Vision and Values

Tonight I need to say a big thanks to my friend Darren Herdman. Sydnie’s van has been throwing the belt since this past winter and leaking anti-freeze. Darren was able to come over to the house and sort out our car troubles in a matter of minutes. It turned out that my radiator cap was bad and wasted capable of holding the 16lbs of pressure required. Because the pressure wasn’t correct I was unable to discover the crack in my radiator that was causing my anti-freeze to leak.

When I took over the role of administrator of our Early Learning Centers here in Harrah and Choctaw I went from managing a a little over a hundred volunteers a week to overseeing a staff of 70 plus employees and hundreds of volunteers. I have been working on fine tuning the amount of pressure that needs to exist within our organization in order for it to operate in a healthy manner that ensures the best possible product. If you don’t apply enough pressure then you are too soft on people and they will take advantage of you. Apply too much pressure and you become Gordon Ramsey. Because I work for a church I can’t run around dropping the F-Bomb, yelling at people and telling them they are too weak of a person to do us any good. Ok…I mean I shouldn’t do those things. You have to find a balance.

Do you feel that you are being too soft or too hard?

Remember, when you are too soft on those who report to you you will increase the amount of pressure on yourself. Dial it in and figure how much pressure you need to maintain in your environment and make sure that you are achieving it. Don’t worry about increasing the pressure. This problem is like boiling a frog. Do it slowly and he will never notice. Do it all at once and he will jump out of the pot.

Share the Win. Share the Work. Accept the Gift. When people want to be generous towards you don’t turn them down. They enjoy giving. Did you know that giving is a spiritual gift? You wouldn’t keep someone from suing their gift anywhere within your church so don’t keep a giver from exercising their gift. There could be numerous warnings here about people only giving to gain authority over you or people that do it as a means to let you know that they are good givers, but don’t miss the opportunity to let someone bestow a blessing on you or your ministry. God has used a lot of people to bless me in my ministry and the relationships and gifts have helped me become the leader that I am and God has used these people to shape me for the ministry that I now have. If I had turned down the gifts I would never had attended seminary, or read so many great books, gone on the ministry trips I have been, had lunch with such wise people or had the money to pay a bill that I had no idea where I was going to get the money for. Giving your blessing to the blessing and you will become a blessing to the blesser.

Something that I see time and time again, especially in younger workers, is the inability to delegate tasks to others. If you are new to ministry and looking to to impress me it wont be by making yourself look like a superman. I am looking for people who can delegate tasks, ensure that they get done with quality and speed and know how to make volunteers feel appreciated. Harrah Church does a LOT on a LITTLE. We are a church of over 700 with only TWO full-time staff members. This is a volunteer led church and we wouldn’t want to change that ever. What happens at Harrah Church is incredible. Sharing the work helps more people share the win. Sharing the win helps give purpose to people within your organization. Hogging the work means that you get fewer good things done and none of it will be getting done in a sustainable manner. If you leave and the ministry you lead dies then you were a terrible leader. Remember, if you think you are leading and turn around and nobody is following then you were just taking a walk. Not sharing the work is like walking.

Focus on building teams and not your resume and you will never need a resume. Let the quality of your work and the relationships that you build speak for you. I really have no idea what Pastor Kevin did day-to-day in his former role at Westmoore Community Church, but I can tell you by the quality of the relationships that he built while there and his ability to share the work that he is an incredible leader without having to inspect his resume. In church leadership you will find that we are looking at HOW you did something and not WHAT you did. This deals directly with your ability to create processes that create wins and not about your ability to work your butt off.

What can you do this week to begin sharing your work and building a team around you? Remember to think outside your “go-to” people too. You will limit your potential by finding and developing new talent. I never miss a Membership here at Harrah Church because I want to be the first to discover new talent and enjoy helping other find their fit.

I love seeing people win. This morning I had the chance to walk around the church and observe so many of our volunteers at Harrah Church. We had a new volunteer running our environmental screens today. He was up and ready to go after about 5 minutes of training and totally ripped it. He was in the zone. One of our Worship leaders, Amanda Coffee seemed to be singing from a different place in her heart yesterday. She is an amazing singer but I heard things in her voice yesterday that just seemed so authentic as she sang the words. Powerful stuff. Our Men’s Ministry luncheon went incredible. The food tasted great and they had so many people show up that they had to cook more.

It is tempting sometimes to focus on ourselves and our chase afte glory, but if you are going to lead a dynamic ministry you have got to learn to share the wins of those around you with people. God is doing stuff in and through your volunteers and you have got to discover those stories, share them and celebrate what is happening. If you are just telling your story them you are missing the bigger picture, which is what God is doing through the CHURCH. Your grandma was right when she called you something special, but when you join in the collaborative effort of the CHURCH we create something that is hard to put into words. Share the win.

You also must learn to allow others to get the win. Think of our race as a relay. If you are lusting after being the person who crosses the finish line every time you may be stealing from your teammates. Allow others to cross the finish line and reap some of that win. Sure everybody contributes to the success, but some roles attract more attention. Are you hogging all the attention roles? Share the win.

Find a way to help someone in your organization share the win and watch how the joy of helping others win becomes the win for you.

As I write this post I am sitting at home on the couch watching a NOVA program on OETA about the Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble has captured some of the most incredible images of space and has vastly increased our knowledge about the universe. This program deals with the repair mission that took place several years ago. It took thousands of people years to prepare for a mission that entailed six. 6.5 hour space walks. They were doing repairs that no one has ever done before. Every motion that took place on this mission was choreographed. New tools had to be invented and developed to even make this mission possible.

I am watching this and thinking about the mission of the church and what takes place during the week. I am a total list guy. I sit down several times each week to write down the tasks that I need to accomplish that day, that week and that month. I use programs like Things and Action Method to help me chart these tasks, delegate them to others, and keep a record of the tasks that I frequently have to do. A few times a year I will sit down to make a detailed record of the steps that I go through each week so that I can really see not just the tasks, but each step that goes into each task and how much time goes into each.

Too many times we approach Sunday morning and church work without thinking about the processes that are taking place. Many times we are just trying to get through the morning without dealing with a missing volunteer or encountering a technology problem. The arts and worship team spend time working on execution and everybody knows if the person running the words on the screen is behind. Those are jobs that are right in front of us. But how many important tasks get left out of the process or are entirely absent because we haven’t set down to map out what we want to happen on Sunday morning? I am not just talking about making sure there is someone greeting people at the door, but making sure that everything that greeter does helps accomplish your mission.

How many connections are missed because there was no one actively thinking, “it’s my job to shake that guys hand”? How do you know that you are not wasting volunteer hours each week doing things that have little to no impact in your mission? How is everything that is happening at your church contributing to your mission?

Can you even imagine sitting down with your team to write out every detail that takes place within your church? The Hubble team not only scripts out every task, but exactly how each tasks should be performed. Analyzing each step shows them how to shave hours off of each space walk and ensures success. Do you need to develop new tools to make better connections with visitors on Sunday mornings? Do you need to develop new tools in order to help people develop in Christ?

Mastering the process will give you the freedom and time to make deeper connections with the people that matter most to your mission.

It has been just about 8 months since Kevin Daniels came to Harrah Church and took the reigns as pastor and my boss. Kevin is not the traditional pastor type. I have worked in several church over the past years and Kevin just does it different…and I like it. He is challenging me in the concept of the HERO and pushing me to become more of facilitator. I have this tendency to create a space where I work that becomes very hard for just one person to take on once I leave. I am a work-a-holic and I love the atta-boys and cuddos that come from that kind of work. Everyone wants to feel needed. What I haven’t understood until Kevin are the things that come from a more balanced lifestyle of work, family, home, play, etc. He models it and does a great job of defending it.

Is Kevin a great communicator? YES. Is he a great pastor? YES. Is he a great leader? YES. But, every person in your church is looking to him for a different reason and he is bringing so many different sides to the table and stretching Harrah Church in many new ways that will increase our ministry potential in the future, because he is unwilling to let guys like me HOG the work, steal the glory, and destroy ourselves. Some are being challenged to get more involved. Some are being asked to delegate. Some are being asked to STOP. Some are being asked for better, some for more, others for less.

What are you looking to your pastor or boss for? If you work in the church, how is your boss pastoring you?

I few insights that have helped me this past 8 months are to look to your new boss to find out what are his goals. What are people, especially those in leadership over him, asking for? What are his deliverables? Help him succeed and he will help you succeed. How does he like to work? Kevin hates meetings so we try to avoid table talks when a lunch conversation or quick couple of questions get the job done. What kind of work does he appreciate? What does he do for fun? This isn’t about sucking up to the boss. Working the relationship can be like fine tuning your car’s engine. That thing is never going to run right if the parts aren’t working together.

Just a couple of thoughts about the last 8 months and how things are going here in Harrah, which is totally awesome.