Spring firing season has begun.

The end of the school year is a dangerous time to be in youth ministry. With the program year winding down it is prime time for church leadership to make a decision on whether to keep their youth worker for another school year.

Hint: If you get invited to an unscheduled meeting with the elders in the next few weeks, you’re getting fired. I’m sorry. (Er “forced to resign” which is the same thing but makes the elders feel better about it.)

I have several friends who are going through this right now. And it really sucks. 

Here’s two things you need to nail to keep your youth ministry job

1. Measurables. Oh sure, we talk about the importance of relational ministry. But don’t kid yourself… it’s about numbers. If you want to get paid to do youth ministry (a pay check is a number, by the way) than you better deliver something everyone agrees is measurable and communicate that measurable well. This might be your career, but to a church leader the youth ministry program is just another mouth to feed. (It’s an expenditure.) They want to look at the financial investment they are making and see the results. You’d be wise to start the ministry year communicating clearly defined desired outcomes with  measurables and then preparing a presentation in February/March to show what you’ve done to meet those desired outcomes as well as the measurable impact. Flow charts, graphs, and case studies. If you think I’m being ridiculous… go talk to someone who works at a non-church charity, they have staff people whose sole job is to keep the funding coming by creating desired outcomes and presenting measurables to donors. At the end of the day the only way leadership will continue funding your ministry is to constantly prove it’s working.
2. Donor relations. Earlier this week I wrote a post called Skin in the Game. As a church staff person you need to know that those who attend the church, especially those for 10+ years, have a lot more skin in the game than you do. Don’t buy the lie that the staff have the most skin in the game at a church… it’s just not true. You are an employee hired to do #1, you are not an owner. I could point you to dozens of friends who have learned this the hard way. They thought being friendly with all the leaders or doing really important, hard work meant that they were safe. Or they thought that if they simply cared a lot and gave everything they had to it that their career would be fine. And then they got invited to a meeting and asked to resign. Spiritually, the owners might be “under your authority” but that doesn’t mean they won’t fire you. I don’t care if you’re the best youth pastor in America. If you don’t deliver on #1 above you’re in big trouble. In professional sports terms, they are the owners and you are the coaches. You job is to win and attract “fans” aka potential owners. If you’re aren’t delivering results than your job is hanging purely by your ability to manage donor relations. Manage those relationships well and you can probably hang on until you deliver on #1. But mismanaging those relationships makes a board decision to fire you a whole lot easier. (Hint: It’s not always the board who are the people you need on your side. Make sure you’re managing the right relationships.)

When I talk to friends in youth ministry who have just been let go, those are the two things it always comes down to. Measurables and donor relations. (aka “politics.”) You might disagree with me on that, and you can probably point to a case where that wasn’t true. But let me reassure you… nail those two things and you are eliminating 90% of the reasons my friends have gotten fired.

Maybe this post is too matter of fact for you? Trust me. I’m only sharing to prevent your pain. I know that I’ve taken something so personal, so much a part of you, and so much a part of your faith and narrowed it down to two bullet points for how you can keep going. I know it seems simpleton and I don’t really get your context. But you just need to know the truth. Don’t be naive. We are all capable of getting fired. Manage these two things well and all the other things you love about your job can continue. Mismanage them and you’re in for a world of hurt. It might not be this Spring, but your Spring is coming.

UPDATE: Brian Berry has a continuation of this post on his blog. Go check it out.

Did you catch that? Steve Jobs invited Drew Houston, CEO of Dropbox, to his office to play Let’s Make a Deal. And Drew Houston walked away.

Why? In the written interview for Forbes and the video above you get clued into Houston’s reasoning.

• “He said we were a feature, not a product.” Apparently, Jobs was thinking that Dropbox would be a great feature… what is now iCloud. (Which is buggy and I’ve turned off, by the way.)
• “We are excited about the prospect of building a really great and independent company.“

Those two statements have great meaning if you understand how the tech industry works. In the tech ecosystem there are whales and minnows and only a few medium-sized fish in the middle. The whales go around and gobble up anything that looks tasty. If you are a minnow your goal, largely, is to get swallowed by a whale. Virtually no company survives a full life cycle from minnow start-up to medium-sized company to big great, independent company. The whales have too much money and too many lawyers. (see Patent Troll)

While at first blush every tech start-up I’ve ever met will tell you that they are excited about their product line and would love to grow into a great company, the reality is that acquisition is probably their exit strategy. If you asked them, “Would you sell to Google?” Almost everyone will say yes because as they grow they realize a couple of things.

• They are great entrepreneurs/inventors and not great managers of people.
• They have a product and not a company. It might be their 4th product which hits and makes them a household name but they can’t see past the success of their first product.
• They are starters and not sustainers. Their business model is short-sighted.
• They want to cash out to get billions, bottles, and babes.

What does this have to do with people in ministry?

• If you want to build a great ministry you have to keep innovating. You can’t get so hung up on perfecting your first “product” that you stop innovating altogether and never find the thing that hits.
• If you want to build a great ministry you have to be a great manager of people.
• If you want to build a great ministry you have to sustain. Stop looking for a better job and make your job the best job you could ever get.
• If you want to build a great ministry you better forget about billions, bottles, and babes.

My post last Sunday about megachurches (and their copycat little brothers) canceling services the day after Christmas generated a massive response. Apparently, there were a lot of people who also felt it was a smidge ridiculous that in America we found an excuse to take a Sunday off while those in other parts of the world risk their lives to worship Jesus publicly on any day. And a good amount of people, especially those who commented, thought the connection between the persecuted church and canceling services was unfair.

That’s OK. I’m a big boy and can handle people disagreeing with me.

There were several spin-off posts generated which I’d like to call your attention to as they are worth reading:

• Do Megachurches Dishonor Iraqi Christians, by John Meunier (Mike took it the family direction)
• Freedom to Cancel Services, by Len Evans (Len went the Fox News route, but he lives in Texas so I gave him a pass.)
• American Christianity and Canceling Church, by Matthew McNutt (Matthew highlighted our ethnocentricity as Americans)

I learned three things from the post and its fallout.

1. In general, American Christians don’t feel much of a kinship to non-American Christians. At least the majority of blog commenters would not put kinship above their individual churches rights to meet or not meet.
2. Few people latched onto a central concept in the post that the church is our real family. I consider my community group part of my family, I’m left to assume that this family-feeling is not all that common. How can that be so?
3. The priesthood of the staff is so deeply engrained that it was nearly 30 comments before someone brought up that churches canceling services could have just managed their resources/staff differently by empowering more lay people and depending on the staff less.

In the end, the post did more than I could have hoped for. Rather than simply getting a pile of people to agree with me or disagree with me… it seems as though the post generated the exact discussion I had hoped for. And getting church leaders to critically think about their ministry is about all I could ever ask.

I’m always a bit surprised when I encounter something that is obviously broken that hasn’t been fixed.

For instance.

I went into a small bookstore. While I was there I noticed a steady stream of customers who walk into the shop, take two looks around, and walk out. The two people working there continued doing what they were doing. One person dutifully shelved books while the other stood by the counter. It doesn’t take a genius to see that something is wrong but the people working there are working on the wrong strategy, aren’t they?

I walked into a church and immediately felt overwhelmed with options. There were booths everywhere in the foyer, each competing for my attention. There were greeters handing me things. There were churchgoers asking my name. There were people trying to get my children’s attention. Five minutes into the visit all I could think of was GET ME OUT OF HERE! This was a broken welcome area. It was meant to make people feel welcome but just confused people. But I highly doubt that church staff spends more than 5 minutes a week thinking about the welcome area. They are working on the wrong strategy, aren’t they?

Dropping our kids off at school is absolute chaos. With no bus service every parent must either drop off their child by car or walk them from the neighborhood. Mix in 500 kids and their imagination-driven walking patterns with a few hundreds cars driven by people from all cultures and walks of life and you have one chaotic mess on a small two-lane street. While the school focuses on keeping kids safe and trying to make pick-up and drop off more efficient you can’t help but see that the whole thing is doomed. They are working on the problem instead of trying to fix what is broken.

Sometimes I visit people blogs and see things that are obviously broken. Bad links, colors that literally makes my eyes water, and no way to subscribe via RSS so I don’t have to ever go back. I don’t care how great your content is! Chosing to leave the bad design there while the content is great is the wrong strategy.

Great leaders pay attention to the most obvious stuff. In whatever you lead you have to stop on a regular basis and say, “Are the basic things running perfectly?” Can customers find what they are looking for? Do visitors feel like this is a church they can belong? Can I drop my kids off at school without them getting hurt? Can I read your blog?

If you don’t take care of the basic things– strategy doesn’t matter. No one will care about your company, church, school, or web content unless you have the basics covered. It’s like talking to a football coach who says that his number one priority is implementing the west coast offense. No one will care about your offensive strategy unless you take care of the real number one priority… making sure no one gets hurt.

When I was about 20 years old I got a job working on equipment that produced ID cards for a health insurance company. The truth was that the department was so lost in procedure and doing things right that they had no ability to get work done. The other people operating the equipment didn’t understand how the equipment worked and could only see the piles of mounting backlog. A machine that was supposed to print 900 ID cards an hour struggled to get 1500 produced in a day. Sometimes we’d have orders for 50,000 cards and be left with no choice but to outsource the work. It was bad. Pressure was mounting. And I knew that if we didn’t focus on the basic things my tenure there would be short. When I started my mantra was, “Just keep the machine running.” We started focusing on that one simple thing… keep the cards printing. We started training the operators on how to maintain the equipment. I showed them how to fix the most basic things themselves so that we didn’t have to wait 2-3 hours for a repairman to come in. By focusing on that one mantra of “keep the machine running” we were able to catch-up and eventually eliminate outsourcing the work. Pretty soon we went from one machine running one shift to 24 hour shifts, to a bigger office with 2 machines, to eventually 3 machines that could run 24 hours a day producing more per hour than the outsourcing companies could on their best day. Our team fixed what was broken and that opened the door of opportunity and expansion.

A good starting point for any leader is to look at the day and say, “What’s most obviously broken?” Work on that first.

A few years ago I was on the church softball team. Being a church league for adults it was mostly filled with people who used to be able to play well, but time and a few extra pounds had lowered their skill level down a lot lower than their imaginations thought they were. In other words, most of the teams sucked. And none was worse than ours!

After a couple of weeks of frustration I started to figure out how to hit. The first 5-6 times up to bat my golf-styled swing lead to easy outs as all I could do was hit the ball right down the fairway… easily gobbled up by the pitcher, 2nd baseman, or center fielder. While watching a few games I made an interesting observation: There were a lot of dropped balls. I noticed that there was a high likelihood that the person playing first base wasn’t going to be able to keep his foot on the bag and catch a poorly thrown ball.

So I learned to just keep running. In game after game this strategy worked. I’d hit a ground ball to 3rd base and instead of trying to beat out the play I’d just round first and keep running. Time and time again they’d drop the ball or it’d fly over their head and I was off to second or even third.

The last game of the year, while I was riding to the game with a few other players, I joked that I wasn’t going to stop at third base. I was going to just keep the calamity going all the way home. I had a feeling that if I rounded third the same way I rounded first, I could make it a home run.

So, true to form our team was down big with just two innings left. I get up and absolutely tee off on a ball that splits the outfielders and one hops to the fence. It’s a stand-up double and I could probably make it to third if I weren’t so out of shape. The third base coach gave me the stop sign at second. But I look at his stop sign and throw caution to the wind… it’s time to go home! As I got close to third I could tell by the way the third basemen was looking that the ball was coming in and he would tag me out. So I rounded third. My locomotion– instead of sliding– caused him to look up for a brief second and he bobbled the ball. Halfway home he tossed the ball to the catcher which made me stop and retreat to third. But wouldn’t you know it? When the catcher tossed the ball back to third, he dropped it and I turned for home… stretching a double into an inside the park home run.

During my commute yesterday I was thinking about this, I love rounding third. I love the whimsy of finishing stuff off with a bang. Which is a weird statement for a guy who spends a lot of his mental day imagining ideas for projects that will never get done. That might lead you to believe I’m a project start-up kind of guy. Nope, I love seeing that small percentage of ideas come to fruition.

With three of those “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if” projects just hours, days, or weeks away from completion I’m finding that rounding 3rd base has given me a lot of energy and momentum. I know that locomotion, surprise, and a smile will carry it home from here.

Every organization can measure success.

It doesn’t matter if you’re running a non-profit, a government agency, a corporation, small business, or an educational institution… you need to have some ways to set the course and measure your progress. That is, if you would like to succeed.

If you are willing to fail (must be a government agency or educational institution where money comes “magically” from the tax gods) goals, mission, and vision are pointless as your default measurement of success is merely “Did I keep my job another year?” While those in businesses without defined goals have default, meaningless measurement tools like “Did we make more money than last year?” From a business perspective, that’s a stupid measurement tool as you can kill next year by maximizing profits this year to reach the “make more money than last year” measurement tool. Just ask Enron. Organization driven by meaningless measurements like profits will always fail!

So, let’s define some terms. Maybe this will help your organization.

Mission Statement: This is the big, grandiose “nebula” statement. For a school district a mission statement would be something like “Every student will receive an excellent education.” The funny thing about mission statements is that they often seem so general that they would fit for any business or school or church or non-profit. And that’s OK. Too many organizations get caught up on this… the mission of an organization is a dream… dream a little when writing yours.

Vision statement: This is how your organization is going to move towards the mission. At my church, our mission statement is “to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ.” Pretty generic, eh? That could be the mission statement for 90% of churches in the world. But our vision statement defines the “how to” of the mission. To accomplish our church mission we create foyer, living room, and kitchen environments for our age-based ministries. For a school district a vision statement would be like “By implementing a cohesive educational model we will succeed at all grade levels.” See, the mission everyone can agree on… its the vision for “how to” that people argue about.

Goals: Goals are the stepping stones for putting the vision to work towards the mission. So, for our pretend school district a goal would be “Each building will train staff to use a common educational strategy by 1/1/2009.” That is measurable. That is saying that 100% of classrooms in the district will start using the new model by the deadline. On 1/2/2009 a report is generated and they will know if they reached their goal or not. Only 90% did it? Heads roll. 100% did it, we all celebrate together.

Where measurable goal setting really helps is three places… first it sets an agenda for leaders. Maybe they need to schedule a training session? Maybe they need to determine some sub-goals to that? Second, it creates a deadline. Let’s face the fact that without clear deadlines things don’t get done in an organization. We learned this in college didn’t we? A solid deadline makes us get it done. Everyone has an all-nighter story, and what is behind that story? A deadline! Third, a good goal is an evaluation tool. The best part is that since it is measurable it is plain to see who is succeeding and who is failing.

Why is this important? It helps your workgroups focus. Having clearly defined goals, vision, and a mission statement changes the discussion. Instead of every idea being equal… when an idea is presented that is good but doesn’t directly help you accomplish a goal within the vision (even if it is complimentary to your mission) you can boldly say no. Likewise, when the mission, vision, and goals are clearly understood by everyone in an organization… it creates two of the most powerful things in any organization. (Two future posts) Both are more valuable than money!

• Synergy
• Soft-innovation

Bear in mind… these are live notes. These are just notes from when I was sitting in the meeting. I may or may not write on some of these later.

• Missing again, Mrs. Hier. Very interesting that she has the ability to write editorials to the newspaper but she can’t be here. [Later Mrs. Wreford was asked about it, Freudian slip she said something like "Mrs. Hier will be back when she is willing... ur, able to attend." Oops]
• The meeting started off on a great pace. By 8:00 PM most of the business was done. Awesome.
• They created a new subcommittee for the Sinking Fund projects. Hey, if this saves us some cash I’m all about it!
• Mr. Beck said bout goals, “I’m aware that it’s March 10th and we have not finalized goals for the 2007-2008 school year, but I don’t think that is something to be concerned about.” (Not to sound rude to Mr. Beck, but it is March 10th. It’s too late for goals. Let’s work on some goals for 2008-2009 and beyond.)
• I’m witnessing a fundamental communication breakdown here. The board just won’t agree on anything. Sometimes it is silly to witness. I keep waiting to see one party or the other reach out to find some common ground. See my next point.
• Mr. Stoback is doing his best to teach the difference between a goal and a value statement. I think this is mostly a discussion of the group not speaking the same language. I keep going back to this thought… the board really needs to read Good to Great as a team. (Mr. Chesney’s point at the last meeting… they are a team, like it or not.) It seems that the root of this fundamental disagreement is that they don’t speak the same language. With all of these great managers… let’s get on the same page.
• Mr. Chesney seems to really grasp why each goal needs to be measurable. There was an interesting comment made by someone. (can’t remember) The comment was that if all of the buildings already have goals, why do we need to do all this goal setting at the district level? Again, there is a disagreement on the vernacular again. A district wide goal can trickle all the way down to the student. From the board to the administrators to the teachers to the staff to the students and parents… everyone can get on board with a common goal. We are all in this together… we need to rally around some common goals. This really reminds me of the church before we restructured. An organization has to go in the same direction to succeed!
• Community Survey: This has been talked about for a while. Mr. Beck keeps referencing that the community survey is important and that it hasn’t been done since 1994… and yet I have no idea what the purpose of the survey is. I think the cost makes no difference… $2500 out of a $48 million budget is nothing. But at the same time there hasn’t been a clear point demonstrated to the community.
• 360 Review: I don’t understand why neither the community nor the staff will be involved. It seems they are spending $1500 for something that doesn’t really mean anything. It’s not part of his full evaluation, will be limited to about 15 people total. I dunno enough about this to know if its a good thing for Mr. Beck or not. I know a lot of people are negative about him, I think he’s got a hard job and he’s doing well to balance his own personal goals for himself with those of the community and board.
• Board maneuvering: Late in the meeting the majority did a well-worn stall technique. Mrs. White wanted to discuss a procedure policy for dealing with complaints against the superintendent. Mrs. Wreford said, “We have an attorney sitting here on the clock, there’s no time for that.” When the minority wasn’t pleased by that response, Mrs. Wreford brought up something that had already been addressed in the agenda prior… the superintendent’s evaluation and they talked about it for 15 minutes. Why won’t they just address the issue at hand? These distraction techniques need to stop.

During public comments:

Linda Palmer- asked questions in regard to Superintendent and Asst. Superintendent’s access to individual students score and attendance records. (No idea what the back story is on that, but I’m interested.) She also mentioned the lack of visitor parking at the high school. (Mr. Beck had no real response, deferred to the HS principal.)

BOMBSHELL WARNING: She made comment regarding a committee called “Our Kids Count” for the Sinking Fund. (I wrote about this mailer on January 12th 2008) As of January, 3 donors paid for the mailer that went out to ensure that the Sinking Fund passed. Two of them were the contractors who were hired! They paid for about 95% of the mailing that I wrote about earlier. Conflict of interest? You think? Isn’t that against the law somehow? At the very least the public needs to know they were duped.

Zoe Wagner- Desiring to know how many letters have been received in regard to the situation with Mr. Winters. (Board has no comment, later counted to say they received five letters.) Mrs. Wagner is being argumentative… However, the point reason she is doing so is just to bring things into the public which are previously kept in subcommittee.

Kristen F. – High school counselor made a great comment in regards to the hard work that is going on at the building level. This is a good sign for the future… I need to say this more often… people at the building level do a great job!