Maybe it’s because I have a deep connection to the cold, dark sea and waves crashing on the shore? But I was totally infatuated with the filmmakers vision for this piece. My only wish is that there had been more surfing shots!

Want to avoid confusion with your team? Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.

I define a leader as someone who takes people somewhere they would otherwise not go on their own.

All-too-often, as I look back on my life in leadership, my tendency is always to get a mile ahead of my team because I have under-communicated the basics with them.

Why are we doing this? What’s our intent? What do we want to get out of this experience? Who are we targeting with our ministry? Why are you serving? How can we accomplish our goals? When is the best time to do this? On and on.

Every once in a while I’d get this feedback: “I know you have a reason for everything we do, and you’ve given us all the information about what we are doing, but I am not understanding why/how this is going to happen.” When I was young in leadership I somehow too this as a compliment. But now I see it for what it is… a weakness I need to address.

When my team lacks focus and drive to execute the vision– That’s my fault not theirs. I tend to communicate the vision too little and the share details too much. In the moment, the logistical details seem more important than the over-arching vision. But in the end, you need both.

You will have leaders who are OK knowing stuff as they go. But to really take a ministry somewhere you need to execute along the way to accomplish the vision.

3 Ways I combat my tendency to under-communicate

1. Give people the big picture often. Before each ministry cycles starts, (school year, calendar year, however your church does it) schedule a meeting with key leaders to go over the plan. When I do this I present a white paper for the year as well as the teaching calendar, event calendar, and a description of a discipled person. In other words, I start with the end in mind and show my team how we’re going to get there together. In youth ministry, at about the same time, I host a parents meeting and go over the same information… plus some other stuff like cost of events, permission slips, etc.
2. Put your pedagogical statement out there. It feels cheesy to think about, and I totally stole it from Doug Field’s youth ministry classic, “Purpose-driven Youth Ministry,” but I think it’s useful to put the purpose for a ministry, in writing, on everything you do. Even better, when I am teaching a lesson and there is a handout for leaders, I also like to give them a quick sentence about what we are teaching. “The main idea of tonight’s lesson is that students will learn ______.” This puts your leaders on the inside, thinking of your teaching strategy right alongside of you, and values their intelligence/abilities.
3. Get stuff to people early. This is the one I wrestle with the most because you’ll always have some people who feel like they need every detail when you can only provide the big picture. Such as, I have volunteers who want small group questions 1-2 weeks in advance so they can think about it in advance. The problem is that I can’t give that because I rarely actually work on the talk until 24-48 hours before I teach it. But I can tell them the passage and the main idea of the lesson. And usually, that’s enough. The same is true for events and trips. I need to give them the information early enough where they can rearrange their schedule and jump on board to help. If I forget, or am lacking, in that then I should expect them to bail on me.

Paul’s teacher has been on us for a few months to get his eyes checked out. She’d tell us, “He squints to see the board” or “He says he has to sit up front. I think he needs glasses.”

I assumed, just like his big sister, that he’d need glasses eventually. Everyone in my family wears glasses. It’s an inevitability for McLane’s.

Until recently, he never complained about not being able to see well. When we asked him to read a sign or move back from the TV he’d just roll his eyes. In truth, there are a number of behavior issues we are dealing with, so we thought this stubbornness about sitting near the TV was just part of his personality.

It all made sense when I took him to Lenscrafters on Saturday. He was very excited and talkative about the appointment. As we waited for the doctor to see him, he was a nervous kind of chipper that we rarely see.

Then he did the pre-screening. He seemed to instantly shut down. There were four machines with simple tasks. In each of them he was excited to do it. But in each of them when the doctor asked him questions he just didn’t answer.

“Uh oh, this isn’t going well.” I sent Kristen a text.

When the pre-screening was over I asked him why he didn’t answer any of the questions. “She was trying to trick me. I never saw anything like she was saying I should. I’m not going to answer and get an answer wrong, I only like correct answers.”

That’s when I started to worry. It hit me. It’s not that he wasn’t trying. It’s that he had just failed all four of the pre-screening tests. Had we somehow missed something all along? Does my son have a vision problem?

My mind raced to connect the dots.

Then we went into the big room. The one with the hydraulic chair and big eyeglass contraption. The chair was on one wall and the chart with all the letters was on the other.

“Paul, there are no wrong answers. This isn’t an eye test. We’re just seeing how we can help you see better. Is that OK?” He shook his head affirmatively.

She explained what all of the instruments were in the room– so he wouldn’t be surprised by anything. (My heart was pumping a million miles per hour!)

“Paul, can you tell me if you see any letter on the wall right in front of you?”

“Letters? All I see is a white wall.”

She pulled a pen from her pocket and held it about 2 feet from his face.

“Can you read the letters on this pen?”

“Of course I can, duh!” He was starting to have fun.

Within a few minutes she started dialing her contraption to discover the right lenses which would help Paul.

She flashed the first set in front of his face.

“Ha! Ha! Now I see the poster on the wall. You weren’t tricking me.”

On and on this went. Within a few minutes he was able to read the smallest letters on the chart with ease. First with one eye, then the other.

Finally, she made some measurements and pulled out two lenses from desk. Just as she was putting them in front of his eyes she said, “OK Paul, tell me what you can see now?”

His face lit up. He quickly started looking around the room. “Wow! I can see everything.”

A smile was plastered on his face like one I’d rarely seen.

I beamed at his discovery.

The doctor turned to me and said, “Your son is profoundly nearsighted. But he doesn’t have a vision problem. He has a clarity and focus problem. Glasses are going to change everything.”

That was a lightbulb moment for me. My mind started to race at all the times I’d taken him to sporting events or movies and he’d turned to me and said, “Can we leave? This is boring.” Or all of the blank stares when we pointed out historic sites. Or why he burned through quarter after quarter looking at New York City through those big binoculars. Or why he hated playing catch with me in the backyard. Or why riding his bike had always seemed so scary. On and on– the dots began to connect.

How many of the behavior problems that we pull our hair out over are tied to this one simple thing… He couldn’t see?

We will soon find out.

The hour between ordering his glasses and picking them up might have been the longest 60 minutes of his life. We wondered the mall aimlessly. And about every 2 minutes he’d ask… “How much longer?”

Finally, the time came and the lab technician called his name. As he put the glasses on his face and the technician made adjustments to the frames, I could see his eyes shooting all over. He was reading and discovering everything in the room. It was a brand new world!

As we left the store he grabbed my arm. “Dad, look at those clouds!”

What the moral of the story?

There’s a lot of talk in leadership circles about having strong vision. But vision without clarity and focus on purpose will lead you, your organization, and your teams to become near-sighted.

It’s one thing to have big vision. It’s another thing to back that up with clarity and focus.

In the cold dark morning of my day my soul cries for new days, new songs, new delights.

I wonder where the dreamers are dreaming this morning.

My heart weeps in disdain for a time and place lost. It lives in my sleep; it dies in my schedule. Such a place feels real but the left side of my cranium conquers the right with alarms beckoning.

This new day is not dedicated to dream, but to task.

Yet in moments of stolen shadows, my mind reveals a new day. A new alarm buzzes between my ears calling me to create, basking in the presence of a bee hive of something so fantastic words cannot capture.

I wonder where actors practice their craft.

I wonder where champions train.

I wonder where the beat of the poets rhyme comes from.

It is at that founts source I want to drink.

It is at that 7-11 my coffee cup wants refilled.

I wonder if there is still a place in peoples hearts to imagine new days? New life? New aspirations of inspirations beyond awe.

Or am I alone in my tears of anticipation?

I long to cry at creative expressions so wondrous, like dolphins dancing to their own song before your eyes on a lonely walk of solitude.

I long for moments where awe seems a ridiculous expression in light of my eyes observation and ears hearing.

Are those moments now lost?

I see days lost milling with friends pondering in circles of delightful giggles as words create paradigms faster than people with pens can write books about them or lawyers can lay claim to who’s words are whose.

In anxious tension I envision manifestos so delightful that poets scribe them in a loss for expression.

People sleep in their seats collected in rounds, as if at the circus, because they fear they will miss the next moment.

Where do I find such a place. Where is moment so thick with creation that hunger pains and mortgages are checked against the register of the moment and forgotten?

Where is the place where pedigree is placed behind the streaming flowing waterfall of ingenuity, it’s bars of acceptance overpowered by respect for the moment.

Where is the place patent laws and egos vanish for the sake of the moment?

Where is the place that time is irrelevant in the measurement of my day?

That’s my Zion. That’s my Jerusalem. That’s my city of dreams.

That’s my alarm.

Am I awake now? Or am I dreaming when I call it wake and alive when I am dreaming.

Where is this place?

Take me there.

Like any person who comes up with a lot of ideas… I’m used to getting shot down. The pill of reality I swallow every day is that only about 1 in 20 of my ideas are worth seeing to fruition. Thankfully, God has put people with the gift of discernment in my path so I don’t go insane.

Knowing that– I know this phrase to be true: A vision unfunded is merely a dream.

A lot of people in my life are learning that their vision is merely a dream. Tough economic times mean that their ministry, their business, their job, or even their early retirement dreams are now unfunded. Grandiose plans usurped by a new need for freelance or part-time work. The people they trusted/hoped/prayed to fund their vision disappointed them.

Kristen and I are chosing which visions to fund and its hard! We have to look inside ourselves and ask which are dreams (the big house, living abroad) and which are visions worth funding. (our local church, building short/long term savings) Hard choices which reveal what’s really important. As you think of that with a wider lens of millions of people doing the same thing you see why the people in my life are struggling when families like ours our choosing one vision over another. It’s painful to witness.

What does this all mean? I don’t know for sure. But I do know that even when the funding isn’t there vision, dreams, and big ideas are still worth having. The world won’t change without visionaries and dreamers. Even unfunded ones.

I’ve been wrestling with the concepts of Marko’s book, Youth Ministry 3.0 for a long time. Actually, before I worked a YS I had been going through a prolonged set of discussions at Romeo saying in a thousand different ways… What I’m doing isn’t working anymore.

The problem was simple. I was trained and experienced at how to do youth ministry a certain way. The entire ministry was built around a youth group night of games, worship, small groups, and a talk. I had seen it work and do incredible things! Even in Romeo we had seen this ministry model draw 40+ students to a church of 120. Lives were changed, kids were discipled, volunteers loved it, on and on. We ran that thing and worked that model like a well-oiled machine. I was well-versed in all the terminology of all the other well-oiled youth ministry systems and had written tons comparing and contrasting the strength of one model over the other. But in the last few years the model tanked. Kids stopped coming. The whole thing became kind of toxic. Instead of re-arranging their schedule to make in on Wednesday night all of a sudden kids were trying to find things to do on  Wednesday night so they could politely bow out. Frustration mounted and I kept saying, “What I’m doing isn’t working anymore.”

The crazy thing was my reaction to a YM 2.0 model. My response was always, even to the last day, “I know this works, something is just missing, that’s all.” I would tweak things here, re-emphasize this or that. It was never that the concept was broken. The problem was always either the kids not getting the vision of the model or my model not having the funding/support it needed to succeed. It never really dawned on me that my solution to fixing things was to kill the model and search for a better way to minister to students. My reaction was always to just work harder and to keep trying.

Pray more, blame the parents. Pray more, blame the money. Pray more, blame myself. Pray more, blame the kids busyness. In the end I was royally frustrated and a little angry at God that He had me in a place where I couldn’t fix things.

But as Marko’s book shows, there is a massive shift from what he calls “Youth Ministry 2.0″ built around programs and models, towards “Youth Ministry 3.0″ where the programmatic approach is, probably though not necessarily, foregone for a draw towards ministries built around affinity. (A super over-simplified analysis, right there!)

My wrestling point right now is pretty simple… how do I help ministries kill what has worked for a generation and open their eyes to a way to reach this generation. My experience in YM 2.0 environments is that they’d be happy running an un-attended YM 2.0 model if that means they don’t have to change things. Youth workers may not like the sacred cows of big church but they have certainly built some sacred cows themselves. (Remember the fury over my articles, “I Kissed Retreats Goodbye?“)

From a national perspective I’m seeing one trend that is scaring me and I don’t want it to be the solution: Killing youth ministry budgets, staffs, and programs. Please tell me that we’re not going to throw the baby out with the bath water? Simply because a model isn’t working doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t minister to adolescents!

What is a more productive outcome than that?

Here are some more thoughts on the medium-sized church crisis. My post the other day attracted a fair amount of comments and attention… and I was pretty frustrated that people jump to the issue of money.

I only think that the money problems of current are bringing the Medium-sized church crisis to the forefront. At the end of the day I’m meeting two types of churchoers. Once you cut past the nice fluff they say about their churches and preacher they are really either small church people or megachurch people.

What does this mean for medium-sized church? My experience in medium-sized churches is that there is a tension between these two types of people. One is resistant of anything “small church” so stuff that is appealing to the small church is annoying to them and visa versa. Eventually, misguided and unaccepted tension results in hurt feelings, bitterness, disappointment, and a range of other typical medium-church angst.

And that angst is why I’m saying the medium church is in crisis… Eventually, church leaders must chose to lead their church one direction or the other: Lead towards smaller environments or toward becoming a megachurch. The cultural division is causing this squeeze. The financial crisis merely accelerates the trend.

A Personal Example

In Romeo, we mislabeled these cultural issues as a “personal preference issue” instead of a cultural issue. Big mistake! Our small church folks didn’t mind if the worship team wasn’t professional sounding or if the church basement was a bit too homey for potlucks. Small church people find those things endearing… maybe even spiritual.

Meanwhile, the megachurch people wanted everything to be like the megachurch they used to go to and they wanted the church to become. Everything was compared to the megachurch down the road or the stuff they saw on TV or enjoyed at a conference or read about online. To the megachurch people, the failure of the small church people to realize all that Romeo could become was an abomination… a spiritual failure at worse and a lack of vision at best.

See… this isn’t about money at all. Maybe I’ll be called a heretic for this? But, I will tell you what 10 years of church ministry has taught me about giving. Giving has 0% to do with what people are taught from the Bible and 100% to do with whether or not they feel that their money will further a cause they believe in. People are just sophisticated like that. They see right through the pleas for cash to your motivation. When motivations converge they give. When they disagree they give somewhere else. Christians are extremely generous… but they won’t give to a church simply because they go there.

Next, let’s talk about money. I’ve only hinted at it, lets hit it straight away next time.

Then, I want to talk about the superiority of small church and megachurch missions in our culture. This is the core reason for the crisis.

Yesterday’s message got me thinking about the mistake many people, even church people, make in regards to grace. Here’s what those two terms mean and why they are opposites.

Grace is receiving unmerited favor. In other words, you get what you don’t deserve.

Karma is the effects of your past deeds is your future experience. In other words, you get what you pay for.

The Karma Conspiracy. I’ll let you in on a little secret. Most people in ministry believe in grace but practice and perpetuate karma in their ministry. Not all, but nearly all.

1. I missed my kids soccer game because I was preparing for my message on Sunday.

2. Come be a part of God’s vision and serve at the spaghetti dinner.

3. Partner with God in the vision of our church by tithing.

4. Join a small group this fall and be a part of what we’re doing.

Now, you’ll see those statements and not see the karma connection. Since I’ve been guilty of all four of those let me translate into what most (nearly all) pastors are thinking when they say these things.

1. If I work hard good things will happen in my church.

2. I am capitalizing on your false belief that working in the church will merit favor in order to fill a job roster.

3. I am exploiting on your belief that if you give to God He will give more back to you.

4. By asking you to do something you don’t want to do, I am perpetuating your false belief in karma with the hope that you’ll discover grace.

See, this is a tricky thing. And I don’t think any pastor does it intentionally. Yet I think that karma is so engrained in our culture that we perpetuate it unknowingly.

Question: How do we stop this? How do we allow grace, true unmerited favor from God, to permeate everything we do in ministry and in life?

Hint: I think both the problem and the solution are found here.

#1 Goodbye Creepy Guy

#2 My Olympic Rant

#3 Where are all the Christian Single Men?

#4 President Bush is the Man

#5 Vision, Goal, and Mission Statements

It always amazes me to see some of these top posts be old posts. But that’s the power of Google. Those who are just learning about blogging would be wise to take some time to figure out how Google indexes things and build their blog/site based on that. 

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