Sabbatical – An Introduction

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In September of 2011 I finished up working in the Diocese of Broken Bay as a Diocesan Youth Ministry Coordinator, basically a Ministry Consultant to 30 churches.  Whilst I loved the job, my family and I were moving from Sydney to Melbourne so that my wife could take a promotion.  After almost 16 years in full time ministry it was time for me to take a break.  In fact it was the first time in almost 22 years that I wasn’t doing any ministry outside my family, not even a small volunteer role in a ministry.

It was important for me to take the opportunity to “revive my dropping spirit”.  It was also important for me to spend some time as a dad helping my boys settle into their new schools and anew city.  So I didn’t want to do the usual academic sabbatical where there is a structured program but I also didn’t want to do nothing either.  It was important for me to call this time a “sabbatical” so that I would give these four months the importance they deserved.

Over the past four months I have needed to waste some time, I needed to have the afternoon siesta or watch too much TV.  But I have also been listening very carefully to God.  During the last project I was doing inSydneyI heard God say “don’t worry about what is next because I will tell you in Melbourne.”  Now that I was in Melbourne I wanted to explore everything that God had in store for me.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be posting more of my learning’s from my sabbatical, you can read Part One here.  Whilst my sabbatical has not been as structured as an academic sabbatical, it has been four months where I have been intentional about listening to God.  Perhaps you won’t get a chance to have your own sabbatical anytime soon so you might pick up something for your leadership position or your ministry from my experience.

Please leave a comment, especially if you would like to know specific about my sabbatical that I could write in a future post.

  1. Sabbatical – Part One
  2. Sabbatical – Part Two

What I learnt from the Yellow Wiggle

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The original handover from Greg to Sam

Recently the children’s entertainment group know as the Wiggles, decided to bring back Greg as the Yellow Wiggle.  Whilst many parents were upset because they liked Sam as the Yellow Wiggle, in this blog post we will look at what this teaches us as leaders in our situation.

Background about the Wiggles

  1. If you don’t know who the Wiggles are then you must not have kids.  They are a children’s entertainment group from Australia that have entertained millions of children.  The Wiggles have won every award possible in their category and are in the Music Hall of Fame.
  2. A few years ago Greg, one of the four original members was replaced by Sam because Greg was unwell.  Sam was much younger and connected well with the kids.
  3. Most of the four original Wiggles would now be their 50’s.  The original four will not last forever so what is their exit strategy?

What can we learn from the replacement of the Yellow Wiggle?

  1. Look to replace yourself – Whilst it was sad to see Greg leave, bringing in Sam was a chance to replace the original line up one person at a time.  When you replace yourself in an up front roll, you train up more people who can do your job if needed.  Bringing in Sam was the perfect way to get the audience used to seeing a new Wiggle. Every few years the Wiggles could be replace another member so that the fans always knew at least one Wiggle.  Going back to an original member was a backward step to replacing yourself.  In your role as a leader are you training up others to replace you or do you hog center stage?
  2. It is not about you – By replacing Greg and bringing in Sam it helps the audience connect with the brand of the Wiggles rather than the individuals.  The Wiggles had the opportunity to build a fan base rather than boosting the self-confidence of an individual.  Bringing back Greg give the impression that the true Wiggles are the original four members.  In your leadership role is it about building your ministry or boosting your ego?
  3. Don’t just hire your friends – in terms of the Wiggles reaching their audience, Sam was the better choice amongst this generation of fans.  By going back to an old friend the Wiggles lost a lot in the public relations department.  It told the fans that it was about what the original members wanted rather than what the fans wanted.  In your leadership role do people have to be friends with you to get ahead or can the best people rise up?

Application to a ministry setting

We all know a “Yellow Wiggle” situation where one leader has been replaced by a new leader.  Perhaps you know situation where that went well or perhaps you know situations where it didn’t work so well.  In a previous post I wrote about how this can be done well  (see Building a Legacy for more).  We know that in a Youth Ministry situation leaders move every 2-3 years and each leader has their own style.  In a local church, the senior minister moves every 5-10 years and a new senior minister can bring a 180 degree shift.  So as a leader at any level remember these three things:

  1. Look to replace yourself before it gets too late and you decide to leave.
  2. It is not about you it is about the people
  3. Don’t just recruit from your friendship circle; build up the people who will best minister to those in your ministry.

If you ever forget these three things then just think about a man jumping around a stage in a Yellow Skivvy.

Please leave a comment, especially if you had any thoughts on the replacement of Sam as the Yellow Wiggle.

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What I learnt at Family Camp

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Recently I returned from my first ever family camp with my wife and two sons. It was a great opportunity to get to know some wonderful people, both parents and kids. It was interesting to see how a family camp runs and the group dynamics that develops from having every age represented. There were babies, toddlers, little kids, big kids, teenagers, young adults, young parents and older parents on the camp.

So after 20 years of attending youth and young adult camps what did I learn from my first family camp? Here are four things that I learnt about ministry at family camp:

1. The “Surname’s” – the big difference on family camp is that everyone is referred to as part of their family by their surnames. After years of learning first names at youth camps, now I had to learn surnames as well. So it was Lisa, Mark, Jesse and Aidan; we were the “McDonald’s”. This helped in two ways:

  • The kids are as important as the adults – I never heard anyone referred to as “Mum and Dad’s kids”. It wasn’t Lisa and Mark plus kids, my boys were just as much McDonalds as Lisa and I were.
  • It builds the bonds within a family – rather than separating parents and kids it brings the family together as the core unit of the camp, and therefore our church.

2. Kids play up and down age groups – it is interesting that our schools and youth ministries separate kids into age groups. Yet at family camp kids play down age groups and up age groups as it suited them. So my 10 year old played with a group of kids one morning that were 5-9 years olds then spent the afternoon playing with 10-15 year olds. My 8 year old son played with a 4 year old then played bowls against a 17 year old. The camp gave kids the freedom to play with who ever they wanted rather than playing in their age category.

3. Everyone can have fun – it was great having fun on family camp through the games, the singing and the dancing. It seems that once adults get together for ministry it goes al serious, but with kids present everyone has fun. So in the games section parents had as much fun as the kids; when singing parents were just as into the actions as the kids.

4. We talked about everything – I will be honest and admit that the reason I have avoided family camps before is because I don’t want to talk about parenting all the time. So I am glad to report that the adults talked about everything. We did talk about parenting but we also talked about faith, ministry, property prices, renovations, cars, boats, holidays, burn out, work, career change, study and many many more things. It was great to be able to engage with others in conversations; our children could witness real conversation.

So that is what I learnt about ministry on a family camp. As someone involved in youth and young adult ministry I felt challenged to see teenagers as part of their family unit rather than separating them into narrow age groups. Perhaps you could build some family time into your youth and young adult ministry. I remember hearing Doug Fields say that he was a much better Youth Pastor when he actually had teenagers in his house. Perhaps if you have never been to family camp or you don’t have kids yet, then spend 2012 building a relationship with someone in your church who has teenagers or young adult children, you will learn so much about the people in your ministry.

Print Marketing … on a budget

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It is that time of the year when our letter box is full of church marketing.  A number of churches in my area have dropped off invitations to the Christmas events.  Some churches have invitations to carols, nativity plays and of course their Christmas services.  Some of the invitations are glossy professionally printed cards whilst others make some amateur home printing mistakes.  In this post I want to share with you some tips I have learnt about doing print marketing on a budget; meaning you are printing hundred of postcards in your office.

One thing I learnt about professional printing is that they can do anything you want … for a price.  Perhaps you don’t have the money to send the flyer to a printer so you are going to print your flyers “in house”.  Maybe you have a photocopier, maybe a colour printer or maybe you have a black and white printer.  What ever your situation you are limited by the printer you have and the time to cut up hundreds of items.  But there are some tricks to get around your printer to disguise that they were printed in your office.  I suggest two types of print marketing, posters and postcards.

  1. The Postcard – this will be your base print marketing because you can put it in the hand or mailbox of everyone you want to invite.  The easiest way to do this “in house” is to print four cards to an A4 page.  This is just a matter of repeating the same card four times on the one page.  Here are a few tips –
    1. Never do a border – if you print a border on your card then you will spend hours trying to get your margins the same on all four images once they are printed.  If you remove the border then it is easier to cut up the four cards without it looking off center.
    2. More detail than a poster – on a postcard you should include more details so that the person will keep the card.  If it is too basic they will throw it in the bin and jump on your website.  You want them to keep the card.
  2. The Poster – you want to saturate your church with posters of your events and an A4 poster can be affective.  If there is room it can be more striking to place four posters together on a notice board.  The poster should do two things:
    1. Draw in someone’s attention – the poster should turn heads not blend in.  Find an image that will draw people in.
    2. Send them to a website for more details – some posters can be too overloaded with information.  A poster shouldn’t be a larger version of your postcard.  Never include the price on the poster as you want them to check out all the details on your Facebook page or website.

Here are just a few other thoughts that will help you when you have no budget and have to print in-house:

  1. White edge – most of us printer that can’t print to the edge; it leaves a white border of 3-4mm.  So design your poster or postcard with this in mind.  You can design your card to look like a Polaroid as this has a white border.  You can also fade the edge of your image to white.  Black backgrounds don’t look good with a white border so avoid these if you don’t want to cut each item.
  2. Graphics – you can use a lot of good images off Microsoft clipart, type in backgrounds to see a range of images to build your poster on.  Go for their new items such as vectors or photos.
  3. Fonts – a good font can make all the difference.  You can download hundreds of fonts for free from many websites.  Try about 20-30 fonts before you print, one font might take it from an average design to a great design.
  4. News print – some churches have used the news print style to cover up for the basic printer they are using.  The retro, rustic or newsprint styles all look better on cheaper printers than trying to do the high gloss corporate look in the office.
  5. Work with the imperfections of your printer.  If your printed always misses a spot then don’t make that spot where the key information is.

Whilst it might be a little late for Christmas, you have some tips to improve your news years marketing. When you are launching your programs for 2012 you have some design tips to help you.

Perhaps you have made some mistakes in the past and have learnt some trick that others would love to learn from.  Please consider sharing them with us by leaving a comment

Growth Part 2 – you can’t do more of the same

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Several years ago I was the ministry leader for a start up ministry.  We were trying to get something new happening and so a few of us pitched the idea to a number of our friends and people we knew.  Mostly it involved going out to dinner with friends and chatting to them over a meal.  We would explain the vision, the concept, some of the practical steps and what we needed from each person.  There was a sense of urgency because we wanted to get this up and running and we needed a start up team.  The pitch worked on about half of the people, but we got our start up team.

Fast forward about a year and half and we had grown to about 20-30 people in the ministry.  This was a good position to be in at that time but we wanted to grow bigger.  Every time we held a meeting we would ask ourselves “who else do we know that we could get to come along?”. The problem was that we had already asked most of the people we knew and after 18 months of doing life together this group was our friendship circle.  We were trying to get the next 20 people using the same strategy as how we got the first 20 people.

This experience taught me a valuable lesson about growing a ministry:

“You can’t do more of the same to get you to the next level”

Doing what got you growth in the start up phase may not lead to future growth.  When we wanted to grow a start up we asked the people we knew.  To make the next growth leap we needed to get people we didn’t know so they could invite their friendship circles.  Sometime in ministry we try to repeat the things that made us successful hoping that we will get the same result.

Andy Stanley says that growth doesn’t come from something that is tweaked, it comes from something new.  You can hear his talk on the Andy Stanley Leadership podcast here.

Growing a ministry from one level to another is not the same; getting the first 10 people to commit to a new ministry might take as much work as adding another 30. Some growth levels are bigger jumps than others.  For example when you double your start up team of 10 you are only adding 10 more people, you can handle 10 new names and faces.  When you double a ministry with 50 you add another 50 people which changes the dynamics to that of a crowd.  Imagine a bring a friend night with a group of 150 regulars, you could have another 150 new faces walking around which is way to much for one person to handle.  Each new growth level brings new challenges and new group dynamics so you can’t do more of the same.

What have you found to be the growth levels that have forced you to function differently?  How did you handle it? Please leave a comment to help us all out.

Growth Part 1 – What is your ceiling?

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Have you ever wondered why your youth ministry is not growing? Have you ever wondered how big it could get? What is the fullest potential of your youth ministry? Here I am talking about the number of people involved in the youth ministry. You can measure the “size” of youth ministry or you could measure the “health” of your ministry. But let’s just talk about numbers in this post, because numbers represent an actual disciple.

Every time I meet a youth ministry coordinator, they openly or secretly have a target in their mind of what number represents success. Some people have 20 as their target, others 50 and some want to reach 100. Peter was a person I worked with and his target was always 50 people, once he got 50 he was happy and said his youth group was “healthy”. In the three churches were he had served he had always got 50 young people in his group but that was his ceiling, the youth group never grew bigger than 50.

Most new groups aim for about 20 to 30 people in their group. The magical number for group dynamics seems to be about 30; a group seems its most healthy at about 30-35 people. But does a ministry subconciously stop there when it may have the potential to continue to grow? Why do some leaders have a growth ceiling?

A game changer for me was meeting Phil, a youth ministry coordinator with over 150 people in his youth group and their target was 500. All I wanted to know was how did they get to 150, let alone how were they planning to get to 500. When Phil started with the youth ministry, the group already had 50 people. Together they set themselves the target of reaching 100 students for Christ. When they reached 100 they set their sights on 500 because that was more outrageous than 200.

Reaching a target can lead to complacency if a new target isn’t set. Some groups reach their numbers ceiling and stop growing because they feel they have made it. It is fine to set a reasonable numbers target early in the growth of a new group, but that number should grow as the group grows. Your target should always be one that makes the group challenge itself to invite new people.

The down side of your ceiling is that complacency can lead to stagnation. Some groups hit their numbers ceiling and then go backwards even if they stay around 50. When a group reaches its target it takes away the urgency to invite new people (evangelism). When a group reaches its target it can turn inward to keep its numbers rather than being outward focused on what they can do for others (mission).

What is your numbers ceiling, or what is your complacency figure? What number would make you think you have arrived? What number of participants in your group would take away the urgency to invite new people? You better find this out because you don’t want to stop growing for 12 months before you look into this. You need to plan your next target before you reach your current one.

Please leave a comment about your growth ceilings, perhaps what advice could you offer to others to break through their growth ceilings.

Building a legacy – be the first in a long line

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How do you want to be remembered?

Recently I finished up in a ministry position where I had served in for about six years.  Since leaving the position I wondered how I will be remembering.  Will I be quickly forgotten?  Will people miss me?  Then it struck me that my biggest fear was that people would say “it hasn’t been as good since you left.”  Whilst sometime that feels nice, the reality is that I hope that ministry will continue to grow stronger into the future.

It seems that when someone is leaving a position is a bit late to start building a legacy.  If someone wants to leave a good legacy then they have to start thinking about it when they are in the position.  How do you want to be remembered when you leave your current ministry position?  Perhaps finishing 2011 and moving into a new year is a chance to refocus on the type of legacy you are building.  Here are a few suggestions for building a good legacy for when you are ready to leave:

  1. You don’t want to be forgotten – whilst it is important to be humble and replace yourself well, people who make an impact in a ministry are never forgotten.  If your time as ministry coordinator is quickly forgotten then you were not making the impact that you should.
  2. You don’t want to leave a void – it is important that you have some role in succession planning for your departure.  It is important that the work that you began continues after you leave.  Perhaps the ministry may not replace you, but if there are leaders to step and lead after you leave then you have built a legacy well.
  3. You don’t want to handicap future growth – after you leave, the ministry should be allowed to grow where it needs to.  Some leaders like to put in structures that predict the future grow, rail road it where they think it should go, but all it does is restrict growth.  As a leader you want to empower future leaders to change or cut programs and events that you may have started to fit the needs of the future community.
  4. You do want to leave your corporate knowledge – you have an obligation as ministry coordinator to leave any work that you have done within the ministry.  Unless you had it written into your contract you must leave a copy of all work produced whilst working for the ministry.  Usually a ministry will allow you to take a copy with you, but don’t walk out of the office with all copies of the files, both hard copy and on computer.
  5. You do want to build flexibility – as a ministry leader you appreciate the freedom to adapt the ministry to the current circumstances.  When you leave respect the future ministry leaders by allowing them to create new visions, programs and events.
  6. You do want to build a dynasty – do you want to be remembered as the last good ministry coordinator or the first in a long line of great ministry coordinators?  You want to build something that will get bigger and better after you leave not smaller,  you don’t want the community wishing that you would come back to save them.  Be the first in a long line of great ministry coordinators not the last.

Now have I done all of these?  No.  In the various ministry positions that I have held both voluntary and paid I have learnt the hard way all of these points.  But as a ministry leader my biggest fear is that ministry will collapse after I leave.  The best bit of advice I ever heard was “a great ministry leader is always doing themselves out of job”.  As ministry leaders lets build great dynasties not ministries that collapse after we leave.

Check out a practical example of Building a Legacy in my post about how the Wiggles replaced Greg with Sam, then brought back Greg to replace Sam in What I learnt from the Yellow Wiggle

Please leave a comment to pass on your advice about building a legacy.

Creating better connection over church coffee

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To all the coffee drinkers going to Church this Sunday …..

Recently I was standing outside church near the coffee stand when I heard a person ask her group if they were getting coffee here or going out for coffee.  At this point her group of friends said they were going out for coffee so she joined them in their tight friendship circle.  It was obvious to me that they were enjoying each others conversation but they weren’t drinking church coffee and they weren’t letting anyone into their conversation.

To all the coffee drinkers out there, and I love a good coffee, church coffee is not about the coffee, it is about fellowship.  In all my ministry time I think I could count on one hand the good coffees I have had at church.  Yet I persist with the average coffee because it is a chance to talk to someone after church or before a church meeting.

As a ministry leader how can you get the “coffee snobs” to hang around for the fellowship instead of driving off in search of a “real” coffee. Here are a few things to improve your fellowship or connection time after church or before your next ministry meeting:

  • Is the coffee really bad? Change coffee – if you don’t drink coffee ask one of the coffee experts in your ministry or church to give you advice.  One tip, if the coffee is referred to as “caterers blend” then stop buying it.  If you change your brand of coffee you might not please everyone but you may stop annoying some.
  • Call it connection time not coffee time – these days most people go out for “coffee” when they really mean they are going out to connect with people.  People can drink great coffee at home so highlight the connection factor rather than the coffee.  Perhaps call it connection time or call the location where you serve coffee “connection central”.  Enhance this connection focus by having of your flyers, notices and event promotion here also.
  • Get out from behind the counter – sometimes we get the best hospitality team but we lock them in the canteen style kitchen where a massive bench separates them from the people.  Get your hospitality team out of the canteen and have all the coffee on a central table so everyone can mix in.  Have your hospitality team moving amongst the crowd not stuck in a canteen.
  • Introduce groups to each other – if you have problems of tight friendship circles forming in your connection area then have some of your team move between groups opening up the conversation.  You regular phase should be “have you met this person? Let me introduce you”  As people are coming in for the meeting or coming out of church, move people into mixed groups or combine smaller groups of friends.
  • Give people a conversation starter – whilst we hope that the church service is so inspiring that people can’t wait to talk about it, perhaps maybe they don’t.  So at the end of your ministry meeting or church service give people a question to ask each other as they leave.  That way the people who aren’t friends can have a safer way to break the ice and start a new conversation.

Now perhaps that all sounds good but if your first reaction was “what you serve coffee at church?” then perhaps you need to work on your hospitality skills.

All of us are looking for ways to get people in our ministry to connect before or after meetings so please leave a comment about how you have improved your hospitality.

Discipleship is like a Christmas tree

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This week I was looking through all the Christmas catalogues that landed in my mailbox.

One major department store were advertising a beautiful Christmas tree for $27 dollars. The picture of this $27 Christmas tree was amazing; it was so beautiful that it made me want one in my house. My second reaction was “how can a tree that beautiful be worth $27?” Then it hit me that this tree would have had over $200 of ornaments, lights, tinsel and other decorations on it. The picture of the $27 dollar Christmas tree I was looking at was really worth about $227.

When you think about a Christmas tree,

it looks rather plain without any decorations. Yet if you had the beautiful decorations but no tree, then all you would have is a pile of decorations. The tree is the major element and the decorations are the extras; you need the tree to hang everything on. The same is true with discipleship; we need something to hang everything off. Let me explain.

Just like in the Christmas tree example, the key to element to discipleship is our relationship with Jesus. Without a relationship with Jesus there is no discipleship. We can get so distracted by the “lights and tinsel” that we forget the core element. We can think that if we have the extras then our relationship with Jesus is secure; in reality that may not be the case. Sometimes we need to strip back the extras to see what is really lying underneath it all.

In the case of the $27 Christmas tree, I am sure once you take the $200 worth of decorations off it isn’t the best looking tree. When you strip back all the extras in your spiritual life what does your relationship with Jesus look like? Is it something that you would be proud to show off to the world by itself or do you want to put all the extras back on? Some of the extras that could distract you from the core relationship with Jesus could include:

  1. Attendance: sometime we think the more we attend Church the more we love Jesus. See Attendance vs Commitment
     for more details
  2. Friends: sometimes we think that if we hang around lots of other disciples that makes us a disciple; discipleship through association.
  3. Routine: sometimes we think that if we fill our routine with spiritual exercise that will makes us more of a disciple, we might be busier but do these exercise fill our time or draw us closer to Jesus?

As a person with the Mark of Faith on your life, sometimes you have to strip back the extras to show others the core element of that faith; your relationship with Jesus. Please leave a comment.

How NOT to promote events at Church

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Have you ever sat through a talk at church where someone was promoting an event and you thought “they are butchering this chance”? Even worst have you heard someone do such a bad job at promoting an event that you thought “I won’t be attending that event”?  There are some basic mistakes that people make when promoting events, perhaps because people are new to a position or maybe nobody has ever workshopped their presentations.

One time that really sticks out in my mind was a ministry leader who was promoting a youth camp at our church.  This person kept referring to the ministry as “my ministry” which straight away made me feel distant as though I wasn’t part of this.  Then they complained to the church that they didn’t get enough helpers last time and then said “I can’t do this all alone, if I don’t get more helpers I might have to cancel”.  At this point I wanted to encourage them to stop talking before they did anymore damage.  Whilst the dates of the camp were clear this ministry leader didn’t give any clue as to how we could help out or how the youth could register for the camp.

Recently we looked at three styles of promoting events, so now lets look at four things to avoid when promoting events:

  1. Don’t be vague – sometimes you only get one or two shots at promoting your events so be very clear about the information other people need to know, which is:
  • When is the event
  • How do people register
  • How can people assist with the event
  • Where they can find out more information (website, Facebook, foyer etc)

2. Don’t doubt the event – it is so important to sell the event with confidence.  Never say that the event won’t go ahead if we don’t get numbers because people won’t register until they know you have the numbers.  Don’t promote this as the best event in the world but you should promote the highlights of the event in a way that is attractive.

3. Don’t be disorganised – if you haven’t got a flyer, Facebook group or webpage set up then never get in front of your church or ministry to promote an event.  You should present a well prepared talk or video clip to your church or ministry when promoting events, don’t make it up on the spot.  The minute you say “more details to come later” people switch off and think “then I will pay attention later”.

4. Don’t make it about you – you are trying to get other people to attend an event so make your presentation about how others can attend rather than how much help you need.  You have to convince the audience that they should either attend the event or ask someone in the target age group to attend.  Don’t make people feel sorry for you having to do all this work to host the event.

Perhaps you can extend this list by leaving a comment on the mistakes you have made in promoting events.  Whilst we learn from our own mistakes, perhaps your mistakes can help someone else get it right the next time they have to promote an event.