Equipping

Maximized Leadership: These Meetings Are Killing Me!!!

Do you ever feel like you are a “P.M.A.?”  That would be a professional meeting attender. The fact is that any organization with more than just a hand full of members or employees has a lot of moving parts. Meetings are a necessity to enhance good communication, foster alignment, and to sharpen strategy. But, not all meetings are created equal. John G. Miller says that “outstanding organizations simply don’t waste people’s precious time with meaningless meetings. Someone once said that the worst of all murders is the killing of time.” While his second sentence is certainly exaggerated I hope you caught the key word in the first sentence….”meaningless.”

Perhaps you have responsibility for leading meetings on some occasions and granted, they are often necessary. If so, here are a few pointers to make the most of the time in your meetings:

1. Have a clear leader for the meeting. He/She should take charge, stay on point, and move toward accomplishing the goal of the gathering.
2. Have an agenda. What will you talk about, in what order will you talk about it, and can you stick with it?
3. Try to limit the list. Fewer items can actually allow for greater focus.
4. Focus on the right things. Spend time planning and problem solving. Do not waste energy discussing someone else’s job. The greatest expertise resides in knowing how someone else should do their job! Your meeting’s purpose is to discuss how to best do yours.
5. Choose the right time and place. Choose an environment as free of distractions as possible while attending to a degree of comfort. Try to schedule at a time when participants are not anxious to get out due to other responsibilities.
6. Invite the right people. One thing worse than a dull meeting is a dull meeting that is totally irrelevant to the person attending.
7. Prepare. If you are not prepared you are wasting people’s time. Get your ducks in a row in advance.
8. Be punctual. Start on time and finish on time or finish earlier. No one ever complains about finishing too early.
9. Herd the cats. If you are leading then you bear responsibility for keeping on task. Is it okay to chase a rabbit? Yes but keep him in the meadow.
10. If someone is done let them leave.

I have to lead a lot of meetings and try hard to model the best practices. But I am open to suggestions and I hope you would be likewise for those who often find themselves in your meetings. Outstanding organizations utilize meetings to energize their team members and bend over backwards not to drain team members with meetings. Let’s all take this principle to heart. I must run now… I have a meeting to attend.

 

*Adapted from Chapter Eight of John G. Miller’s Outstanding; 47 Ways To Make Your Organization Exceptional

Maximized Leadership: Tools Trump Slogans

“Attitude is everything!”

“Dare to Achieve!”

“Just do it!”

Statements like these can serve as great rallying points for an organization.  John G. Miller states that “slogans may sound great, but in order to take the organization to higher levels, people don’t need platitudes – they need tools.” Allow me to illustrate this premise with the job of a lumberjack. Suppose you want your lumberjacks to produce more. Therefore you develop a slogan to inspire them to chop faster.

“Swinging our axes like there’s no tomorrow!”

“The Sahara was a forest before lumberjacks moved in!”

“Lumberjacks for Jesus – Chopping until the Kingdom comes!”

The lumberjacks get inspired and begin to swing harder. They drive their trucks to and from their work with fresh bumper stickers crafted to inspire. But there is a problem. The axes are growing dull. They are swinging harder and actually producing less. These lumberjacks do not need a slogan, they need a tool to sharpen their axe. An even better resolution would be to purchase chainsaws. Mind you that the slogans are not wrong and it is not wrong to have a slogan. But, in the most effective organizations tools always trump slogans.

The easiest way to do one’s work is the way that one has always done it. But that may not be the most effective approach. It is human nature to cling to the status quo and what is familiar when a crisis is not at hand. However, failure to change, adopt, or adapt will ultimately lead to a crisis as the business or organization begins to falter and at that point the needed tools may be out of reach, unaffordable due to eroding resources, or of lesser value because the proverbial hole is too deep to dig out of.

I do not consider myself to be “tech savvy.” I have noticed that some leaders even take pride in ignoring emerging tools and technological developments. That is tragic because leadership and (personal) growth go hand in hand. I am very “tech aware” and continue to try new technologies in an effort to strengthen my leadership. What is new with you? Are you seeking new tools for your work, your leadership, your organization, your ministry? While slogans can motivate, it is the tools that allow you to do your work more effectively. Focus on getting your team the best tools possible. Or else you may go the way of the organization with this slogan: “Our buggy whips can’t be whipped!” Really?

*Adapted from Chapter 7 of John G. Miller’s  Outstanding: 47 Ways to Make Your Organization Exceptional

Maximized Leadership: Does God Want Some Churches To Die?

“If God wants our church to live, it will live, and if He wants it to die, it will die!” A church leader in a dying congregation made that statement to a friend of mine. His sentiment was in essence; “we are not changing anything even if we have to close the doors.” Of course, he spiritualized the issue in an effort to forfeit his personal responsibility. Churches do close their doors sometimes but it does not have to be. There are alternatives. The problem is that the alternatives require sacrifice, require the relinquishing of power, and result in changes. Some people would actually rather the doors close than sacrifice, release power, or change. The irony is that after the doors close, change has taken place, the facilities have been sacrificed, and power has been relinquished. However, since the doors have closed, no ministry takes place, no disciples are being made, and the gospel is not being shared from that location.

I appreciate that there are several layers to this issue including the fact that the church is not a building but rather resides in people. But, a local church is a gathering point where people network and serve together to worship, serve, and touch lives. It is always sad when any of these local gathering points disappear. Fewer of these gathering points results in fewer opportunities to accomplish the aforementioned. That is why we plant churches, in order to establish more of these gathering points or perhaps mission points or service points might better make the point. What are the alternatives for the dying congregation?

• They could merge with another congregation.
• They could allow a strong, healthy church to adopt them and give the sponsoring church full authority to make changes needed to survive.
• They could turn the church over to a church planter and be absorbed by the new congregation.
• They could invite a healthy church to send several families as missionaries for a year to give a leadership boost.
• They could move services to 8:30am and give the 11:00 hour to a church plant to share their facilities.

 

None of these options is intended to eliminate the best possibility of all and that is for God to lead the congregation in a miraculous turn around. But, how often does that happen when the congregation falls well below twenty and into the single digits? The answer is “rarely.” Do not read too much into the numbers here because there is no wrong size church. But why let a congregation totally shut down when there are alternatives? If God wants a church to die, as the gentlemen suggested, that is not much of a compliment to that congregation or to its leaders. This is what I know; if the Lord tarries, I want my church serving and sharing Christ 100 years from now and beyond, even if I am no longer in control. If I am, that will be another miracle as I celebrate my 156^th birthday. Can’t wait!

Maximized Leadership: Off to College…Out of Church?

In John Dickerson’s book The Great Evangelical Recession, you will find a sobering statistic about the students who grew up in your church and graduated in May. If they fit the typical profile of today’s college age young adults, two of the three will be leaving the church. I am writing this article in mid-summer because now is the time for your church to take action. As Tom Crites and I conducted research for our forthcoming book, Why They Stay which addresses how to help parents and church leaders make investments that keep children and teens connected to the church for a lifetime, we learned a valuable lesson that you should know about. The next 120 days are critical to the faith journey of those youth group members who just graduated.

Our research unveiled the importance of making the transition from “home church” to “a new church” in college for those who moved away from home. Almost 70% of High School graduates will enroll in college and what happens in the fall semester has a huge influence over whether they will still be attending church a decade later and beyond. Our research revealed that a student who moved off to college and immediately connected with a new congregation during the transition was 138% more likely to still be in church a decade later than one who moved and did not make the connection. I said that to say this. When students graduate from High School and are members of your congregation, the discipleship responsibility of the church has not concluded. I fear too many churches wash their hands at the conclusion of the High School career of their youth group members as if the “job is done.” It is not and the four to six months following graduation are critical. What is the strategy of your church to help those who graduated to connect with a new church in the place where they will be moving?

I don’t think the answer is complex but it does require some initiative. Here are a couple of quick thoughts:

1. Someone has to take responsibility. Who in your church will take the lead in following up and ministering to the grads who move away in the next few months. It could be the pastor, a staff member, a Bible Study leader, or a volunteer. The key is that someone must take responsibility.
2. Plan several forms of personal contact with the student who moves away in the summer and fall months. The object is not to “hound them” but to maintain a connection. They are more likely to get involved with another church if they are receiving ministry and encouragement from the home base.
3. Send (or communicate) to those who move away recommended churches to visit. Many, if not most, have never had to look for a church before. Their parents have always taken care of that aspect of their lives. Orient them, prepare them, and take one step out by providing good recommendations in advance.
4. Make occasional personal contacts and ask the question(s) straight out: What churches have you visited? Are you connected with a church yet? Even if the answer is “no,” you are keeping the subject on their spiritual radar and they are more likely to be in church next Sunday than if no one posed the question.
5. Send “care packages” and remind them of the value and blessing of a faith community. They will have distractions but a taste of the past can serve a glue to keep them bonded.

Parents can apply these same principles. Look for the book, Why They Stay, coming in October. To learn more now, view a sermon I recently preached on this subject at Why Thy Stay Sermon or listen to this podcast which provides an in depth discussion and interview at Why They Stay Podcast.