By NewChurches.com: In Episode 606 of the NewChurches Q&A Podcast, Daniel and Todd discuss what it looks like to build back better in regards to team development.

In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

Why you need a structure to team development
How to create an environment that engages feedback

 Shareable Quotes (#NewChurches):

“This is a great opportunity to audit your roles and audit the individuals in those roles.” – @toddadkins
“In retooling, it is a great time to take a step back and look at everything you do from the actual ministry that you do to the strategies, systems, and structures of it, to the volunteers and people themselves.” – @toddadkins
“Having a culture of development where people are learning and growing is important.” – @danielsangi
“The key factor is simple structure and systems that will help distribute the weight.” – @toddadkins
“Something as simple as a one page job description can really help you on your way to retooling.” – @toddadkins
“I recommend that all of your volunteer roles are only one year commitments and that way it forces you to do feedback.” – @danielsangi

Recommended Resources:

Listen to Episode 602: Remote Work
Listen to Episode 604: Staffing
Learn more about Ministry Grid

Help us Multiply the Mission:

Please subscribe
Leave a rating and review on iTunes
Ask a question by clicking Send Voicemail on the right hand side of NewChurches.com
If you’re on a phone or a tablet, then go to www.speakpipe.com/newchurches to download the app and record your message
When you’re recording, introduce yourself and your context in about 15 seconds and then record your question for 30 seconds

This Episode’s Sponsor:

Downline Ministries’ mission is to encourage a restoration of biblical discipleship in and through the local church by equipping men and women to know God’s Word and make disciples. 

The primary way we partner with churches is through the Downline Institute, a 9 month biblical discipleship training program that walks students through the Bible (Genesis-Revelation), biblical manhood/womanhood, and key discipleship lessons. Listeners can receive $100 off tuition cost by using the code LIFEWAY when you apply at www.downlineministries.com.

The post Episode 606: Team Development appeared first on NewChurches.com – Church Planting, Multisite, and Multiplication.

Source: Episode 606: Team Development

The post Episode 606: Team Development appeared first on Passion for Planting.

By unSeminary: Is your team moving back to an “in-person” office experience?

Do you know how your team members feel about working at home once life looks a little more normal?

What does the future of church leadership work arrangements look like?

We must understand the impact that COVID-19 has had on our church leadership environment and consider those various dynamics that have been born out of the pandemic.

How work “gets done” has evolved over the last 20–30 years as information and collaboration technology have gained traction and changed our communities. Many of those changes that we were seeing pre-pandemic have simply accelerated over this last year.

I can remember those long-gone days in 2018 and 2019 where having a dedicated Zoom account was a special thing. But now even my mom knows how to use Zoom and understands that there’s a 40-minute limit for non-paid accounts! What a difference all of this has made on the way work gets done within the local church! What changes have we seen in people’s preferences regarding getting church work done either in person or remotely?

In the broader marketplace, there seem to be two factions that are digging in around the office environment of the future. Ironically, if you look at companies that are involved in information technology, it seems like they hold divergent and passionate views on both ends of the spectrum.

On the in-person side of the conversation, Google, Apple, and Amazon have recently confirmed that they will return to in-person offices as their default approach. Part of this could be because of the hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars that they’ve spent on offices around the world. But they’ve also done all kinds of studies that show there is something about being in the room where it happens. They believe that face-to-face drives collaboration. All three of these companies have made incredible fortunes by helping people work remotely, but it should be noted that they are moving their own workforces into offices post-pandemic.

There are also strong voices advocating for the other side of the conversation. Twitter, Slack, and Dropbox have all made bold steps towards being “remote-first” organizations. Some of these organizations have told their senior management they’re not required to come back to their offices, while others have made moves to get rid of office space or enhance their remote working abilities.

Take a look at the headlines in any major publication and you’ll see that people are grappling with the complex issues around what work will “look like” post the pandemic. For instance, here are just a few articles that have cropped up in recent days:

Bloomberg: The Big Question: Is Remote Work Here to Stay?CNBC: Workers could face new burnout symptoms when returning to the office—here’s how employers can helpThe Atlantic: Winners and Losers of the Work-From-Home RevolutionUSATODAY: What Apple and Google executives missed in telling workers to go back to the officeThe Economist: Remote workers work longer, not more efficientlyNew York Times: A Little More Remote Work Could Change Rush Hour a LotNPR: ‘Why Do We Have To Go Back To The Office?’: Employees Are Divided About Returning

The same conversation is taking place in churches across the country, as our culture shifts to whatever the next normal is going to look like. We’re all trying to identify what we need to do to create either in-person or remote work arrangements as we look to the future.

In light of this, unSeminary surveyed church leaders from across the country to understand their attitudes, preferences, and experiences regarding working remotely since the start of the pandemic and how it has influenced their thinking going forward.

Overview of the National Survey of Church Leaders

Between May 24th and June 4th, 2021, we surveyed nearly 350 leaders from churches ranging from less than 100 members to over 10,000 members. Our goal was to get a clearer picture of what church leaders are thinking when it comes to structuring their work going forward.

We compared their answers to GitLab’s 2021 Remote Work Report, which is the leading report on working remotely released by one of the largest all-remote organizations in the world. We did this because we wanted to compare the attitudes and behaviors of local church teams and their marketplace counterparts.

We know that the work of the local church is not the same as working in the marketplace. However, there is much to learn from our contemporaries about emerging attitudes and behaviors in the broader marketplace and it is wise that we compare them to how we work within the local church. We also believe that we must be able to lead in an environment that understands what’s happening in the marketplace. Oftentimes as church leaders, we’re out of step with trends in the broader culture because we structure our work differently. This study attempts to understand the similarities and differences between local church leaders and marketplace leaders.

Personal Reflections on Remote Work within the Local Church

On and off, I’ve been working remotely for the better part of 20 years. I can remember in the late 90s, spending a tremendous amount of time working from home: emailing, building websites, doing communication plans, and trying to collaborate back and forth across email. The volume of remote work that I do has grown over the last two decades. Some of my work “on the road” with churches across the country has necessitated me being able to do much of my work from a coffee shop or a hotel room. At the same time as working remotely, I also stay connected with various churches and team members scattered across the US, and all over the world. In many ways, I was living in a remote-first world long before the pandemic hit. And through experience, I’ve managed to keep strong tabs on what’s going on in specific locations. It is possible to make a huge impact while working remotely.

There are vast differences between how my work life is structured and how my parents’ generation structured theirs.

I’m firmly Gen X. I was born in 1974, the lowest birth rate year of the 20th century, and while I was growing up my dad was upwardly mobile in his career. As a kid, I clearly remember times where we’d have only one car and so we’d drive to my dad’s workplace to pick him up and take him home from time to time. I remember that some days we’d wait and wait for him to finish his day at the office. The work he did, although it was primarily knowledge-based, needed to be done in proximity to other people and to the organization that he was leading.

The upside for his generation was that work was something you physically went to. I have no recollection of my dad doing anything that looked like work from the office whilst he was at home. His work stayed at the office. (In fact, some of my fondest memories of that time would be the rare occasion of going into “work” with him on the weekend if he needed to check on something.)

However, the downside was that work was something that he went to. My dad coached my hockey team in my early years, and he attended a lot of other school events. However, many of my contemporaries did not have their parents watching in the audience because they needed to be at their offices, working.

The distinct line between the office and the home had its upsides and downsides. As we chart the path forward, I think it’s important for us to think carefully about how we structure the home lives of our team members. We want to maximize their effectiveness as well as ensure their long-term health as they serve within our churches.

Summary of Survey Findings

This blog post contains some of the highlights of the learnings from unSeminary’s study; however, I would encourage you to pick up the full study that is much larger than what we can cover here. It dives into all the facets we studied and provides a lot of action points for us to think about as we move forward. But for an even shorter summary, here are three key findings from our national church leader study that focused on attitudes towards work as we move beyond the pandemic:

Church leaders are open to more remote work. // As the study shows, church leaders are open to more remote work in the future. It doesn’t appear that there is widespread hostility towards this. However, the volume of remote church work is far less than in the marketplace. It seems that we were positively predisposed to working remotely but need some guidance to take steps towards it.The nature of our work is still seen as in-person. // So much of what we do as church leaders is seen as in-person, whether that’s recruiting and training leaders, hosting services, or various other actions that take place within the local church. Many church leaders see these as things that can only happen in an in-person environment. This is somewhat ironic, considering we’re coming out of the backend of a pandemic where for long periods many of us were forced to figure out how to do in-person things, remotely! There is an opportunity here for us to take some of these learnings and apply them to our future. We can craft a new hybrid work and leadership experience for our teams. There is strong evidence that working remotely is better for our people and our ministry outcomes. We need to explore what that looks like in the coming months and years.Church staff are not prepared to work remotely. // Church leaders are far less equipped to work remotely than their marketplace counterparts. One of the things that you’ll see through this study is that there’s a huge gap between how marketplace leaders and church leaders see their readiness and attitudes towards working remotely. This study confirmed one of my suspicions that as executive leaders within the local church, we need to work hard to help our people be prepared for a more remote future. We need to stop focusing on improving our systems that served the church of yesterday and focus on readying our leaders for the future. This study outlines some examples of the kinds of work we could do on this front to help our people be better prepared.

5 Key Learnings from a National Church Study on the Attitudes Towards In-person and Remote Work Arrangements

There are five significant findings that this study presents. Local churches should consider these findings as they pivot off the backend of COVID-19 and reform their life-work balance situations for their team members. Each one of these findings compares the experiences of local church leaders to marketplace leaders and contains some potentially effective “next steps” for church leaders.

In-person, Remote, And Hybrid: Attitudes and Approaches to How We Work Today and in The Future

One of the striking similarities between marketplace and church leaders is that 4 in 10 say that their organization’s policy towards work is hybrid.

Both church leaders and marketplace leaders indicate that their current organization’s approach is to provide an experience where both in-person and remote work experiences are available. It’s worth noting that both surveys took place at the tail end of the pandemic. At this time, many jurisdictions across the country were still restricted in what office work could look like, or COVID hesitancy was still expressing itself. There were still people, even as vaccination rates rose, who were nervous to enter face-to-face environments.

The findings show a few differences between church leaders and marketplace leaders when it comes to attitudes and approaches to structuring their work lives. Marketplace employees are six times more likely to have a remote-only approach to their workplace. 32% of marketplace leaders indicated that they have a remote-only workplace approach whereas only 5% of church leaders are currently experiencing this. This is not a particularly surprising find. As noted earlier, so much of what we do in the local church is seen as in-person by nature.

We should be thinking about this critically because this difference may mean that church leaders won’t be able to communicate effectively to their people and the broader culture as they may not know what “work” in the marketplace looks like anymore. It is amazing to think that almost one in three marketplace leaders surveyed indicated that their work environment has become remote-only. This surely represents a shift in attitude, particularly from 10 years ago. This trend towards remote-only continues to increase within the marketplace and needs to be something that church leaders think about when helping people work through what it means to be a Christ-follower in the workplace.

Amongst church leaders, there is a level of ambivalence shown around whether they’re supposed to be in-person or remote. Church leaders are two and a half times more likely to say that remote work is either “allowed or tolerated but is not the norm or default”. Only 14% of marketplace leaders would describe their work environment like this, while 40% of church leaders say that this is the case. This could also represent a level of ambivalence in local churches around how they structure their work-life balance. The knowledge-based work that church leaders do means they could have flexible approaches to work arrangements that would be suited to remote configurations. While flexibility is a good thing, fuzziness is not okay. Clarity needs to be king when we’re structuring people’s work arrangements. As we come out of COVID-19, one thing we need to be clear on is what we expect from our teams. Pushing beyond the fact that remote work is allowed or tolerated, we need to be clear with people on exactly what that arrangement will look like going forward.

Church Leaders are not Prepared, Equipped, or Released to Work Remotely.

This area represented the largest disparity between the marketplace and church leadership. Part of the survey tried to understand people’s ability to be both prepared and trained to work remotely. It also asked them to reflect on their organization’s willingness to release them to do that healthily. People were asked to select which of the following statements applied to their attitude towards working remotely.

I am satisfied with the tools and processes that enable remote team communication.My leadership team understands what it takes to operate a team remotely.I am able to accomplish all of my tasks remotely.My leadership team gives me agency and authority while working remotely.Remote work is the future of work.I recommend working remotely to a friend.

All these areas attempt to get a holistic picture of people’s attitudes towards working remotely. It gives us a sense of how prepared and aligned team members are around the area of working remotely.

On average, marketplace leaders rated these statements collectively as 81% true. Astonishingly, 8 out of 10 marketplace leaders indicated that each one of the statements is true for their workplace when only 1 in 3 of these same leaders experience a fully remote work environment. Noticeably, 8 out of 10 marketplace leaders have the framework in place to step towards working remotely in the coming years. However, on average, only 36% of church leaders rated these statements as true. Church leaders were less than half as likely to express that they’re favorably prepared or released to work remotely. Therefore, there is a significant difference between marketplace leaders and church leaders when it comes to feeling prepared to work remotely.

Executive leaders within the local church need to focus on equipping their teams to work remotely if they are looking to fuel this aspect of their work culture. This will require three aspects:

Training // Provide consistent training for people focused on how to work remotely. This should not be generalized, but specific to the type of work that each team member needs to do. This will encourage your team to step forward in their position with confidence.Tools // Investing in collaboration tools and a consistent approach to connecting when not in the office is important for churches to do if they’re eager to craft an effective remote work environment.Empowerment // Ultimately, having a more remote workforce drives the organization to be more trusting of its team members rather than depending on a centralized command and control structure. Remote workforce managers need to trust their people to do their work to move the ministry forward. This study could point to the fact that too many church leaders are holding onto old, centralized control structures rather than a decentralized vision and outcome-result approach. We’ve seen widespread adoption of these newer approaches in the marketplace.

The Majority of Church Leaders Don’t Anticipate They Will Work Remotely Post-Pandemic.

Only 19% of church leaders surveyed believe that they will primarily work remotely after the pandemic has receded. This is compared to 74% of those in the marketplace sample.

I wish I had the pre-pandemic numbers on this to compare with our results; however, I will work with our findings to illustrate my point. 19% means that nearly 1 in 5 church leaders believe that they will work remotely after the pandemic. This is a sizeable portion of the local church workforce. There are about 600,000 ministry leaders in America. So, our findings indicate that 120,000 of these leaders hold this opinion. That’s a lot of folks sitting in coffee shops and the spare bedroom in their house!

There have been some “remote work evangelists” who, in this season, have been calling for this huge shift post-pandemic. They’ve been jumping up and down, talking about how no one should go back to the church office, and that all of us will end up working remotely as we did during the height of the pandemic. Most church leaders are not accepting this view at present.

However, nearly 1 in every 2 church leaders believes that they will work remotely sometimes. From my perspective, this shows that there’s an openness to work remotely. Church leaders are noting the trajectory of doing more work outside of the office as they look to the future. However, they haven’t made the jump to say it’s all going to be done remotely.

Although this is the case, there are still many leaders feeling unprepared and not trained or released to make the jump to work remotely as their default approach.

This represents an opportunity for the leadership of local churches to open dialogues with their teams about their preferred future work arrangements. This part of the study indicates that at least half of the people serving on your team are thinking that they will occasionally work out of office. Keep this in mind when you engage with your team members and plan a way forward.

How does your team want to structure their work going forward? How can you support that? What could it look like to help your team achieve their work-life balance through a combination of remote and in-person work arrangements? How do we create an environment where people can easily shift between one and the other?

Workday “Rituals” Look Very Similar for Marketplace Leaders and Church Leaders.

One of the questions that we explored in our survey is, where does your typical workday begin? What do church leaders or marketplace leaders do when their typical workday starts? There was a striking similarity between these two groups. 53% of marketplace leaders say that they begin their workday by checking their emails, and 51% of church leaders said the same thing. Email is how many leaders start the day. This is an important thing to notice because email continues to be the monster of all collaboration tools. It is the preferred way for people to begin their day, and it’s still a primary connection tool.

While there are a lot of other communication and collaboration tools that have attempted to unseat email, it would appear, for good or bad, that email continues to have a stronghold on leaders across the country. This is an important thing to note because we need to train our people on how best to manage their email. Just think about the fact that every morning, 50% of your leaders sit down and check their email before they do anything else. We want it to be a well-used tool and something that drives ministry collaboration going forward rather than slowing it down.

Here is an interesting thought: If you’re looking to reach leaders in your church, then sending an email that hits their inbox first thing in the morning is a great way to get their attention. A way to aid this would be to survey the people in your church and find out what the beginning of their workday looks like. What time do they start working? You could do this under the guise of trying to understand their work-life balance, and that this information would help you communicate with teams.

There were some other interesting findings when we looked at how people structured their workdays. For example, 1 in 3 church leaders indicated that their workday startup routine varies, whereas only 1 in 7 of marketplace leaders said that their workday varies. Therefore, there is less randomness with marketplace leaders in how they begin their days.

This could represent the fact that the work we do in the local church has more variety, or it could represent that there’s less discipline in how church leaders structure their work lives.

Although only two-thirds of surveyed people were lead pastors or executive pastors, a small finding is that only 1.75% start their day looking at numbers or the numerical performance of the organization. For marketplace leaders, the result was only 5%, but it is markedly larger than what’s happening in the local church. I know that these are small numbers, but it is worth noting that far fewer church leaders start their day looking at the numbers that are driving their organization. They could look at things like giving, attendance, newcomer numbers, etc. This could be an area of further inquiry as we go forward. A lot of churches track numbers, but how are we using those numbers to drive the performance of our teams and our organizations?

Church Leaders Are 50% More Distracted Than Marketplace Leaders

The survey also asked what the greatest pain is in a person’s workday. Both groups said that distractions are the greatest pain associated with their daily function as a leader. However, church leaders indicated this pain to be 50% higher than marketplace leaders. Only 25% of marketplace leaders indicated that distractions were a pain point, as opposed to 37% of church leaders.

Just stop for a minute and think about this. Distraction indicates that people are doing work that they see as not core to the mission. The only way that you would identify something as a distraction is because you self-identify that it is sideways energy.

You only consider something a distraction when you know that it’s taking you away from focusing on what you’re responsible for doing. Just over one in three church leaders say that their daily distractions are their greatest source of pain in leading their local church.

Your church team members are finding distractions to be a consistent pain point. Our role as leaders is to help give our team focus and ensure that our people are plugged in with the essential work that’s pushing the mission forward. Each one of our team members is given spiritual gifts that we know empowers them to uniquely contribute to their team. When they’re not operating in their area of gifting, they’re not living out their God-given purpose in life.

We believe that each of our team members should be focused primarily on doing only what they can do. We hire people to solve problems and move the mission forward in a specific way. How can we help them stay on task? What do we need to do to help reduce their distraction? This finding could make landmark differences in the life of your church if you focus on trying to solve it with your team members.

3 Next Steps Church Executive Leaders Can Take Out of This Study

Our goal was not only to listen and understand where church leaders are at. We also wanted to provide you with some potential next steps for your team. We suggest you pull your leadership team together and look at the study and reflect on how you can push your team forward as you craft a post-pandemic office and work environment.

Here are three potential things you could look at:

Clarity // Define what the next normal will be. It seems like church leaders across the country are open to more remote work environments, but let’s move beyond just tolerating either in-person or remote and define it for our people. Getting clear as we come out of COVID will enable our team to make wise decisions around their work-life balance. Fuzziness in this season around “how” work is done should be rejected. Let’s be pushing hard to ensure our people gain deeper levels of clarity on how work is done in the church.Training // Don’t assume that your people know how to do the work that you’re asking them to do. Oftentimes, we define what we are hoping people will achieve in their areas, but we do not spend enough time training them to reach these goals and work in a hybrid environment. Don’t just launch a new tech tool. Rather, push towards training that can help them understand how to get the most out of the tech tool and other systems. Teach your people what good collaboration looks like and reward them for engaging with each other (whether it’s in-person or online). Like any good relationship, communication is something that needs to be worked on because it doesn’t just happen. Help your people communicate more effectively in this season and as you move forward.Focus // Clarify the win. Help your team define what the win is in their area of the organization. From a big picture point of view, we want to understand what the “mission win” is. What is the overall goal that your church is looking to achieve in this season? How do we know that we are taking steps forward, and not losing ground? Then, at a micro-level, how do we define ideal work habits? How do we know if people are succeeding in their areas? What new numbers and metrics can they look at to understand if what they’re doing is working? How can we help them push back against distraction if we don’t clearly articulate what the win looks like for them?

Download The Full Report to Dive Even Deeper into In-person, Remote, & Hybrid Working Arrangements for The Local Church

The full report includes lots more information. This post provided an overview but if you download the study, you’ll find our in-depth review on various areas, areas that we didn’t touch on here. These areas include:

Learnings around how people are collaborating within their teams. You’ll get a deeper sense of what collaboration is looking like within the local church today.A look at what tools church leaders are using to connect and collaborate.What aspects of your church’s “work culture” is winning? Where do we need to be improving? In this part of the study, we look at aspects that are reportedly working for church leaders in their pursuit to create healthy working environments. We also look at areas that seem to be detracting and distracting ideal work environments.You’ll understand church leaders’ concerns and what they will miss if they are to work remotely. In this part of the study, we dive into the potential pains of working towards a more remote work environment. This information could help you craft your communication plans if you’re looking to increase how much you and your teamwork remotely in the coming weeks and months.

You’ll get an opportunity to look at how we conducted the study, as well as the breakdown of the types of churches that we selected. The best part is that this study is completely free! All you need to do is enter your email address. Using the link below, we’d love for you to share this with other church leaders. Feel free to pass it on to others who may see this as a helpful tool for them as they lead!

Plus the full report also includes expert commentary from leaders who offer their perspectives and takeaways on the research. Even more helpful insights to guide your team as we navigate this season!

Kenny Jahng – Chief Innovation Officer at Big Click Syndicate & ChurchCommunicationsKadi Cole – Best Selling Author, Speaker, ConsultantTim Stevens – Executive Pastor at Willow Creek ChurchChristine Kreisher – CEO at Irresistible Teams plus Author, Speaker & CoachDavid Fletcher – The Dean of XPs, XPastor.com

Click here to download this report.

Download PDF Article

Thank You to This Article’s Sponsor: CDF Capital

Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. CDF Capital’s XP Summit Cohorts provide an exclusive, year-long experience that brings together hand-selected global ministry leaders and your peers in an intimate, small-group setting. Visit http://cdf.capital/UnCohort to learn more and enroll today!

Source: National Church Leader Survey on Attitudes Towards In-Person, Remote, or Hybrid Work Arrangements

The post National Church Leader Survey on Attitudes Towards In-Person, Remote, or Hybrid Work Arrangements appeared first on Passion for Planting.

By NewChurches.org: In Episode 604 of the NewChurches Q&A Podcast, Daniel and Todd discuss what it looks like to build back better when it comes to staff.

In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

How do you lead out when it comes to staff
Why you need to rethink how to fill staff openings

 Shareable Quotes (#NewChurches):

“The higher you go in leadership, more often than not, the less people want to tell you where you are ugly.” – @toddadkins
“Have a me-first attitude when it comes to service and living out the vision.” – @toddadkins
“You can teach whatever you want as a pastor, but you reproduce what you are.” – @toddadkins
“When you think about the team side of things and the programming side of things, it is so often that we put the programs ahead of the people.” – @danielsangi
“When you think about your team, do you have the right people on the bus?” – @danielsangi
“Just because you have a staff opening, doesn’t mean you need to fill it the same way you would pre-COVID.” – @danielsangi
“What COVID revealed is that it is more important to have the right people over the right positions.” – @toddadkins

Recommended Resources:

Listen to Episode 602: Remote Work

Help us Multiply the Mission:

Please subscribe
Leave a rating and review on iTunes
Ask a question by clicking Send Voicemail on the right hand side of NewChurches.com
If you’re on a phone or a tablet, then go to www.speakpipe.com/newchurches to download the app and record your message
When you’re recording, introduce yourself and your context in about 15 seconds and then record your question for 30 seconds

This Episode’s Sponsor:

Downline Ministries’ mission is to encourage a restoration of biblical discipleship in and through the local church by equipping men and women to know God’s Word and make disciples. 

The primary way we partner with churches is through the Downline Institute, a 9 month biblical discipleship training program that walks students through the Bible (Genesis-Revelation), biblical manhood/womanhood, and key discipleship lessons. Listeners can receive $100 off tuition cost by using the code LIFEWAY when you apply at www.downlineministries.com.

The post Episode 604: Staffing appeared first on NewChurches.com – Church Planting, Multisite, and Multiplication.

Source: Episode 604: Staffing

The post Episode 604: Staffing appeared first on Passion for Planting.

Source: Objectively Assessing Your Team

The post Objectively Assessing Your Team appeared first on Passion for Planting.

By NewChurches.com: In Episode 598 of the NewChurches Q&A Podcast, Daniel and Todd discuss the choice between video preaching and live preaching.

In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

The teaching strategy Daniel is installing at his church
Ways to communicate more regularly if you are not the lead teaching pastor

 Shareable Quotes (#NewChurches):

“If you are on the main feed that everybody is seeing, you need to bring it.” – @toddadkins
“We just want to see people be equipped for the work of ministry and to have cultures where development is the M.O.” – @danielsangi
“When it comes to the teaching side, if you try to look for an A+ communicator plus a great campus pastor, it might be a unicorn.” – @danielsangi
“If you want to grow as a communicator, you need to find the reps.” – @danielsangi
“You are not going to be a great communicator if you only preach once or twice a year.” – @danielsangi
“There are a ton of opportunities you can find to communicate – how are you prepping for the time you teach your volunteers and leaders?” – @danielsangi
“Part of developing as a communicator is doing it lots and getting feedback as you are doing it.” – @danielsangi

Recommended Resources:

Listen to Episode 588: The Relationship Between a Lead Pastor and a Campus Pastor
Listen to Episode 590: The Relationship Between a Campus Pastor and the Central Location Staff
Listen to Episode 592: What Ministry Planning Looks Like
Listen to Episode 594: Leading People You Don’t Like
Listen to Episode 596: Changing Direct Reports

Help us Multiply the Mission:

Please subscribe
Leave a rating and review on iTunes
Ask a question by clicking Send Voicemail on the right hand side of NewChurches.com
If you’re on a phone or a tablet, then go to www.speakpipe.com/newchurches to download the app and record your message
When you’re recording, introduce yourself and your context in about 15 seconds and then record your question for 30 seconds

This Episode’s Sponsor:

No matter how many people you have on staff at your church, there’s only so much you can accomplish in a day, right? Your church exists to serve your community, so the mission of your church and its staff is to reach as many people as you can.

So BELAY, the innovative staffing solution with over 10 years of experience serving churches with virtual assistants, bookkeepers and social media strategists, is offering a free download of their resource, ‘Church Leaders: Essential Strategies to Unleash Productivity.’

Let BELAY help your church live its mission in your community by helping you juggle less and accomplish more. Visit belaysolutions.com/lifeway for your free download.

The post Episode 598: Video Preaching or Live Preaching? appeared first on NewChurches.com – Church Planting, Multisite, and Multiplication.

Source: Episode 598: Video Preaching or Live Preaching?

The post Episode 598: Video Preaching or Live Preaching? appeared first on Passion for Planting.

By Shawn Lovejoy: Of all of the tensions you will face as a leader, the tension you will have the most self-doubt and inner turmoil over is the tension around the people you lead.

I am talking about Team Tensions!

Ever felt those?

Thought so. So have I!

While I can’t give you the entire system for building a killer team without killing yourself or your team, I can give you one simple step towards what I call “fostering togetherness” on your team.

In fact, a couple of years ago when the NBA relaunched in the bubble to complete their season during the pandemic, Phil Jackson made the statement, “The team that emerges from the COVID-19 NBA bubble as winners will be the team that has the strongest sense of ‘togetherness.’”

Togetherness is the competitive advantage of effective teams in today’s culture; the ability to foster it is the superpower of today’s most effective leaders.

Here’s your simple step:

Schedule Strategic One-on-One Meetings with everyone who directly reports to you. 

Are you already having these meetings? Great! This article will help you get better at them by giving you a simple system.

Are you not having these meetings? You should be! Don’t beat yourself up, just make the adjustment and add them to your calendar.

(Do you have too many people reporting to you? We would love to coach you through that, but you can start the process toward narrowing that focus in our free teams course.)

Let me give you a simple focus and formula to get you started having deeply impactful one-on-one meetings with your team.

First, when meeting with the individuals on your team, be sure to…

Build People Rather Than Institutions. 

Maximize the potential of people and team around you. Not programs, productions, problems, processes…people.

This meeting is the time to get to know them personally. Ask about their family, their hobbies, their dreams. Share about your family, what you did over the weekend, the things you dream of.

Humanize this meeting and your team will begin to approach you with more trust and honesty.

Next, during your meeting…

Create a Simple, Predictable Agenda.

What is happening to predictability on intensely competitive, rapidly changing teams (especially in a virtual environment)? It is being destroyed.

The practices that leaders are adopting to make their teams more competitive often ignore the human need for predictability.

Many leaders I coach are frustrated by this, but the truth is, unpredictable meetings lead to erratic results and eroded trust.

Every one-on-one meeting should include space for asking good questions, listening, getting updates on projects, coaching and accountability.

Here is a short list of 4 good questions to ask in every one-on-one meeting with your team:

1. What’s working?

If your team is filled with high capacity leaders, they naturally focus on what needs to be fixed. Force them to start by identifying where they’re winning. Celebrate with them and celebrate them.

Hearing what’s working also gives you perspective. You learn what your team thinks is most important, which helps you coach or be in the mind of your team. You also learn of what could be potential competitive advantages for your organization.

2. What are you challenged with?

Word this question right. Don’t ask what isn’t working. Ask what is challenging them personally. This opens you up to more honesty and for them to share more from their personal lives. When trust is high you should hear about work challenges and private challenges organically in the same conversation.

3. What do you need from me?

Availing yourself to serve your team is more than just symbolic leadership. Leaning into one issue someone on your team is having for just a few minutes can possibly fix a problem they have spent hours on, not to mention the value you add to them simply by be present in their problem.

4. How can I pray for you?

I am a spiritual person. That means I am a spiritual leader. You may not be. If not, this question may not be for you. For me, I want to pray with my team. In some instances, we pray on the spot. In the right setting, this is a valuable tool to help those on your team be valued at the highest level as human beings.

One of our coaches would love to walk you and your team through our process of building healthy one-on-one meetings, but first, let’s start by discovering how coaching could best serve you and your team on a Strategy Call. Schedule a call today!

Schedule your strategy call

— We JUST Launched THE COURAGETOLEAD PODCAST with Shawn Lovejoy SEASON 2 —

SEASON 2 of the podcast is filled with practical coaching from myself as well as interviews with seasoned leaders like Bill High from SIGNATRY: a Global Christian Foundation, Derwin Gray from Transformation Church, and Elizabeth Dixon from Chick-fil-A!

Episode 1, titled “The #1 Thing That Keeps Me Awake at Night” just dropped on May 18th.

Subscribe today!

Subscribe on Spotify

subscribe on apple podcasts

Watch the Podcast on youtube

Source: How To Lead Better One-on-One Meetings

The post How To Lead Better One-on-One Meetings appeared first on Passion for Planting.

Source: Why Role Clarity Is Vital

The post Why Role Clarity Is Vital appeared first on Passion for Planting.

By NewChurches.com: In Episode 594 of the NewChurches Q&A Podcast, Daniel and Todd discuss how you lead people you don’t like.

In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

Why it’s important to learn how to handle difficult team members
How prayer can draw you closer together

 Shareable Quotes (#NewChurches):

“In a multisite reality, you are not building your team from scratch.” – @danielsangi
“While you should love everyone on your staff or volunteer leadership team, it’s OK for you to like some people more.” – @toddadkins
“It’s important for you to realize that at some point in time you will end up with someone on your team that you don’t completely jive with.” – @toddadkins
“You have to manage expectations for what healthy boundaries are when you bring new people on your staff.” – @toddadkins
“We have to be friendly, professional, and courteous with everybody.” – @toddadkins
“You and your team member are both filled with the same Holy Spirit, so spend time praying for one another.” – @danielsangi

Recommended Resources:

Listen to Episode 588: The Relationship Between a Lead Pastor and a Campus Pastor
Listen to Episode 590: The Relationship Between a Campus Pastor and the Central Location Staff
Listen to Episode 592: What Ministry Planning Looks Like

Help us Multiply the Mission:

Please subscribe
Leave a rating and review on iTunes
Ask a question by clicking Send Voicemail on the right hand side of NewChurches.com
If you’re on a phone or a tablet, then go to www.speakpipe.com/newchurches to download the app and record your message
When you’re recording, introduce yourself and your context in about 15 seconds and then record your question for 30 seconds

This Episode’s Sponsor:

No matter how many people you have on staff at your church, there’s only so much you can accomplish in a day, right? Your church exists to serve your community, so the mission of your church and its staff is to reach as many people as you can.

So BELAY, the innovative staffing solution with over 10 years of experience serving churches with virtual assistants, bookkeepers and social media strategists, is offering a free download of their resource, ‘Church Leaders: Essential Strategies to Unleash Productivity.’

Let BELAY help your church live its mission in your community by helping you juggle less and accomplish more. Visit belaysolutions.com/lifeway for your free download.

The post Episode 594: Leading People You Don’t Like appeared first on NewChurches.com – Church Planting, Multisite, and Multiplication.

Source: Episode 594: Leading People You Don’t Like

The post Episode 594: Leading People You Don’t Like appeared first on Passion for Planting.

By unSeminary: Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast! This week I’m chatting with a repeat guest, Danny Franks, Pastor of Guest Services at The Summit Church. The Summit Church has twelve locations around North Carolina and the heart of the church is set on sending. They continually want their people to be asking: how does God want to use me and send me?

As a church grows, it’s not uncommon for the culture and DNA to get watered down. The Summit Church realized that as they launched more campuses and moved to a central model, the guest experience looked drastically different from one campus to another. Listen in as Danny shares how to examine your church’s DNA and replicate it by developing high-capacity volunteers that will in turn invest in others.

We can’t send people that we don’t keep. // In order to be a good sending church, we first need to learn how to be a good receiving church. For The Summit Church this meant taking a good look at their guest services experience at each of their campuses. Guest services covers a person’s visit from the street to the seat and everything in between. It’s about making sure the church is doing everything it can to help its guests know that they’ve been expected, planned for, and that the church is excited to have them return.What is your DNA? // To create a uniform guest services experience at each of your campuses, first ask: What is our DNA when it comes to caring for guests? It will be a process to talk through who the church is and what it looks like to welcome guests well and help them take their next step toward the gospel. After a lot of prayer and discussion through these questions, Danny developed a High-Capacity Volunteer Cohort to help communicate the church’s DNA surrounding guest services clearly to all the campuses.Identify your high-capacity volunteers. // The High-Capacity Volunteer Cohort is an eight-month journey where a small group of two to five volunteers from each campus come together. At The Summit Church there are about thirty volunteers that are a part of the Cohort at one time. They meet each month for an hour and a half to discuss books and principles that help everyone understand what the church’s DNA is. The books cover a wide swath of topics and serve as a springboard for the monthly conversation and there is always a practical component to what they teach. Ultimately the goal of the Cohort is to equip volunteers to be better leaders.Invest and Influence. // As the Pastor of Guest Services, Danny has a dotted line relationship with the Guest Services Directors at each campus. They report directly to the campus pastor and may be responsible for guest services as well as things like small groups and membership. Sometimes all of their responsibilities feel like an impossible task but when they are identifying high-capacity volunteers who are in turn trained, they are replicating themselves in a smaller group that can then go on to invest in and influence others. The Cohort process has allowed the Directors to be more like shepherds and less like administrators. And it’s empowered volunteers to find areas of need where they can pitch in and help with specific problems.Where to begin? // You don’t have to be a multisite church or a mega church to start a High-Capacity Volunteer Cohort. Any leader should be looking for who their high-capacity people are and invest in them. The first question to ask as a leader is what’s the win? What are you trying to accomplish with this cohort? What is your timeframe? Your cohort doesn’t have to last 8 months – you can do a smaller, focused version over six weeks. Next define the parts of that DNA that you want to clearly communicate. If you have trouble identifying who your high-capacity volunteers are, that may indicate there is a problem with your leadership pipeline. Something needs to shift to make sure you are regularly identifying and bringing in those potential high-capacity people. Also be aware of not having a clear end goal in sight. For more tips on how to begin, download this PDF: High-Capacity Volunteer Cohort: A How-To Guide.Resources for your cohort. // Danny has a wealth of resources on his website, including articles, workshops, training events, a coaching network and more, that you can access by visiting dfranks.com. In addition, a great book to read with your cohort would be “People are the Mission: How Churches Can Welcome Guests Without Compromising the Gospel“. In it Danny shows churches how to take a balanced approach to hospitality by developing ministries that are guest-friendly from the outset and gospel-centric to their core. Churches will learn not only how to effectively bring people in and convince them to stay, but also why our hospitality to honor the stranger doesn’t stand in opposition to honoring the Savior. Lastly, download this PDF for an overview of The Summit Church’s High-Capacity Volunteer Cohort: Guest Services 2020.

To connect with Danny Franks, reach out to him on Twitter @letmebefranks, and learn more about The Summit Church by visiting their website.

Thank You for Tuning In!

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live!

Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe

Is your church ready? Are you re-opening? Ready to welcome MORE people to worship and grow with your church? Are you out of space or are your interiors dated and needing improvement?

The architecture and design team at Risepointe want to help you align your facility with the mission and vision that God has given your church. That’s why Risepointe developed The Needs Analysis. The Needs Analysis is a comprehensive look at your site to seat experience through the lens of your first time guests. Learn more by visiting www.theneedsanalysis.com. Let them know you heard about The Needs Analysis on unSeminary for $500 off!

Source: Practical Strategy for Developing High-Capacity Volunteers with Danny Franks

The post Practical Strategy for Developing High-Capacity Volunteers with Danny Franks appeared first on Passion for Planting.

Source: One Step Your Church Should Accomplish Before Looking Ahead

The post One Step Your Church Should Accomplish Before Looking Ahead appeared first on Passion for Planting.