, I've wanted to watch Never Say Never for a while. It is a documentary telling the story of Justin's discovery and rapid rise to fame. I'd heard it was good from several people, and I've always had a soft spot in my heart young, hard-working talent (even if it is Justin Bieber).
Netflix finally got the documentary, and I found it last night under the New Releases section. I expected it to be part music video, part marketing piece, and part follow-your-dreams spiel with a whole lot of glitz and glam mixed in. My expectations were not far off, but there was a huge theme throughout the film that I didn't expect: mentoring.
In a nutshell, the whole Justin Bieber story started with his discovery Youtube. He posted a few videos online, was discovered by an up-and-coming A&R rep (Scooter Braun), and then was connected with Usher and other pop stars who helped launch his career. What I didn't expect from the film is its focus on the Justin Bieber team, not just the celebrity himself.
I think Scooter Braun is one of my favorite people in the film. When he initially discovers Justin, he tries to get ahold of the family in every way he can. Finally, Justin's mom picks up the phone to tell Scooter to leave the family alone. Instead of getting rid of him, Scooter convinces the family to come out to Atlanta for a week and meet with music industry professionals. So they record a few demos and start sending them off to various labels, but no one will sign this kid. They get all kinds of excuses (too young, doesn't have the “Disney Chanel Machine” to back him, etc.) why this will never work. Yet Scooter continues to push and push. They put Justin on small tours of schools and camps. They get him in front of as many people as possible. They get him a great vocal coach and talented managers. They give him everything he needs to succeed – and succeed he did. I think it'd be safe to say that if there was no Scooter Braun, there would be no Justin Bieber.
I have a challenge to leaders. Who are we investing in? Now the definition of investment in Christian circles is typically meeting for breakfast once every two weeks. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the people that you are willing to stick your neck out for. I'm talking about risking a little bit of your own skin to help someone else succeed. Great leaders do this. They realize that sometimes people need to be pushed. They realize that sometimes people are capable of more, and they just need a chance to help achieve it. You don't need to be at the top to make this happen (although those at the top have more potential for influence). If you have peers or oversee a small group, do you push them to be better? Do you invest in them at personal risk to yourself?
Who are the rising stars in your organization? Who are the people that you look at and think, “They are going to go somewhere?” Are you investing in them? Why not? When is the last time you put yourself at risk for someone else? Because if they don't get investment, one of two things will happen. Either they will leave the organization to find people who will invest in them, or they will never reach their full potential. Either way, you lose. And who knows, maybe you have a future rock-star right inside your organization. If you don't give them a chance, you will never know.
Spiritual Maturity and the Information Age
Lately, I've spent a lot of time really investigating what it means to be spiritually mature. A few years ago, if you would've ask me what it meant to be spiritually mature, I'd tell you that it had something to do with knowing the Scriptures well. I believed that if you knew enough verses by heart or you could manage to beat Sally in the Bible drill, somehow you were more spiritually mature (for those of you who don't know, a Bible drill is when the Sunday school teacher gives you an obscure Bible verse and the first person to find it stands up and reads it in front of the whole class).
Now don't get me wrong, knowing Scripture and theology is indeed an important part of growing spiritually mature. The problem is, we often treat this as if it's the only part of growing spiritually. Honestly, I think (in fact, I know) that God doesn't care how fast we can find the third verse in Malachi if the rest of our life doesn't show any spiritual fruit. Your ability to memorize the entire book of Leviticus is much less important than your ability to show Christ's love to those you interact with on a daily basis. Besides, I can punch in a few search terms on my cell phone and in 15 minutes be at least acquainted with any number of spiritual topics. I also have access to free podcasts of some of the best speakers and teachers in the world. Information is not what we need. We have more than we could ever use at our fingertips. So our churches can't just be about information and teaching anymore.
Most pastors in the United States today spent at least four years at a bible college, and many went on to seminary or any number of graduate schools. As a result, it is easy for us who work in ministry to simply teach facts. After all, people typically judge a church service on two things: the style and quality of the music and the impact of the teaching. Pastors are given incentives to stand up for 30-40 minutes and teach from the pulpit. Traditionally, the better they deliver a message, the more people come through the doors every weekend.
The same information overflow can happen in small groups. In many of the small groups I've been in, there are usually one or two people in the small group who are thought to be more spiritually mature because they can recite more facts from the Bible or discuss the theological implications of transubstantiation (and I'm often the one guilty of such conversation). Yet knowledge doesn't inherently lead to spiritual maturity. It is only a start. It is like an athlete who only works out a certain part of his body. As a result, he might be great a bench-pressing 300 lbs., but he can't even make it to the half-mile mark on the track. His training routine is out of balance. Often, so is our spiritual life.
The next question churches and church leaders must ask then is: How do we help grow holistic christians? How do we avoid overgrowing one area of the spiritual life while leaving the others unattended? How do we help people take the knowledge that they have and apply it to their daily lives?
Hint: It probably doesn't involve any additional sermons.
Why I Hate the Term “Unchurched”
If you spend enough time working churches, you're bound to hear the term unchurched thrown around. As expected, the term refers to people who do not attend or are not members of any particular church. Usually the word is used to connect some sort of demographic who the church wants to reach. So why do I loathe this term so much?
Mainly, I despise the term unchurched because it implies success is just getting people in the doors of the local church. Logically, the opposite of unchurched is churched – meaning people who regularly attend or are members of a church. The problem is, we are not supposed to be making churched people. We are supposed to be making disciples – and there is a big difference. Disciples follow Jesus no matter what the cost. Disciples love those around them. Disciples seek to create disciples. Disciples go to church to celebrate what is happening in their lives or to ask for prayer for challenges. Churched people go to services. Churched stand up and sing and sit down when told. Churched people complain about the style of music. Disciples are known by their works. Churched people are known by their attendance. Churched people can only make other churched people. It takes a true disciple to begin making other disciples. So do we want to create more churched people, or do we want to create disciples?
The second reason I hate the term unchurched is because it is too sterile. Unchurched simply means one who does not attend a church. But this doesn't capture what is really happening to us. Everyday we are either becoming more spiritually alive or we are spiritually dying. When we focus on “churched” or “unchurched,” we sterilize the fact that we are really trying to save lives. If all we are doing is trying to get the “unchurched” to become “churched,” we are in trouble. What we do everyday is a life or death situation. It's not about changing Sunday morning habits. Being in church doesn't save you. Knowing and following Jesus saves you.
Third, the terms churched and unchurched imply that something happens to you, instead of something happening inside you. If you are churched, it simply means you go to church. If you are unchurched, you don't go to church. It's as simple as that. But I know some people living vibrant, spirit filled lives who aren't part of traditional, meet-every-Sunday-at-9am churches. I've also known people who aren't showing any fruits of their spiritual walk who attend church every Sunday, and have for years. Being churched or unchurched is not dependent at all on where you are spiritually, but rather where you are any given Sunday morning.
Unchurched is an informative term. It is a demographic term. It tells us how many people aren't darkening the door of a church on a regular basis. In this way, it is a useful statistic. It's helpful to know about your community. But I've been in too many conversations with spiritual leaders who make this one term the arbiter of all they do. To talk to them, you think all they wanted to do is to make more churched people. But that's not what we're called to. We're called to make disciples. It doesn't do you any good to get people into the doors of your church if you aren't working to make them disciples. So make sure your church is creating disciples, then reach out toward the unchurched. Then you won't be making churched people, you'll be making disciples.
Push People
It's been my experience in Christian circles, that “loving someone” often is interpreted as being only kind and tender toward him or her. Especially in a Christian workplace the trend is often to let people slack because we're afraid of pushing someone too hard. Yet this attitude can be just as dangerous as pushing people too hard. Many people don't know what they can do, and aren't willing to find out until they are pushed to be better. If I let people that I work with, get by with shoddy work, no one wins. They don't get better, I get frustrated, and the output isn't what it could be.
So push. Be loving, but keep pushing. Never let people get by when you know they are capable of more.
Why I Miss the Pot-Luck Dinner
Today is Ash Wednesday. For those of you who don't know, today is the first day of Lent. Seeing as many people give up certain foods for a period of time, I wanted to talk a little about food in this post.
Let me first state that I love food ,and I'm generally not a picky eater, but lately the conversation in my office has revolved primarily around the healthiness (or lack thereof) of a variety of different foods. Apparently my coworkers (or my coworker's spouses) regularly log onto Netflix and gain access to at least three dozen different documentaries about what foods are good or bad for one's body, or the unfairness or inhumanity displayed in preparing certain foods. In fact, I know people who obsess over what foods they put into their body. Now I have no problem with eating healthy (in fact, I encourage it!!!), but we talk a lot about the food we eat, and rarely do we talk about how we eat it.
Let me put it this way. Meals are meant to be shared. When I look throughout Scripture, I'm bombarded with powerful moments where the Spirit moved that all take place around food. From huge monumental moments (such as the last supper) to miracles (Jesus feeding the five thousand) to parables (the feast at the end of the prodigal son parable), the Scriptures are filled with great events and relationships around the context of food.
The first time this idea was presented to me, I was in a meeting with one of the vice-presidents of the university I attended for my undergrad studies. I was serving on the Student Government at the time, and our conversation had segued into a discussion about food service at the university. This gentleman shared that our school, no matter how much growth it experienced, would never get rid of the cafeteria. Through his research at several other institutions, he found that growth stopped and the organizational culture often changed for the worse as soon as universities did away with their cafeteria. In other words, he believed (and his experience had shown) that continued relational growth best happens around a meal.
This idea resinated with me. I think back to many of the most important conversations I've had in my life, and they have been around a table or over a cup of coffee and a bagel. I remember the relationships that were developed at my home church over the pot-luck dinners that we had at least once a quarter, or the family discussions at the dinner table. I think about how blessed I was that my school had a cafeteria where I got to build relationships with my classmates and professors. I think about the good times I've had at lunch with my coworkers, or the business opportunities that have been presented to me – all over some sort of food.
So if food was a good opportunity for Jesus to connect with others, it should be good for us as well. What are we doing in our organizations to develop community over a good meal? Never underestimate the power of good food. Maybe a good old-fashioned pot-luck wasn't a bad idea after all.
Creating Spaces
I've spent a lot of time in buildings in my life. In fact, so have most Americans. From the largest, most impressive monuments in Washington, D.C. to tiny little shacks in the Honduras, I've seen my fair share of buildings. And besides a few extra large or expensive ones set up as monuments, all of the good buildings I've been in had one thing in common: function.
Yet with many churches, I've seen numerous buildings that have no function – or even have the wrong function. In my experience, most churches don't even know the right questions to ask when they build a building. They build buildings to be as flexible as possible (which seems like a good idea), but instead it becomes a not-that-great facility for everything instead of doing a few things really well.
Whenever I've been part of a church that is building a new facility, there is one question that churches always seem to ask:
What current programs do we provide now that we need space for?
As seemingly innocent as this question is, it can lead to creating environments that simply meet the current perceived needs of the congregation, rather than provide for growth and movement. The question leaders should be asking when developing a new facility is:
How can we create spaces that move people in the direction we want them to go?
I'm not talking about moving as in traffic flow or foot patterns (although that is important in a facility), but rather I'm asking how to create space that allows the church to fulfill its mission and vision. For example, if you have weekend services with the goal of getting people in and out as quickly as possible to allow as many attendees as possible, do you want to provide a coffee shop and tables that will cause people to tend to linger around? On the flip side, if your church is intentionally creating community and developing conversation around your service times, don't you want to have spaces with couches or tables and chairs that allow people to sit and relax for a few minutes? If your church is heavily involved in missions work, why not create special space that specifically allows people who come through your church doors to engage with your missions team and get involved in outreach?
As long as you ask the first question, you will have nice buildings, but they won't fully engage your congregation. First decide where you want to move people to in their spiritual walk, then create a facility that meets those needs – and make sure you let the creativity flow.
Permission to Fail
Obviously, good leaders expect followers to take initiative. If you have talented people in your organization, they want to succeed. They want to do the best they can, and if they have any kind of creativity, they want to develop and implement new ideas. Yet over and over I see employees simply work in a day-to-day job without any action steps forward.
Many leaders typically think that their employees are lazy – that they don't have any desire to be better and simply show up to their job for the paycheck. Sometimes this is true. Sometimes success for an employee or follower is doing as little as possible and then taking home their pay at the end of the week. If you have people like this in your organization, you will never be able to be a great organization. No matter how hard you try, these people will refuse to move forward or improve. Honestly, the sooner you can get them out of your organization, the better.
But before I make a summary judgement about someone's work ethic, I always ask myself what I can do to help them. Many times, I find that I really do not give those following me the permission to fail. Instead, I want to micromanage what they do. I want to be involved in every step of the process, and if the process isn't going exactly as I thought it should, I give unrequested suggestions. As a result, people do not learn how to improve, but rather they simply change what they are doing to make me happy. They don't learn. The next time they take on a project they become more reliant on my input. They won't make important decisions simply because I might overrule them before they even have a chance to see if they are right. I haven't given them permission to fail. Instead I treat them like a child, and they begin to give only the bare minimum to a project.
So before you decide the people you lead are just plain lazy, ask yourself if you've made them lazy by constantly interfering and refusing to let them learn from their mistakes. Chances are, they are capable of way more than you expect, just figure out how to empower them.
Ready, Aim, Fire
I have a confession. Sometimes I spend too much time aiming. At my job, in my daily life, and in all things related to productivity, I spend a lot of time aiming. The nice way to say this is I like to “analyze” things. And I really do analyze. I'm not usually lazy, I just have trouble pulling the trigger. I have trouble stepping on the gas. I have trouble diving in.
Now I imagine that I'm not the only one with this problem. One only has to look at the lack of productivity in the typical office or organization to understand that sometimes it's just easier to get ready, and then spend a ton of time aiming. People are afraid of making big decisions. We like to play it safe.
But the truth is, aiming doesn't do anything for you. If you've gone through your entire life aiming at goals, but never pulled the trigger, you haven't accomplished very much.
So analyze. Think. But then do. To borrow the Nike slogan, just do it. Make the call. Send the e-mail. Have the conversation. Write the proposal. Create the project. Sign-up for the class. It might not work out perfectly, but you'll learn way more than you did just standing still.
Oh, and happy Valentine's Day.
Leadership, Parenting, and Busy Streets
First off, let me offer a disclaimer: I have never been a parent! So I do not come at this particular topic as an expert, only as a casual observer. However, I do have parents who love me more than I can understand, and they did a pretty good job raising me (at least they did their best...if I didn't turn out perfect it's not their fault, it pretty much all my own fault). I've also had the opportunity to observe dozens (if not hundreds) of parents on a regular basis. With all that said, I may be totally off base with my main idea, and if I am, hopefully some wise, experienced parent will gently let me know that I'm totally wrong – but until then, let's move on!
There are probably a couple thousand analogies (at least) that can be draw between parenting and leadership, but I'm just going to pick one for this post. When children get into their teenage years, one of the constant struggles I've seen parents go through is deciding when, where, and how to let go. Now “letting go” isn't an instant event. Your child is not totally free from responsibility, then one day wakes up and is expected to be totally on his or her own. Growing up is a gradual process. There are milestones along the way. There are first steps, first day at school, driver's license, first date, graduation, and about a million other steps in between that I could list. My parents did a fantastic job of simultaneously letting me grow up while being there to catch me when I fell down (literally and figuratively)!
As a team leader, you have a constant responsibility to work this way with your team. Especially if you are working with volunteers or a particularly young team, you have to be willing to let them grow. You must let them scrape their knees when they fall down, and then you must help them back up. It's also your job to help protect them from failures that might be too big to recover from. My parents let me learn to run, and I often fell down as I was learning, but they never let me run into a busy street. Falling down when running is a recoverable mistake. Get up, shake yourself off, then try again. Running into a busy street is not a recoverable mistake.
I've worked under both types of leaders. The great leaders were the ones who pushed me to be better, and often let me fail. The key to their successful leadership is that they protected me from the critical failures while letting me learn from the small failures. I've also worked under leaders who wanted to protect me from failure entirely. I really applaud their desire to protect me (as it shows they really do care), but it ended up being more of a hindrance than a help to my own personal growth.
So how do you know when to protect and when to let go? Decide which opportunities teach your team to run, and decide which opportunities are busy streets. Once you know which opportunities are which, it will be easier to make a decision.