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What Your Organization Can Learn From Barack Obama

January 21, 2009 in leadership with 4 Comments

The new president has yet to sign an executive order (that I know of), yet he has already positioned himself to be a very effective president. This past week, before the celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr holiday, Barack Obama sent out a video message calling people to celebrate that special holiday through service.

Calling a nation to service is not new. Many past presidents have done so with vigor. But what is different about Barack Obama is how he does it:

1. Use of technology: When he releases his weekly addresses, they are through YouTube. Through this medium he is vastly expanding his reach and audience.

2. Through offering immediate opportunities for action: A new website has has been created called USA Service through which immediate action may be taken. You plug in your zip code and how far you’re willing to drive, and you’ll be rewarded with a list of opportunities and more information to serve.

Through offering practical and immediate opportunities for service, based upon a level of commitment, was how he won so many primaries and eventually the presidency. You could either make a phone call from your home, drive to a center and make calls as a group, you could volunteer to knock on some doors, or host a party!

What about you? What are you doing in your church or organization to offer immediate action opportunities? When you call people to service do you have a list of places handy where they can serve? When you call people to be witnesses do you also provide immediate opportunities in which someone can witness?
If you’re not offering immediate opportunities for action, then you’re wasting the people’s time. They will end up zoning you out in any future calls, and you will have done yourself a disservice.

Coming up on the 14th of February is Valentine’s day. For the first time in a while it will be on a Saturday. What if churches took that day to teach on love and outreach, and then gave people an immediate opportunity that afternoon to serve and love their community? We’re planning on handing out roses and candies. For more ideas click here and here.

The Power of Leaderless Churches

January 13, 2009 in book review,leadership with 2 Comments

I recently read the book The Starfish and the Spider, and thought it provided some interesting lessons on leadership in organizations.

The concept of the book is based upon a simple observation:
If you cut off the leg of a spider, you will slow it down. It you cut its head, it will quickly die. Certain starfish are completely different. If you cut off the leg, that leg can grow itself into a new starfish. If you cut it into eight pieces, eight starfish can grow from the stumps.
This is the main metaphor that the authors use to compare different kinds of organizations. 
Highly structured top-down companies like GE and MGM are compared to the spiders, where as companies like wikipedia, youtube, and grokster are compared to the starfish. 
Concerning how this applies to church work, there are varied opinions. Lane Douglas feels that the best application of this principle means that decision-making should be a decentralized process. The pastor should have less power, and more decisions should be made on the ground level. Tod Bolsinger sees the spider as being large churches, where as “organic” house-churches are the starfish. 
I’d like to point out a slightly different application that I see concerning small groups. I think the truest incarnation of the starfish model is the rise of cell-based holistic groups around the world. All of the top churches in the world are cell churches. They multiply rather quickly, are extremely decentralized, and could very easily survive the loss of many levels of leadership. Outside of the U.S., this is the predominant model that is thriving. 
Within North America, though, this model has not caught much traction. There are several cell churches here in the U.S., but by far, the largest churches here seem to be using a system of affinity groups. These are groups that can be based on any number of different “affinities” or “interests” such as basket-weaving, studying biblical finances, dog-training, or football. 
The genius of this method is that it truly decentralizes not only the structure, but also the topic and information. Cell groups only decentralize the structure, but the overall information is largely quite centralized, with many churches giving the outlines of what should be studied during the week. Whereas in an affinity-group based churches, people develop different kinds of small groups based upon their gifts, interests, and outreach opportunities.
At our church, we’ve currently been reading through a book by Nelson Searcy called Activate.
We haven’t yet implemented the affinity-based model, but I believe we will be transitioning to that in a few months. We’ve tried the cell-group model, and it just didn’t seem like the most effective way to reach people and to meet the needs of people across the faith spectrum.
What have you tried concerning small groups? What’s working for you? What’s not working?

Top Books of the Year!

December 31, 2008 in book review,leadership with 0 Comments

Nelson Searcy and Bob Franquiz from Church Leader Insights recently released a podcast with their top reading pics from this past year. Why is their recommendation so powerful? Because between the both of them they read over 300 hundred books and distilled these down to give their top eight books. These books range in topics from business, leadership, economics, public speaking, ministry, and others.

Without further ado here are the top eight books of 2008 for ministry leaders:
Happy Reading in 2009!

Solving Misery at Work

December 19, 2008 in leadership with 0 Comments

I was reflecting recently on a Catalyst conference DVD that I saw where Pat Lencioni spoke on the “Three Signs of Job Misery.” One of his main points stuck with me: anonymity.
We’ve all felt it at times. The feeling that nobody notices you. 
It was a saturday night. I was invited by some friends to check out a party that was coming up. They gave me the address. They gave me the time. Everything was a green light. This was before the days where everyone had cell phones, so there was no last-minute way to tell someone if there was a problem. 
The party was to begin at 9:00pm, but wanting to be fashionably late, I arrived around 9:15pm. I blame the extreme punctuality of the subway system in Singapore. 
The music was pumping and it was dark as I was led down to the basement where the party was being held.  I immediately began scanning the room for my friends. They were there. I was sure. But as I continued watching the bobbing and frolicking heads, the arms raised in the air, and the brief moments when the strobe lights would hit someone’s face, my heart began to sink. My friends were not there! In that brief moment of extreme clarity as heat came over my face  and adrenaline rushed through my heart, the truth that I was alone came upon me.
I wasn’t alone, of course, but I was anonymous. I recognized a few faces in the crowd, and whether they recognized me or not, I was not acknowledged. I left there about thirty minutes later, tired of acting like I was having fun on the sidelines.
I know, poor me, right? The high school kid who didn’t get acknowledged at this party. Boo-hoo. Yes, I will accept your cookie. 
In a greater sense, though, millions and millions of people are going through this same misery in their jobs, organizations, and churches.
What makes a job miserable? Is it the difficulty of picking up garbage cans all day? Is it the pressure of fixing the company network when everyone is waiting on you. Is it the monotony of making hundreds of files and sending dozens of faxes per day? 
No.
I’d like to suggest that what makes a job miserable is being anonymous in a job. What makes a miserable/difficult job tolerable is being acknowledged in your job.
To be acknowledged in your job means that people show a personal interest in you as a person. I know…for many this sounds a little too touchy-feely, but it’s true.
My wife has worked for a year and a half as a special ed teacher, and yet today is her last day. Why? Is it because of the difficulty of teaching special needs kids? Nope. She says it’s because she never received much support from her leaders. The principals were cold, and always seemed too busy to care. She asked for help with different things at different times, but the leaders didn’t follow through.
It all boiled down to her sense that the leaders did not care about her. 
She felt anonymous.
So what can you do if you lead a team of people? 
Care about them. I know….this is really technical and heady stuff, but listen on. Talk to them. Ask them about their life. Ask them about their families. Publicly acknowledge them when they do a good job. Get to know what their hobbies and likes are. Send them a hand-written note with an encouraging word if you feel they’re a little down.
What can you do if you work on the team, but are not the leader?
Care about the other people in your team. Instead of joining them as they rant and rave about their bosses, you be nice to them. You give them a word of encouragement. You show them that you care enough about them to remember how many kids they have.
And maybe, just maybe, you’ll help someone move across the scale from having a miserable job, to a tolerable job, to a pleasurable job.

Leadership is Dangerous-Part Two

December 7, 2008 in leadership with 1 Comment

In my last post I shared a few lessons I learned from the movie “Coach Carter.” I’d like to share now why I said that Leadership is Dangerous.

In the movie, Coach Carter began to notice that his players were not living up to the agreement of maintaining a certain gpa. So what did he do? He decided to close the gym down until the players made up their academic requirement. By this point, the team had been completely undefeated. Life was good. What was the reaction from the players? They were very upset, of course, but didn’t take him too seriously. They weren’t too worried, because they knew that there was a game coming up, and they knew that the coach would open the doors and allow them to play their game.

He did not. To make a long story short, this ended up costing him his job. Well, sort of. You need to see the movie.

But there’s the point: true leadership is dangerous.

Everybody hated him for sticking to his guns. And it was the right thing to do! But, yet, everyone else was blinded by other issues. They thought it was more important for the kids to play their game, than for them to learn a lesson about sticking to your commitments.

I guess the question is, then, “how do you lead well and survive to tell the story?” 

It seems that there’s a fine line between being seen as a revolutionary vs. a rebel like Joan of Arc, or being seen as a genius vs. a doofus like Einstein.
I suppose it begins with having an overwhelming vision that you believe is possible, and doing everything you can to remain focused on seeing it through to completion. I don’t know. I have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m just trying to put one foot in front of the other at the moment. 
I just know that it’s dangerous to reputations, emotionally costly, and occasionally overwhelming. 
But is there another option?

Leadership is Difficult-Part One

December 3, 2008 in leadership with 0 Comments

I recently saw the movie “Coach Carter.” Though there were some scenes that were less than wholesome, I thought it provided some powerful lessons on leadership.

In case you’ve never seen the movie, allow me to give you a very brief summary, and then I’ll share some lessons that I took with me. For a more in depth summary click here.
Coach Carter was a business man and former decorated player at Richmond High School, when he was asked to take over as head coach. The previous coach was retiring and in his last season had won only four games. The players were undisciplined, rowdy, and didn’t seem to have much skill. 
Through Coach Carter’s efforts, the team was completely turned around in his first coaching season, and made it to the championship game. 
How did he do it? Here’s a few principles that stuck out to me:
1. The Law of the Lid
John Maxwell highlights this principle in his book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. According to the “law of the lid” everything rises and falls on leadership. This principle was proved to be especially true in this case. The old coach didn’t have it. Coach Carter had it. No other variable had changed. The players were the same. The only difference was the coach. This is why whenever a sports team has a bad season, the first person to go is the coach. 
2. Structure and Direction
Coach Carter provided a level of structure that just did not exist before. The old coach was tired. Many of the players were failing classes, and the school system in place supported them playing even though they weren’t meeting the standard. Instead of urging and requiring his players to meet the standard, Coach Carter gave his players very clear structure and direction. He made them sign a contract with specific points of conduct that they had to maintain such as maintaining a 3.2 gpa, wearing jackets and ties on game day, and sitting on the front row of their classes. Because of this structure and direction the players were able to focus on the game.
3. Return to Fundamental Skills
Gordon Maxwell, in his new book The Outliers,
studies the fundamentals of what makes a person successful. Through his research he discovers that the basis has to do with the number 10,000. He says once someone has attained 10,000 hours of practice at something, one becomes very proficient at it, allowing someone to then begin perfecting it. This comes out to about 3 hours a day for a decade. Coach Carter’s team did not have this much time to practice. But it was clear in the movie that he made a pointed turn to cover the basics of conditioning, shooting, plays, etc. 

Which brings me to my dilemma. As a leader, these principles are somewhat intimidating and scary. I don’t want to think about the fact that if my church is declining it’s because of me! I don’t want to admit that if the church remains in a state of perpetual plateau, it’s because I’ve become comfortable with the view.   

It’s so much easier, and much more cathartic to put the blame on the people. To pass the buck. I want to do it all the time! And it feels better than blaming myself. 
“Those people are just stuck with their old-way of thinking.” 
“They just love tradition!”
“They’re impossible to change.”
But if I face the facts, I have to come to terms that people can change.
So how can I apply these principles to my situation?
1. Law of the Lid
I can seek to build myself up as a leader. The million dollar question, of course, is how. One thing I try to do is surround myself with good leaders. At the moment, most of the good leaders that I come into contact with are sitting to the left of my desk on a bookshelf. They’re always there for me to speak to me, but they aren’t very warm.
I also try to get in contact with other leaders in my field and poke their brains a little. I think the best way to learn as a leader, though, is to see good leadership in action. This is something that I wish I had a lot more of in my life. Right now I’m the only pastor of two churches, so it’s difficult to gauge my personal leadership capacity. I think it would be a wonderful experience to work hand-in-hand with a pioneering pastor/leader for my next gig. And to be able to see how an excellent leader would deal with a particular situation. To see how a good leader would react and what he would say when confronted with trials and obstacles. Alas, for the moment I’ll have to wait on this one.
2. Structure and Direction
I feel like I’ve been giving a sense of vision and direction in my churches. I like to read and discuss various books with my leaders. But I feel like there needs to be more clarity as far as structure is concerned. I’d like to be able to analyze the effectiveness of our current leadership structures. At the moment I don’t have much time to think about these things.
3. Return to Fundamental Skills
As a pastor, I think this entails making sure that my people understand the basics of Christianity. How we’re saved. How to study the Bible. How to pray. How to tell other people about God. Our mission as Christians. I think this covers the basics of Christianity.
I think there’s a couple other leadership lessons in there that I could recall. I’ll share some more in my next post.
If you’ve seen the movie, what did you take away as the best leadership principles? If you haven’t seen the movie, how are you doing in your leadership? What are you doing to build yourself up and build up other leaders around you?
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