Tag: Church

  • 5 Ways to Encourage Your Church Staff

    One thing I learned when I was on church staff— rarely does a person really want what they are presenting what they want.

    In other words, when a parent wants to come in and talk with you about some ideas for the summer youth group schedule, that’s only the presenting issue. I know that with enough time and a couple “How are things going?” and “How can I pray for you?” type of questions you can usually get to the real reason they drove 20 minutes to come to my office.

    I’m finding the same is true with church staff.

    Satan has a very active and special ministry with church staff.

    We have an enemy. Not a metaphorical one. Not one who wears a red cape and pulls some cameos around Halloween. No, Satan is real and he is active and he is effective.

    And he knows when, who, and where to tempt your church staff. He is sneaky and he thrives on discouraging them. Satan loves a sucker punch so he gets them when they are really, really high and really, really low.

    As a youth pastor, I hated the end of our youth group time on Wednesday nights because I knew what was coming. I called the hours between the end of youth group and when I finally fell asleep, “The dark night of the soul.” I went home and questioned everything. I relived every moment. I wondered why I was a youth pastor since I clearly sucked at it. My heart criticized everything I said. I’d often stay up late and re-write everything.

    Logically, I knew that Jesus wasn’t the author of that. But emotionally, I just couldn’t flee it.

    And I’m not alone. The staff of your church likely experience the same things.

    5 constant temptations for all church staff

    • Evaluate the wrong things.
    • Make brash decisions and abuse power.
    • Do it your their way with their own talents.
    • Comparing to other ministries.
    • Leading more and serving less.

    5 ways to encourage your church staff

    • Translate evaluation questions into affirmation of calling. They are asking, “Am I doing the right things?” And you need to tell them, “You are the person God is calling. You are in the right spot.“
    • Communicate to your staff that you love them by praying for them. “If you won’t pray for the staff and their families find a new church.” A long time ago I went to a membership class lead by Ray Pritchard. He said that and it kind of shocked me. I thought he was being arrogant. But its true. If you don’t love the staff God has placed in your church enough to pray for them than you better take that up with Jesus. He’s way smarter than you are. Get over yourself.
    • Only say nice things on Sunday’s. I know that sounds fake. (Maybe you need to be more fake and less mean?) But your staff has laid their hearts on the altar in ways you will never see. Right after they have finished their ministry time they are most open to Satan’s attacks. They will pick up on the slightest slight and amplify the words you say. Just save it. Sleep on it. Put it in your pocket. Instead, look your staff in the eye and tell them thank you, that you are praying for them, and you think they are doing a great job.
    • Act as a shepherd and guardian for their family. Not the cute, cuddly shepherd who leads sheep to still waters. No, the defensive one with the rod. Smack people in the forehead when they attack your church team. In case you didn’t know, your church staff isn’t paid all that well. Help them take care of their relationship with their spouse by offering free childcare so they can go on dates! Grab a gift card at the grocery store “just because.” When you hear people pick at or about the pastors spouse or kids, get angry and defend them. When you hear a staff member squirm with embarrassment at their kids behavior, grab their arm and say, “Stop it. They are kids. It’s OK for them to be kids.“
    • Think about their schedule and send notes at the right times. Find out when your pastor is preparing the sermon. Or when the worship band practices. Or when the youth pastor writes the talk. Or when the kids worker is photocopying curriculum. That’s when you want to drop them a text, Facebook message, or email. That’s when you want to leave a voicemail just to let them know that you are praying for them, that you love how they are ministering to them, and that you are thankful to God for bringing them to your church. 8:00 AM on Sunday morning, that’s not the right time. Friday afternoon or Saturday morning… bam.

  • 5 Ways to Fight Loneliness in Leadership

    It’s lonely at the top.

    For those who work in the church, we all know it. Those who make it for the long haul either succumb to a lifetime of loneliness and don’t have any real friends or we learn to adapt and find deep connection outside the walls of the church.

    But loneliness doesn’t have to be a part of the job. You really can have deep friendships and be in full-time ministry.

    Acquaintance vs. Friendship

    The first few years I worked at churches I confused church members hospitality with true friendship. Sure, I really enjoyed being close with people in the church… but at the end of the day (and certainly in retrospect when you step away from a church) a lot of those people I thought were my friends turned out to be just positional acquaintances. As soon as I stopped being their Pastor Adam they stopped wanting to hang out. Once I stopped investing in their kids there were no more invitations to dinner, golf, and BBQs.

    Of course, we have been able to transition a few of those church acquaintances into true lifelong friendship. (For which we’re totally thankful!) But I think getting there took some time and wisdom.

    A spouse helps but doesn’t really count

    Kristen is my best friend. That goes without saying. But Kristen could never fill the void I needed in ministry as a friend and confidant. When I meet with people young in ministry, I often see them putting their spouse in the friend category. Of course, your spouse will help you curb loneliness! But don’t forget your spouse needs to find true friendship outside of you, as well.

    So, what works?

    Here are five things that helped me get past loneliness and find some healthy friendship while in church leadership.

    1. Find a ministry network locally. Believe it or not, there are people just like you in your own community! Joining a network is a great way to meet people. Go a couple of times, see who you connect with, then take the first step and take that one person out to lunch.
    2. Join a sports club or league. I don’t mean a church league either. Join a league and get outside of your church social circle. Get to know contractors and realtors and other normal people.
    3. Connect with long-time friends intentionally. Some of my best friends in ministry, I only see once or twice per year. The few days we spend together per year are awesome and fill up our tanks. Going to the same conference really helps. But even meeting up for a weekend somewhere goes a long way.
    4. Ignore other leaders who live unhealthy lives. For whatever reason, church ministry attracts workaholics. Looking through job postings at YS I can’t believe how many of them will admit that they want someone to work more than 40 hours per week. Don’t work at those ministries. Go home on time. Make wise use of your ministry time and you’ll have tons of time for real friendship. Never forget that its Jesus’ job to grow the church.
    5. Take the first step! I think I spent over a year completely lonely and out of my mind crazy because I was waiting for fellow ministry people in my community to come find me. It’s not going to happen. The assumption is always going to be that you are busy and your life is full of relationships until you step out first.

  • Churches don’t reach people…

    Time For Plan B Photo by Bjørn Giesenbauer via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Churches don’t reach people… People do.

    Maybe that’s a statement of the obvious for you. But if you read enough church blogs or look at enough books or listen to a bunch of pep talks you may begin to believe the lie that churches, their leaders, and their programs reach a lot of people.

    They don’t.

    Less than 5% of our culture is actively involved in church. That’s a lot of smoke and not much fire.

    Neighbors loving neighbors reaches people. Which involves talking and getting to know people who live next door to you. Which involves you being home and not hiding in your house.

    Here’s a little secret I learned from working on church staff.

    It feels good to keep people busy.

    It makes you think you’re being productive. It makes you think that they are keeping your ministry a priority. You look really good with lots of things going on and people running around like busy little bees.

    Having a lot of people involved in your programs is a powerful temptation as a church staff member. The bottom line is that you feel like its your job to grow a program. Heck, there’s a good chance it IS your job to grow a program.

    But if you step back for a minute and think about it– For every moment you are keeping a person at the church “doing ministry” you are actually preventing them from doing the one thing we know works. And the one thing every believer, including your pastor, is called to do universally.

    Love your neighbor as yourself. Matthew 22:39

    A lot of church involvement is actually counter intuitive to your church actually reaching a community.

    It might feel good to keep people busy. But in the end it is killing your ability to grow the church.

    Reality Check

    For Kristen and I it took stepping out of a busy bee church and into a situation where we could simply say no to everything but church attendance to have this truth awakened in us.

    Believing in the “churches reach people” paradigm is really just an excuse for me to not reach out in love to those in my neighborhood. I might feel pretty good about keeping busy in the church. But my life ends up with a lot of smoke and not much fire.

    We try to do the bear minimum and I still feel like we are over involved. We have church on Sunday. Community group on Monday night. And youth group on Tuesday night. (I’d skip church and youth group over community group, by the way. Community group is our lifeline.)

    And it still feels like too much.

    Wondering

    What if community service became the program of the church? What if you had a simple service on Sunday morning and then sent the people of the church out to apply what they’ve learned in their life?

    What if the role of the staff is to go out with the people of your congregation and work alongside? Not as a program overlord, but as an encourager and equipper.

    Wouldn’t that be a biblical expression of church?

    Or have we bought so firmly into the current paradigm that we don’t think simple expressions of faith in action will work anymore?

  • Affluence, Influence, and Activism

    Photo by lewishamdreamer via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    The byline of this site is: Crazy enough to change the world. On Twitter I alter this slightly, my bio line says, “The sane need not apply for the position of world changer.”

    Both of those boil down to a basic question in my life.

    How do I maximize whatever leverage I can acquire to help Christians be more Christ-like?

    Within the church there seems to be two primary ways to gain leverage.

    1. Affluence. The American church is pretty simple to manipulate. It pains me to say it but we all know it to be true. We even come up with cute little phrases to put in books affirming it. “An unfunded vision is just a dream.” Affluence is the fastest way to exude leverage on a Christian organization for change. There are a lot of Christian leaders who would balk at that– I don’t care, you know it’s ultimately true. If you are a leader of a Christian church or organization in America, budget is the fourth member of the Trinity. Budget is the silent elder. Budget is the ultimate accountability partner. We refuse to learn how to do ministry for free, so budget is power. So if you want to exude some leverage in any Christian organization, write a big check. Heck, just waving a big check is generally good enough.
    2. Influence. This is the great hope of all of us not born into money or lucky enough to buy Apple stock at $27. Many of the great voices in the American church today were not born into it. They acquired leverage through wise use of talents. (Either gifted by the Holy Spirit or just flat out gifted) These written/oral communicators are, in many ways, prophets to the church. In many ways, the local church leader is looking at these national church communicators and emulating them. People study their speaking mannerisms. People dress like them. People flock to hear them speak. People buy their books. And when a leader gets really powerful people model their churches after these prophets.

    An observation

    There are too many in category two trying to leverage their influence to affluence.

    There are not enough leveraging their influence to actualized change.

    Just because affluence is the fastest way to change any Christian organization– this doesn’t make it right. And, as we’ve seen over the last 50 years, leveraging affluence to change the church doesn’t make the church more Christ-like. It seems to just make the church more church-centric and less community-centric.

    Where are the activists?

    On Saturday, I watched a documentary about Paul Watson. Where is that guy in the church? The dude took a bullet for a freaking whale!

    On Sunday, my pastor talked about Nelson Mandela. Where is that guy in the church? 26 years in prison for his cause and came out hating no one.

    Where are the Martin Luther King, Jr’s? Where are the Mahatma Ghandis? Where are the César Chavez’s?

    Why is there no one in the American church willing to take a stand and leverage their influence for real change?

    There are a lot of strong opinions. But no one seeks to offend even when the offense is offensive. There are a lot of great ideas, but none of the people espousing those ideas are willing to spend the night in jail. There are a lot of offenses in the American church, but no one is wearing a bullet proof vest to preach on Sunday morning because we are offending people with truth to the point where we think someone might take a shot at us.

    Why is that?

    As Christians, we believe that Jesus is the solution. We believe that Jesus didn’t just come to save us, we believe we have been placed here on this planet to make things better.

    Do you want to know who is worth following? Find a man or woman who is calling Christians to love their neighbors like Jesus did, love justice like Jesus did, and leverage their influence for big/little things that matter.

    Follow those people.

    God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing. Ephesians 2:10 The Message

  • Lessons from the bench

    For the last two years I’ve been riding the pine at church. This time has taught me a lot about what it means to be in church leadership.

    From age 16 until 31 I had always aspired to be an up front leader at church. I like being visible. I love speaking, teaching, and preaching. I truly enjoy the grind of regularly doing those things as my vocation.

    Over the past two years I’ve gone from being the person everyone on our church campus knew to being a relative nobody. In athletic terms, I went from being a starter to being a player who sits the bench.

    And just like in athletics, when you put a starter on the bench, the Coach always does it so the starter can learn.

    Here are 5 things I’ve learned from riding the bench at church:

    1. Every attendee gets something different out of a Sunday morning, you can’t control the takeaway or topic one bit. I can’t believe I ever thought I could control that.
    2. The more a church offers the less people are involved in their community. Growing a church by doing less doesn’t make logical sense, but its 100% true.
    3. Never assume people know what a term is or who an author/speaker is that you reference. People in church leadership live in a different world, with different heroes, than the rest of the congregation.
    4. Visibly valuing people is really important. This manifests itself in a lot of different ways. But it demonstrates the church leaderships character in what they put up front.
    5. People in the pews care way more about the staff and their families than I ever imagined. It’s not creepy, it’s not some American idol worship, it’s actually quite sweet.

    If you’ve gone from church staff to church attendee, what are some things you’ve learned through that process that could help people in church leadership?

  • Stick it to the Man

    I want to see church culture change. I know that if we’d just apply what we believe the church would be the most attractive option on the planet.

    And I also know that in order to change the leadership culture within a church you have to do three things.

    1. You have to play along to gain access to the people who can change things.
    2. You have to gently prod leadership with ideas that are approachable.
    3. And sometimes you need to show them your middle finger and just plain stick it to the leaders by giving them glimpses of your vision for reform.

    Here are some examples of moments in history when visionaries have extended the middle finger (mostly figuratively) to the man and changed the culture forever.

    • 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence and told King George, “Come and get me, punk.“
    • William Wallace lead a band of warriors against King Edward in a fight for independence for Scotland. “I’m not your slave, I’d rather die than serve you. Here, look at my butt.“
    • On December 1st, 1955 Rosa Parks sat down in the front of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. “What are you going to do about it?”
    • George Whitefield lead massive outdoor revivals in staunch opposition to the established church and local laws which required permits to preach. Much of the American evangelical church was born from his disobedience. “We are going to meet outside, where the people are… you know, just like Jesus did. You OK with that, sucker?“
    • Martin Luther recognized he could barely move the needle an inch in his lifetime if he worked within the rules of Rome. So he wrote some things down and made his own appointment with the Pope Leo. “You’ll be changing one way or the other, Mr. Fancy Hat.“
    • Instead of ignoring the Pharisees and their muttering, Jesus teaches his band of cultural losers that they should go out and try to reach Pharisees. “Sometimes you stick it to the man by going out and loving the man while sticking it to him.”

    What’s the problem with this?

    • A lot of us are the man.
    • In nearly all of those situations, the established religious leaders were on the wrong side of history. Oops.
    • We stand in a long time of people who realize… awful hard to stick it to ourselves.

    The reason I’m saying this is to remind people like myself that we are, oftentimes, the biggest agents against change. We have our ways. We have our culture. We look at prominence and degrees. As the established religious leaders we give a million excuses why the pains in the neck are wrong and we are right.

    World changing men and women come into our lives, observe our behavior and practices, and give us the middle finger.

    The lesson from the examples above is simple: When people come to you to give you the middle finger of no-more-fellowship… you need to listen to them. You need to give them the opportunity to be heard.

    They may be right and you may be wrong.

    You need to look at those people with sober judgment.

    Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. – Apostle Paul, Romans 12:2

  • 10 Ways Your Church Can Be Good News to the Neighborhood

    I have a fervent belief that if we want to reach a post-Christian society, we have to be Good News before someone will listen to Good News.

    Here are 10 ways you can begin transforming your church into a place where Good News flows from:

    1. If you have a building, offer a public bathroom and shower that’s open to whomever needs it during your office hours.
    2. Ask every attendee to get in the habit of bringing a canned food item (you get the idea) to church every week. Then start a food pantry that’s open a couple days a week for people to drop in.
    3. Buy things for the church from local suppliers. Avoid the big box (probably cheaper) stores for ones that support a local company. Encourage your church attendees to do the same.
    4. Encourage people who go out to lunch after church to be generous with tipping servers and conscious of how long they are staying. You want wait staffs to desire the church crowd, they are avoiding it at all costs now.
    5. Require church staff to live within the area you are trying to reach.
    6. Add a requirement to all board and staff job descriptions that they attend public meetings. (Schools, city planning, city council, county government, etc.)
    7. Ask adults to volunteer at the public schools. (Give staff lots of freedom to volunteer)
    8. Participate in organized community events. Cleaning up, planting flowers, helping with parades, etc.
    9. Make church property open to the public. (Playground equipment, skateboard park, community garden, host local festivals, allow the schools to hold events in the auditorium.) Better yet, turn all of your property into a community center.
    10. Create a culture of saying yes to community involvement instead of no.

    These are my ideas. What are yours?

    How can your church (and the people who go to it) become Good News to your neighborhood?

  • Boring Old Church

    Photo by richardmasoner via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Perhaps the reason your church isn’t growing is because you are boring? Your church is boring. Your faith is boring. The Jesus you’re presenting is boring.

    People’s faith isn’t challenged by your ability to keep them busy. It is transformed when they are sent out to do God’s work in their daily life.

    The last thing most people need is another sermon. The last thing they need is another worship experience.

    The first thing they need is to apply the last thing you taught them. I guarantee you that your next worship service will be exciting if your community of believers is coming to worship Jesus after they have dipped their toes in the River of Grace and seen Him act.

    That is exciting. That grows… Quickly.

    No more songs about moving mountains until you show people– God moving mountains!

    Deal?

  • 5 Things I Love about my Church

    This Easter marks roughly two years since I turned in my Pastor Adam card and went from church staff to church attendee. (I was officially done June 1st, but it was during Easter week  that the offer to come to YS came, which completely changed everything.)

    In so many ways I’ve re-learned what it means to be a member of a church. God has shown me hundreds of ways in which my assumptions and desires for people in the pews were flat out wrong.

    But, more importantly, the last two years has solidified a deep love and respect for the church universal as well as the church I’m a part of– Harbor Mid-City.

    Here are 5 things I love about my church:

    1. They model their bridge building strategy with their staff. When I look at the make-up of their staff– I giggle. A PCA church plant with staff from a huge spectrum of Protestantism. Liberals. Progressives. Conservatives. I jokingly remind them, “In most communities this group wouldn’t even get together to pray… and you guys are on staff together!” I love that they chose to unite around Christ and major in the majors. Let me tell you, this is rare.
    2. They meet at Hoover High School. I’m a huge fan of our location and all the challenges it brings along. I love that we pay to rent part of a high school. I love that we bring 200 adults to a high school campus they would rather ignore. I love that there is a constant tension in the space we use for kids is also a teachers space. I love that part of our being Good News to the community is showing up and worshipping at a place, Hoover, that is so common.
    3. The production value of the service is awesome. Seriously, one of the things I love about Harbor is just how rough the tech side of things are. You would think that I, Mr. Super Church Tech Dude, would be annoyed that every week the microphones are jacked up, the projector is crooked, and they lovingly rock PowerPoint when Media Shout, Easy Worship, or ProPresenter are so readily available. Nope. Every time something goes array in the service I just lean over to Kristen and go, “That’s awesome. I love it.” Because I know the flip side of those blemished moments is not a persons hours of hard work. I know that no one is going to get an ugly stare back at the booth. And I know it’s not going to be an hours discussion at staff meeting. Ultimately… it’s no big deal and it’s treated as such.
    4. They love kids and show it. Most churches get this right. But I have to say that there are two places where Harbor gets this right-er than anywhere else I’ve been. Here are two things I can point to which illustrate this thought. First, early in the worship service they invite all of the kids to come to the front to join the worship band. So about 20 kids come to the front and bang on percussion instruments and dance for two worship songs before heading to kids church. Some people might think this completely ruins those songs. But I love the lesson we are teaching… these kids are a part of the congregation and we need to allow them to participate in the worship. It’s a visual way to say “children are valuable to God.” Second, I love how they handle infant baptism. (This is a theological issue I have NO IDEA where I stand on.) So, they baptize the baby and the congregation affirms their responsibility. [All very normative.] But Stephen has started this little thing which I hope he continues. He leads the parents to the center of the auditorium and invites the congregation to quietly sing “Jesus Loves Me” as a lullaby to the baby. I doubt it leaves an imprint on the baby but it certainly leaves an effect on the parents and the congregation!
    5. They value all people. I wish this were the case in all congregations but sadly it is not. Two quick ways this plays out on Sunday. First, we are an ethnically mixed congregation. We have a Spanish-speaking pastor and an English speaking pastor. Each language group is given equal value. (Not time) The only thing we separate for is the message. (Because translating that would be exhausting!) But for the majority of the service we have both groups together and it makes for a fun cornucopia. Second, we work hard to put everyone on an equal playing field socio-economically. El Cajon Blvd, where the church meets, is really a dividing line between the have-nots to the south and the have-alots to the north. There is a conscious effort to blur those lines on Sunday morning. I don’t have any idea how they pull it off… but it’s something I love about my church.

    Those are some things I love about my congregation. What are things you love about yours?

  • It only takes 10 givers to fund a church

    People don’t like to talk money and the church. It makes people instantly think of TV evangelists.

    And while those TV evangelists swindled millions out of well-meaning, hard-working Americans, the truth is that 99% of churches are great places and not full of crooks.

    I have an encouragement for my friends just entering their 30s, you’re finally hitting the earning power to make a difference in your church.

    Here’s something that may be news to you: It only takes about 10 solid givers for a small-to-medium-sized church to stay solvent.

    Working for a small church this was clear. 6-7 core “giving units” provided a solid foundation of giving on which our monthly budget was built. We didn’t really know who they were but we were thankful for their faithfulness. But the $200-$500 a week they each gave weekly was the difference between the staff having a heart attack about the budget and knowing we’d at least make payroll! And, of course, people beyond that core group gave substantially too which made all the difference in the world for doing more than making payroll. Yet the fact remained that without those 6-7 anonymous folks we would have been in deep trouble.

    Now, I’m sure $200-$500 per week seems unattainable. You’re saying that’s a lot of money! In some parts of the country $800/month is more than the mortgage. So you’ll have to do the math to figure out what that translates to in your local economy.

    But here’s the point: These weren’t a special breed of super-givers. These were regular Joe’s and Mary’s. The median family income in that part of Michigan was about $60,000. That meant the median family brought home about $800/week after taxes. ($80/week if they tithed) Yet most of the folks in our church had professional jobs which paid much, more than that. All of a sudden you realize… the 6-7 families funding a big chunk of the church are really just average professionals tithing about 10% of what they brought home.

    That’s where you come in. If just 5% of the church actually tithed, your church could stay solvent. I don’t mean they’d be in great shape. I just mean that 5-10 solid givers per hundred forms the foundation of giving for your church.

    And if you are wise with your money you can be one of them soon.

    Again, that may seem impossible. But if you got serious for the next 6-12 months on reducing your debt load you will be able to give a lot more. And while most people in their early-mid thirties are just starting to dig their way out of mountains of credit card debt, college loans, car loans, and the fat part of a mortgage… as they do that they are discovering they can have a lot more giving power.

    It only takes 10 givers to fund a church. The question is simply– Do you want to be one of them?