General

At our weekly staff meeting this afternoon we began discussing the first chapter in the book Building Leaders by Aubrey Malphurs and  Will Mancini. In the discussion that dealt with credibility we talked about character, competency and clarification. In the discussion I mentioned that one issue that can derail all three of those things is poor communication. Now you could lump communication as a competency, but I wanted to explain to the staff the need to over communicate the right things to the right people at the right time.

Poor communication will lead to:

• An attack on your character: “I hear him saying one thing and then doing another.”
• An attack on your competency: “He doesn’t communicate well, he leaves things undone, he is not able to get people on board.”
• An attack on your direction: “He doesn’t know what he is doing or where he is going.”

As a leader you must learn to OVER-communicate things to people.

• Use direct lines of communication or what we call FACE-to-FACE communication
• Use the phone or text
• Use Social Media, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Send people notes or email
• Create newsletters

Hit them from every side and every angle with the SAME message and you will get closer to getting people headed in the same direction.

In the Wikipedia definition of sound it states that sound is produced through mechanical vibrations passing through a medium and that sound cannot pass through a vacuum. If you are not being heard then it is because you have chosen to communicate through a vacuum instead of a medium. Make sure your communication is hitting something. Don’t just broadcast a message. AIM your message at the people you want to hit.

Thoughts.

B is the Associate Pastor at Kingsland Baptist Church in Katy, Texas and the creator of the Legacy Milestones strategy designed to link church and home to equip the generations and the author of the book Shift: What it Takes to Finally Reach Families Today. Here are my notes from his talk.

What is Family Ministry?
Family ministry is discipleship and discipleship is family ministry.

We must help parents pour the Great Commandment and the Great Commission into their children so that they can build a legacy.

What does family ministry look like?
There are two components to this model – The home and the church
The danger of rolling out a model is that what works at one church may not work at another church. Learn to implement the principles, not just the methods.

• What is your church like?
• What are your families like?
• What are your leaders like?

Common Language is a core component of the development of family ministry. A common language helps you change your culture and will provide a metric as you measure how far the vision and strategy have reached.

At Kingsland they have 7 Legacy Milestones:

• Parent/Baby Dedication – This class is preceded by a class called First Steps where parents learn about and make commitments to the 7 Milestones.
• Faith Commitment – Salvation decision and baptism, somewhere between the age of 7-11.
• Preparing for Adolescence – All of the Tween years, getting ready for teenage life in American life and how to live it in a Biblical way. Teach parents how to lead “faith talks.” Create celebrations around this class at the church and in the home. The culmination of this is a Road Trip where parents take a weekend to make talking about sex a normal part of the home.
• Purity for Life Weekend
• Rite of Passage – Raising a Modern Day Night – Teach parents that rite of passage is not about car keys and freedom it is about become a Biblical man or women. The Baptist Catechism by John Piper is a short form system of doctrine. We tell parents to stay one question ahead of their kids. The whole thing culminates in a rite of passage ceremony that is designed by the parents.
• High School Graduation – The Truth Project is taught to juniors and seniors and the parents are taught the lessons one week ahead of their students. The Blessing and Our Church by John Trent. Moms and Dads write a letter of blessing for their son or daughter and share it with them at this time.
• Life in Christ – An adult ministry designed to teach 7 core competencies. Are you growing in your prayer life? Are you a disciple-maker? Are you serving? Milestone 7 is the most important step in the legacy path.

Encourage parents to have faith talks in their home? Parent Summit is a seminar designed to equip parents to have these talks. Help parents capture “God Moments.” Parents must be abiding in Christ and reading scripture in order to capture these God moments. Help parents learn to abide in Christ so that they can pass it on to their children.

Ministry Actions for building Family Ministry in the church:

• Align
• Equip
• Resource
• Build Wins

Questions for the Home:

• How’s Your Own Home?
• Are You There for the God Moments?
• Celebrating Spiritual Milestones?
• Are you Abiding in Christ?

Great stuff in this session. My takeaway from this session will be to sit down and organize our steps at Harrah Church according to these milestones so that parents and students can see the path that we want to lay out for them. We have begun to do this with our adults and membership classes, but have failed to provide the same path for our students and families. After a year of implementing and aligning the church to the Family Ministry model it is time for Harrah Church to begin putting more emphasis on the Equipping and Resourcing actions of building a stronger Family Ministry.

How well are you doing in bringing faith talks into the home?

If you are a church leader are you spending more time programming for the kids or trying to equip parents?

If you are a parent, what is one action step you can take in expanding the role of faith in your home?

I am spending the bulk of this week in Orlando for the Exponential Church Planting conference with my pastor Jimmy Holbrook and our worship leader Justin Mann. We are having a lot of fun and I can say that we have broken many laws, but have not been arrested…YET.

I have learned many things on this trip

• We have too many chiefs in this car
• Jimmy eats 5-7 meals a day
• There is a reason that Jimmy has so many traffic tickets, really there are MANY reasons
• 5 Guys Burgers in incredible
• Orlando is an amazing place

I have learned a lesson about why you don’t eat with your elbows on the table. Jimmy eats so often that I have developed a blister on my right elbow from lifting my drink and food to my mouth. Ouch.

I had great time hanging out with many friends last night. We went to downtown OKC to eat at Rooster’s Chicken, go o see Date Night at Harkins in Bricktown and then we ended the evening with a stop at Cuppies and Joe for cupcakes.

It was good to spend some time with our friends Justin and Amy Lester and their baby girl Cash. Rooster’s Chicken was really great. The friend pickles were on the hook. I will definitely be going back soon.

Date Night with Tina Fey and Steve Carrell was funny. It stumble a bit just after the half way point, but our group laughed hard. I really enjoy going to the movies with this group.

Next couple of movies on my schedule to see are The Losers and Iron Man 2.

One of the great hindrances to leadership growth in your church or organization will be your failure to provide growing leaders with spaces to ply their skills and talents. If you don’t create spaces for young leaders to work then they ARE going to leave you. They can’t help it. They must lead or they become frustrated. These frustrations will either lead them to seek new opportunities, undermine your leadership, or stall as a leader.

At some point in your own personal leadership evaluation you must ask yourself which leaders your have put a lid over and are you that lid? If the answer is yes then you need to carve out a greater role for that leader and get out of the way.

How are you giving growing leaders an opportunity to spread their wings? What new directions are they taking you?

This year has been a whirlwind. I have:

• Become a father
• Moved
• Started a new job
• Sold a house
• Purchased a house (hopefully this Friday)
• Traded my Honda for a Buick
• Lived with my parents for a couple of months

The year has gone by really fast but as I end the year I want to list a few things that I am thankful for.

• An incredible small group community in Broken Arrow
• Serving with Mike, Rich, Sheila, and the AHBC crew
• A wonderful wife
• A new house and lower mortgage, buyah!!!
• Getting to work @HarrahChurch and the most fun office environment ever
• The volunteers @HarrahChurch who are working so hard
• My parents for letting us crash in their spare room
• This amazing MacBook Pro I am typing this post on
• My Rhythm in Twenty crew who helped me move from burned out  to overflowing
• God for letting me experience all of this and keeping me from going off the deep end
• and last and most certainly topping the list is Baby Margot who is more fun everyday

We are having a blast here @HarrahChurch and I hope to post a picture of the new house next week. Stay tuned.