By: Brandon A. Cox

Source: Time Management Matters in a Pandemic More Than Ever

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by unSeminary: Thanks for listening in to the unSeminary podcast this week. Today Charles Stone, the lead pastor of WestPark Church in London, Ontario, is joining us again.

Charles describes London, Ontario as a melting pot of cultures and people from many different backgrounds. WestPark Church has about fifty different countries represented in the people attending, and four language congregations all a part of the church and meeting at the same time in different parts of the building.

Charles is with us today to talk about whether Christians should practice mindfulness and what that really means.

Mindfulness is holy noticing. // Charles noticed a few years ago that there wasn’t much for the evangelical reader when it came to the topic of mindfulness. Most of what he came across in pop culture was derived from Buddhist practices. However “mindfulness” from the Christian perspective is rooted in scripture, Christian history and in the past several hundred years of the contemplative practice of learning to be still before God. So Charles defines Christian mindfulness as holy noticing, or noticing with a holy purpose, noticing God and His handiwork, noticing our relationships and thoughts and feelings.Jesus remained present in the moment. // Jesus is the example of what it means to live a life of mindfulness. He was busy, and people were constantly clamoring for His attention, but yet He remained present in the moment. He paid attention to each moment and the people there in front of Him, and He also had His times of being away and present with His Father on His own. We can live a busy lifestyle, but also be fully present to our Heavenly Father and to others. Intersecting spiritual truth with mindfulness. // While studying for his bible degree Charles has been busy with spiritual disciplines such as reading scripture, prayer, bible study, and scripture memory, but he found that he was still worried and anxious. He went on the search for the answers to what was going on inside of him and what he was missing. When he began practicing intersecting scriptural truth with what he was learning in neuroscience about mindfulness and leadership, it helped him to be more present with others and made him more aware of his emotions.Become a better thinker and leader. // A common misconception is that if you practice mindfulness you will lose the drive to set goals. Charles tells us that instead it makes us better thinkers and leaders so that the next hill we focus on climbing is what God wants us to climb; mindfulness aids in getting us to that next place. Holy Noticing in mindfulness. // Charles has written the book Holy Noticing: The Bible, Your Brain, and the Mindful Space Between Moments. The book provides a biblical foundation in the scriptures for mindfulness, as well as a chapter about different Christians in history who practiced mindfulness. The backbone of the book focuses on an acronym, BREATHe, which Charles uses as a framework to practice mindfulness and be present in the moment: Body, Relationships, Environment, Affect (another word for emotions), Thoughts, Heart, engage. The book provides tips on how to practice mindfulness using this acronym.

You can get the ebook Should Christians Practice Mindfulness by clicking here. Or learn more about Charles’ book, Holy Noticing, at www.holynoticing.com. Reach out to Charles at www.charlesstone.com and learn more about WestPark Church at their website: https://www.westparkchurch.ca/

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Source: Practicing Christian Mindfulness with Dr. Charles Stone

The post Practicing Christian Mindfulness with Dr. Charles Stone appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Rich Birch: It’s hard to believe it but it’s true. We live in a post-Bill Hybels era. Over the last few months, watching from the sidelines has been heart wrenching to say the least. The resignation of the entire elder’s board, Heather Larson and Steve Carter this week does seem like the start of a new beginning for the church. Even though Bill hasn’t acknowledged what really happened, it’s evident that he stepped way out of line and hurt people in the process.

It’s hard to overstate the influence that Bill Hybels and the people of Willow Creek Community Church have had on the evangelical church world. As a result, much of what we view as “normal” within a broad spectrum of this segment of the Christian world traces its roots back to this leadership community. Just a few ways that this group pioneered what we currently do include:

Communicating in a way that can be easily understood by unchurched people.
Bringing clarity in mission and vision to drive our churches toward deeper effectiveness.
Small group ministry to help connect more people.
Gift-based serving focused on helping lead from how God has uniquely created them.
Employing modern music in weekend programming.
Establishing church marketing as a normative way to relate to the community.
Elevating the role of women in leadership.
Putting the focus on raising generous givers to fuel the mission of the church.
Reinforcing leadership development as a core function of church leadership.
Using kids’ ministry as a strategic tool to grow the church.
Implementing multisite church as a way to improve a church’s ability to serve the community.
Identifying practical acts of rendering service to our communities locally and globally as the essence of what we do.
… just to name a few.

On a personal level, I remember sitting in the Lakeside Auditorium as a young leader and crying during a “normal weekend” service at Willow and being astonished as I realized how effective church could be in reaching the community. Over the years, Bill’s voice has served to reinforce the irrefutable importance of reaching people far from God in my life…

Source: 5 Church Leaders You Should Follow in the Post-Hybels Era – unSeminary

The post 5 Church Leaders You Should Follow in the Post-Hybels Era appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Rich Birch: Stop and think about how much of your time is spent in meeting in an average week at your church. Now, do some quick math to calculate that across your team. Wowsers! That’s a lot of time! (Bonus: Assign some monetary value to each of those hours.)

Clearly, you need to work on ensuring that your team is being a good steward of all that meeting time.

Although it can seem like a “plumbing” issue of how the church does its work, in many ways the meeting culture of your church could be a make-or-break aspect of what is either pushing your ministry forward or holding it back. As I’ve had the honor of being in the orbits of some fantastic churches over the years, I’ve noticed some healthy habits that those leadership teams live by to get the most out of their meetings. Rather than seeing meetings as a necessary evil of “doing church”, these teams are looking for ways to optimize their meeting culture towards performance that pushes them forward. Here are some healthy habits I’ve seen in churches that are making a difference today:

Use meetings to make decisions, not to disseminate information.

Meetings are disagreements to move the organization forward. Healthy teams use meetings as a place to come together to make decisions. More pointedly, leaders use meetings to make decisions. A good meeting should be built around ideas that need to be debated and discussed in the context of an impending decision. Meetings are not a place to simply pass out information or keep everyone informed. It’s a waste of your team’s time to use meetings as a place to ensure they are up to speed on what’s happening at the church.

Adults are basically “just in time” learners, so when you use a meeting to simply pass along information, they are almost hardwired to not pay attention because they can’t put the information into practice right away. However, you can turn this same dynamic on its head by using meetings to present a desired and debatable outcome that you’re going to discuss. People can’t help but lean in and want to participate when change is on the horizon based on this meeting. When there are consequences to meetings, people show up and are ready to jump in. If the meeting feels inconsequential, your team will disengage at best or maybe even resent the meeting.

3 Other Ways to Disseminate Information to Your Team Besides Calling a Meeting

Voice Messages // You’d be amazed how much information you can pass in a 5 minute audio message recorded on your phone. It’s easy to record your voice and email it out to your team.
“What to Expect” Documents // In just one page, you can outline a lot of information that people need to know about an upcoming event or activity at the church.
Weekly Check in Email // Many churches have a standard report email that is generated every week with data that the entire team needs to know. Get your information to hijack on the back of that communication.

Ensure people come prepared to discuss.

No agenda? No meeting! If whoever is calling the meeting doesn’t have time to prepare the people attending the meeting for what is being discussed, it’s probably best not to meet. People don’t like surprises and it’s a bad use of people’s time to get their gut reaction to issues without them having time to prepare. If the decisions being made in the meeting are of such low consequence that people don’t need to think about them ahead of time, then they should be delegated to a team member to make the decision and inform the team later. The prep is both an agenda that outlines the decisions that will be made at the meeting and reading materials to help people as they process the decision.

5 Elements of a Compelling Agenda

Decision: // What is the big decision that is being made at this meeting? This is the overall driver for why you are calling people together.
Attendees // A clear list of who will be at the meeting. If people don’t know each other, a one-line bio is helpful.
Please Read // A list of resources designed to bring the team up to speed on the issue at hand.
What’s at Stake // Why is this such an important decision? A clear and compelling reason why this decision needs to be made at this time.
Rules of Engagement // Some ground rules about how the team is going to go about “doing” the meeting.

Healthy teams work to avoid the feedback bubble.

Learning teams win. Churches that are making a difference in their communities are led by teams of people that are looking for ways to learn from other organizations and apply those lessons to their church. Stagnant churches keep to their own small tribe and shout into the echo chamber of their community. Healthy meetings seek to bring in data from a wide variety of sources to push to a better answer, not the answer that was assumed from the outset. Too many churches just run the same plays over and over and aren’t committed to bringing in outside voices to help them make better decisions. If you are looking for a way to improve your decision-making as a team, you need to bring in voices from other circles to help you make better decisions.

This is particularly important when we think about our ultimate mission as a church. Every church needs to find ways to leverage opportunities to reach people beyond their own church. In fact, the local church is the only organization in the world that exists not for its member but for people not yet connected to the church! As Colossians 4:5 says, “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity.” The hard truth is the voice of the “insider” will always be louder than the “outsider” and so your church needs to find ways to include those voices at your decision-making table. If you only listen to those people who are already with your church, you will miss the opportunity to reach people who haven’t been reached yet!

3 Ways to Add Outside Voices to Your Decision-Making Process

Data is Your Friend // Find hard numbers that talk about what is actually happening rather than just your opinion or hunches. There is no bad information, just information you don’t like.
Invite People In // Who is attending the meetings at your church should be driven by the decisions being made, not by tradition or hierarchy. Pull in people who can speak first-hand about the decisions being made.
Coaches // Growing churches bring in people who have been down the road they are looking at before. A day with a coach or consultant can help bring added clarity to the decisions you make as a team.

Capture action steps and assign responsibilities.

Take massive action. The reason you’ve called meetings at your church is to make decisions. Therefore, coming out of the meeting should be a series of decisions that need to be assigned to team members to follow up on. In fact, the very essence of what “happens” coming out of meetings is new and vibrant energy that has been released. If your meetings aren’t leading to people taking action, then you are just using your meetings to inform people of decisions that have already been made and you should stop meeting.

3 Vital Pieces Needed to Record Next Steps After a Meeting

Owner // Who is the person responsible for the next step coming out of the meeting?
Outcome // What was the decision that was made by the team?
Due Date // When does the owner need to make sure the item is completed by?

As important as the agenda is the pre-reading material, someone from the meeting needs to follow up quickly with “action steps” that are going to be initiated because of the meeting. Ideally, those are recorded in the meeting and sent right away. Again, the meeting should be a tool to push the church forward, so now that decision has been made, the organization should move to take action on that decision!

Meetings should be an exciting event, not a total bore.

All meetings should be optional and exciting. If you are just getting together for the sake of getting together, stop it. Don’t force your people to sit through another meeting just for the sake of meeting. Cut your “repeating” meetings out or at least in half. As a team leader, you need to ensure that each meeting is exciting and engaging, not boring. If the meeting is putting people to sleep, then the team leader isn’t doing their job.

6 Ways to Make Your Church Team Meetings More Exciting

Make Them Optional … really! // If people can choose not to come to the meeting and won’t suffer any retribution from the team leader, you’d be amazed how creative the team leader will get to make the meeting great.
Add Food // Something almost magical happens when you add food to a meeting. Have a favorite exotic food? Add it to the start of your next regular meeting and see what happens. (Skip the donuts … it’s been overdone.)
Standing Meeting // Okay … this might not be fun, but it is just effective. Take all the chairs out of the room that you meet in and have the meeting standing up. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you move through the agenda!
Thank You Notes // Kick off your meeting with some gratitude! Hand out thank you cards to everyone on your team and have them share something that someone else on another team at the church did that was fantastic. After people share, have them write thank you notes to the people that they shared about!
Get Rid of the Table // The physical space you meet in matters. Get rid of that big table that blocks everyone. Paint the walls a bright color. Making a physical change can switch people’s attitudes about your meetings. What if you themed the room something fun? Hawaiian Luau Theme? Christmas in July?
Stick It Up! // In preparation for the meeting, put 3-4 pieces of poster board around the room with short sentences describing issues your church is facing. As people arrive for the meeting, give them a pile of post-it notes and a marker and ask them to jot down solutions for each issue and stick it up on the boards around the room. Take some time to discuss the ideas generated.

It is important to connect with your team relationally, but don’t do that poorly through something masquerading a meeting. Cut out some meetings and then use that freed up time to go do something fun with your team and actually connect!

Interest in learning more about meetings? Listen to Al.

If you are interested in diving deeper in great meeting culture, you need to follow Al Pittampalli and Modern Meeting Standard. He is a leader in thinking about how organizations do meetings well and is leading a revolution to get all kinds of organizations to improve them! Much of my thought has been shaped by Al on this front and I find myself coming back to him time and again when I’m faced with needing to retool our meeting culture one more time! I’m grateful for his leadership.

Source: 5 Healthy Meeting Habits in High Performance Church Teams – unSeminary

The post 5 Healthy Meeting Habits in High Performance Church Teams – unSeminary appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Rich Birch: One of the facts of leading a growing ministry is that you are going to have to get really good at hiring a great team. In fact, as the church grows, often the core leadership team will spend a large portion of its time in simply acquiring a fantastic team to push the mission forward. Ministries that scale their impact end up requiring a team of people to get the work of the church done, and therefore, you need leaders who think carefully around the hiring process.

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of hiring some amazing ministry leaders. These leaders pushed the ministry forward and took us to brand new levels. There is a deep satisfaction in surrounding yourself with a team of people more qualified than yourself to help make the ministry grow. As I reflected on what went right during the hiring process for the top leaders (and what went wrong on people that didn’t work out), I’ve pulled together eight truths for you to reflect on in your ministry hiring.

Past performance is the best indicator of future reality.

When we’re hiring people for roles at our churches, we’re usually in a blissfully euphoric mood that can impair our judgement. The candidates we’re talking to are on their best behavior, saying what we want them to say, and since we feel the pain of the open role we tend to believe them. Church leaders are typically optimistic and hopeful individuals, compounding our ability for self-delusion when it comes to any particular candidate’s qualifications for the role.

Simply put, we imagine skills and abilities that aren’t present in the candidate because we want them to work in our organization. We need to force ourselves to look closely at what they’ve actually done and accomplished in their past roles and graph those results onto our church.

Use performance-based questions to explore what they have actually done and soberly consider if that exact level of performance was achieved at your church, would it accomplish what you’re looking for. Development and growth are a bonus, not a guarantee! In fact, their performance will drop in their early days with your church because new relationships and culture take time to acclimatize to.

Anybody is not better than nobody.

I’ve made this mistake more than once and the pain has stung every single time. We had an open position that we needed to fill for a long time. We struggled to find the candidate from a number of people who applied. After a while, we started to think that the type of person we needed didn’t exist in the world. Slowly our standards for what we wanted to hire started to erode. Eventually, we got to the point of convincing ourselves that anybody is better than nobody. We begrudgingly hired a candidate that we knew didn’t have all the past experiences we were looking for, but we told ourselves that it would be ok and that they would be a quick learner. However, this logic never works out!

Your church is surviving without the role currently filled, but a bad hire can actually do a lot more damage than an open role. Resist the temptation to prematurely fill open positions at your church with candidates who would not excel in those roles.

The pain of extracting a misplaced staff member is multiple times worse than the discomfort of an open role in your organization.

Internal to consolidate culture. External to change culture.

When you hire a member of your team from within the church, you reinforce the culture that already exists. However, when you hire someone external to your church, you push the culture in a new direction. Over the years, I’ve heard church leaders claim with pride that they just “hire from within” as if that is the badge of honor we’re all driving towards. This is a sure sign that the church will simply perpetuate its existing approaches and systems. If we’re honest though, there are areas of our ministry that need a new sense of life and vision, and those areas should be considered for “external” hires.

The degree of change required in the area that needs change is an indicator of how “external” a hire should be. If you are looking to make tweaks to an area, possibly bringing in someone from a different department within the church would be the best; however, if a ministry needs a complete overall change, you need to go and find the best person from anywhere in the world and get them into that role.

Staff expands.

In 20 years of ministry, I’ve never had a manager come to me and say that they believe the next best move for their area is to reduce the total number of staff in that ministry.

Staff generates the need for more staff. Managers who can keep a close eye on their “head count” and resist the urge to just expand their staff are rare, but a vitally important group in your church.

This is related to the “Parkinson’s law” that states that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. People find a way to make jobs more complicated and time-consuming, which in the end requires more staff to get the same amount of work done.

Time stewardship is a real issue in most church staff teams. We need to find ways to get more done with the same number of staff members as a stewardship and care for the time that the Lord has given us.

People move towards where they are from.

Hiring people “from away” can be a source of richness in the life of your community. Team members from another state or even country can add a tremendous amount to your ministry because, by definition, they add cultural diversity to your organization.

However, over time people will generally move back towards where they are from. Family is a strong pull for people over the long arch of their lives. In fact, on average people live only 18 miles away from their parents during their adult years of life.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be hiring people from far away, but just be aware that the stress these individuals put on themselves is abnormal behavior and might result in them opting to move closer to home in the long run.

Hire chemistry & character. Develop competency.

You’re going to spend at least 2,000 hours a year around these people; so, ensuring that these are solid relational fits is important. Although you don’t want your staff team to feel like a “frat house”, it should be a fun and enjoyable experience to be a part of.

Moral failures because of character flaws are a more common reason for ministry implosions than ineffective or incompetent leadership. Make sure that through the hiring process you probe the character side of the candidate. Find ways to explore the subtler side of what it means to work in a ministry.

What we “do” in the ministry isn’t rocket science and can be developed while someone serves with your ministry; however, chemistry and character are typically more fixed traits and will settle out over time.

“Really wanting to work at the church” isn’t a qualification.

I’ve been easily flattered (and ultimately fooled) by candidates who are really excited to work at our church. Their enthusiasm is infectious when I’m meeting with them and I find myself wanting to work with them simply because they want to work with me. Please resist this pitfall! Enthusiasm for the mission and community of the church is needed, but it’s not an overarching qualification that should blind you to the other aspects of the candidate’s background.

Often times, this sort of enthusiasm will be even more evident in candidates who are considering joining your church from marketplace roles. You need to explore this particular enthusiasm closely because often it’s rooted in a love for what the church “does”; however, working within the ministry is a much different experience than benefiting from the ministry. Everyone loves the sausage but not particularly the sausage factory!

Hire ministry leaders, not ministry doers.

What are you actually looking for your staff to accomplish in your ministry? It’s important that you are crystal clear on the objectives you are looking to fulfill through this role. My firm conviction is that every staff member needs to be leading the ministry and not just directly doing the ministry. We’re hiring people who can mobilize, train, and release volunteers into the ministry rather than them doing the work directly. You are hiring ministry leaders, not ministry doers! Paul said it clearly in his letter to the Ephesian church:

“And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds[a] and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ”

– Ephesians 4:11-12

As you are interviewing candidates, focus on the information they provide about the teams they built and leaders they equipped rather than what they did personally. You’re looking for leaders who can scale their impact through leading teams of people to reach the ministry goals and objectives. Don’t get caught being overly impressed with people who tell you harrowing personal stories of their one-on-one impact on the people your church is serving.

Source: 8 Axioms of Church Staff Hiring

The post 8 Axioms of Church Staff Hiring appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Rich Birch: I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the most remarkable churches across the country over the last ten years. Perhaps one of the greatest honors is that I have witnessed the incredible leadership in these organizations personally. Working so closely with churches, I’ve noticed several hidden habits that many of the largest and most healthy churches in the country maintain. These are habits that, while they have a profound impact on their ministry, remain largely unseen by the masses. Here are five of the most prominent and recurring healthy habits that I have encountered:

Leaders Park Far Away // Arriving a few hours before a church service begins can tell you a lot about the leaders of a church. If they are all parked right up against the building it indicates that they don’t instinctively think about their first-time guests or people outside the church. Leaders who park their cars at the farthest away spot and stroll over make a symbolic statement; a guest’s needs come before a leader’s. These leaders are actively living out the fact that the first will be last in their churches. This attitude ultimately weaves its way through the organization as people see humility and servanthood lived out in a million small ways!
Limited Green Room Time // Most church leaders have room or area within their church dedicated to providing them respite from people. While setting aside some time to gather your thoughts is an important part of serving at any church, it is important to limit the amount of time leaders are away from “the people”. Recently, I took a friend to visit one of the largest churches in the country and we arrived about an hour after an evening service had wrapped up. As we stepped into the main auditorium, it was humbling to see their lead pastor still talking with people at the front of the church. There was a leader of a church of tens of thousands of people who knew that slowing down and serving people one-on-one is vitally important part of leadership. Get out of the green room and talk to the members of your congregation more this coming Sunday than you did last weekend!
Lots of Thank You Notes // I’m still convinced that the thank you note is one of the most powerful tools a senior leader has at his/her disposal. Slowing down to handwrite a quick note to someone conveys so much in a world of depersonalized digital communication. It doesn’t take long and the notes you write are often held onto for months, or even years, later. Many leaders in thriving churches have a thank you note writing regime where they regularly identify people within their community to reach out to through this medium. All you will need is a stack of simple cards and a pen; just half a dozen notes a week and you’ll start to see all kinds of benefits within your community.
First In. Last Out. // Running a church is challenging work. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to “do” ministry. One of the things I’ve noticed in thriving churches is that their leaders are often the first to arrive when the church is doing something and the last to leave at the end of the event. These people want to be part of what’s happening and ensure that their presence is felt and known on “game day” when the church is at its best. This selfless act demonstrates to your people that you are as deeply committed to the mission as they are. Churches are fueled by a group of amazing volunteers who are giving up their personal time to make the mission happen. Then how much more committed to the mission should the “paid staff” be that are leading the mission? Sure, you have lots of places you could be but your team is choosing to serve with your ministry so why not show them some love and care through your presence with them while they serve?
Do for one what you wish you could do for all. // As a church grows, a natural pressure creeps in. The scale of the ministry starts to push to the point where the leader can no longer provide the individual care and support that they used to when the church was smaller. The natural pull is towards not doing individual care for people because of the mass of people attending the community. But healthy and thriving churches are led by people who figure out a way to serve individuals in their church in a way that they wish could serve everyone at the church. Rather than being paralyzed by the dual pressures of the scale of people attending the church and your desire to serve them all individually, healthy church leaders look for places to slow down and care for people at a personal level. They understand that although there are a lot of people attending church, people have individual reasons for journeying with a church. Taking time to slow down to send flowers, make a phone call, help with meals or attend a funeral are never a bad idea to ensure you, as a leader, remain connected to the people.

I’d love to hear from you. What are some “hidden habits” that you see being lived out by church leaders you admire!? Let’s share those stories.

Source: 5 Hidden Habits of Healthy Churches

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