Archives For transition

8 THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND IN REGARDS TO CONFLICT AT WORK/CHURCH

May 25, 2012 — Leave a comment

 I have posted something from Perry Noble before. You can go and check out his leadership blog HERE, but I just had to post this. When it comes to conflict in the church environment, you would think that everyone would know how to deal with it. A lot of times, it can be super messy. This is why I thought Perry Noble’s in how to deal with it is awesome. Read it and enjoy:

#1 – Email DOES NOT WORK!  (This would also apply to texting as well as any form of social media!)    

When conflict use to arise with me and someone in the office I used to walk to my desk, log on to my computer and fire off an abusive email, several problems with this…

  • It is the act of a coward, I would do this so that I would avoid a eye to eye conversation.
  • It removes the fact that I am actually dealing with another person…if I type an email I don’t have to look them in the eye and removing that obstacle allows me to say things to them through typing that I would NEVER say to them in person.
  • It often drags out the conflict way longer that it should be.
  • It can easily be misinterpreted, thus causing new conflicts.

#2 – Handle Conflict Quickly – The Bible is VERY clear in Ephesians 4:25-26 that we are not to allow the sun to go down while we are angry.  If we allow something to fester inside of us what usually comes out of that is NEVER pretty.

#3 – Always Assume The Best About The People You Work With – If you don’t get anything else in this article then PLEASE get this, LOVE ALWAYS ASSUMES THE BEST ABOUT SOMEONE…ALWAYS!  If you hate/can’t stand the people you work with then THE BEST thing to do is to begin to ask the Lord, “what is wrong with MY OWN heart?”

#4 – Remember that Email Does Not Work!  

#5 – Stop Expecting People To Read Your Mind – Often times people have said something hurtful to me that they did not perceive as hurtful.  I would become angry with them and actually tell myself, “well, they should just know that hurt me!”  NEWS FLASH – THEY DON’T KNOW, and they won’t know unless I am man enough to look them in the eye (because email does not work), assume the best about them (which automatically assumes they didn’t mean to hurt me) and CALMLY walk them through why what they said wounded me.

#6 – Stop Waiting For Them To Approach You – If you know there is conflict and you know there is a problem to be solved but you are “waiting on the right time” or “waiting on them to come to me” then I would encourage you to read what Jesus said in Matthew 5:23-24.  Maturity is when a person is willing to seize responsibility instead of just waiting on something to happen.

#7 – Never, EVER Go Public When You Have Not Even Attempted To Talk In Private – Too often people take their conflicts online when they have never even attempted to handle them in a private matter (sort of goes against what JESUS actually said in Matthew 18:15 as the first step in dealing with conflict!)  People are way too quick these days to read/hear something that someone says and automatically fire off a tweet or blog post without ever attempting to have a conversation with the person that they assume “got it wrong,” causing them to feel like they need to be the savior of the world by jumping to conclusions and making accusations about things that they actually have zero knowledge of.

#8 – And finally, do not forget that Email does not work!  


In creativity, Devotional, high school ministry, Leadership, Shout Out Friday, student ministry, worship , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
permalink

Service Programing vs. Relationships: Can You Do Both? (Part 3)

May 23, 2012 — 4 Comments

Past couple of Wednesday we have been looking at the constant battle between service programming and relational ministry. To recap, there is a fine line that all ministries need to balance when it comes to having a great, well ran service and having real, authentic, true relationships with the people who come to the service. Not everyone has a team of people to help them plan and service and focus on relationships. I am thankful to be on a team that we all can put together a great service and still focus on relationships, but I have not always had that. I know both sides.

Last week, I said relationships are the number one thing when it comes to a service. Relationships is what keeps people there, it is where the life changes come from. A church service is just a means to get people within the relationships with leaders or pastors, and ultimately Jesus. While the service can be ran with music, games, a sermon and a funny video, everything within the service should be pointing the students to someone they can talk to and get connected. The lights and music might intrigue them to come in, but after 3 weeks without making a connection with someone that person most likely wont come back.

So does that mean the service should suffer? No way! I love my job. I love creating services in which are fun and engaging and well ran. I wouldnt have it any other way. Give me lights, give me videos, give me great sermon illustrations and fun ways to do announcements all day, but as long as I realize this is not the end all. All these things are to start a conversation or point to someone to have a realtionship with. After all, at Saddleback, our weekend services are to EXPOSE students to the Gospel, to get them introduced to who Jesus is, and the relationships will help guide them to EXPERIENCE Him.

So how do you add relational aspects into the service so people can be guided to start a relationship with someone on your team? Here are a few suggestions:

  • Add a 2 minute greeting within the service. Use it as a transition somewhere in the service to have students get up and meet someone new. This gives leaders a chance to talk and make a connection as well. You can read more about this in a previous post HERE.
  • Info cards. We have a tear off section on the bottom of their message notes that if a student turns it in to a leader after service for first time visitors, we will then give them a FREE GIFT, from HSM to them. 1) We get their info and we can connect them and 2) A connection is made and a relationship is started.
  • We try to focus on those students who are sitting alone. We have our leaders and our student leaders in each section go and sit with those who are by themselves. For the most part, if they are by themselves, they are new and do not know anyone. This wil get them a connection and a face to look for the following weekend.

These are just a few suggestions. What do you do in your group during service to get people connected into a relationship? What would you suggest?

In creativity, Devotional, God, high school ministry, Ministry Idea, organization, service programing, student ministry, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
permalink 4 Comments

Smoother Service: Transitions Matter

May 2, 2012 — 1 Comment

For a service programmer, I think one of the best things anyone can say after a service is, “That was a smooth service.” This means that the service went on without a hitch, no mess-ups, no awkward dead air and or silence. The service went smooth from beginning to end. My goal is to run smooth services, where all pieces of a service are to come together as if I actually planned it to happen that way (what a concept!).

One thing that I have noticed that will absolutely kill the momentum of a service is an awkward transition. It is that time after the first set up worship when someone is supposed to come up and do announcements and there is that dead, dry, weird silence because the worship leader didn’t welcome up the announcement person. Its that time where the video was supposed to play and you stand there pointing at the screen but instead you are pointing to dead air. Its that time where you go and speak into the mic and its not on and no one can hear you so you are standing helpless on stage.

When your goal is running a “smooth service” this is something that needs to be addressed. This will kill the atmosphere. You might be thinking, “There is no need to focus on this, there is no real difference.” But oh there is. No one notices a smooth transition. No one after a service goes up to someone saying, “Oh man, the way you directed us to the screen for the video was so good!” That’s my point.

No one notices a smooth transition, but they WILL notice an awkward one.

Some steps we have taken to prevent bad transitions:

  • Pushed everyone to be done 30 minutes earlier than normal.
  • All tech, band, and people on stage attend the run through.
  • We do a halfway mock run through of the services.
  • Basically just running through all the transitions with the person doing the welcome, the band, the announcer, the speaker, into videos, and out of prayers.
  • It takes about 20-25 minutes to walk it out so the band knows when to come up, who to welcome up to speak, the tech knows who’s mic needs to be on, how the lights need to be for a certain section of the service, etc.

I can almost promise 100%, if you take just the little extra time to work on transitions in the service, your services will run so much smoother. If you notice the little things before the service, then the congregation wont notice them during the actual service… because there wont be anything to notice because you already took care of it in the pre-service run through.

 Do you already do something like this? What does yours look like? Is this something that would help your service?

In high school ministry, Leadership, Ministry Idea, organization, personal growth, service programing , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
permalink

Ministry Idea: 2 Minute Greeting

April 25, 2012 — 1 Comment

This could be the most awkward thing your group does or it could be a gold mine of perfection. It could be the quiet kids worst nightmare or it could be their saving grace and actually get to know someone. You wont know until you try it.

This is something we started to do here at Saddleback HSM. This past week we introduced a 1 minute greeting right before the message. We put 1 minute on the screen and told everyone to meet someone new who was sitting next to them, and then when the time was up they would sit down and the speaker would be all set up and ready to go.

We were super weary and nervous about how it would go because it is something that has never been done in this ministry before. To our pleasant surprise, when we announced that they had one minute to meet someone…THEY ACTUALLY DID IT! It was pretty great, we saw this huge community building time evolve right in front of our eyes. When the time was over, they were just getting into it, so the next weeks we will be adding a minute for a 2 minute greeting time.

You can place it where ever you think it would best fit with your service, we ourselves are going to try to move it around the service to see where it best fits. The 2 minutes is all it takes for a new student, or maybe a quiet student, to get connected and actually KNOW and MEET someone before they leave. One of the main reasons why new people (in bigger groups at least) do not want to come back is because they did not make a connect with anyone while they were there.

The 2 Minute Greeting time worked for HSM in these ways:

  • It brought down the awkward approach of a student you do not know. If the title of this section is “Greeting Time” they then know that a leader coming up to them is not a creeper but wants to meet them during “Greeting Time”.
  • It allowed the HSM staff and our weekend volunteers make connections to the students around them that they were not able to make before the service. With all our volunteers and staff spread out throughout the crowd, we are able to cover so much more ground, making sure we are making a connection with as many students as possible.
  • You can either start a really great conversation with someone next to you, or you can try to meet and know as many names as possible during the 2 minutes.
  • It creates a sense of community in the room because we try to make it clear to make sure everyone needs to say hi and meet 1 person so everyone feels connected.
  • Students like to socialize, and typically will if you give them a chance. So why not give them a chance during service where you can join them in that time.

Something huge (a relationship, a time of prayer, etc.) can come out of something as small as a connection made during a 2 minute greeting time. So I think it is worth it.

Do you have something like this? How does that look? Would this not work in your group? What are hesitations for you? Let me know!

In Devotional, God, high school ministry, Ministry Idea, service programing , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
permalink

SHOUT OUT FRIDAY: Holistic Programming in Student Ministry

April 6, 2012 — Leave a comment

I would love to make Fridays a shout out day of great stuff I have been reading as well. Sharing the wealth, if you will. Post is written by a friend Nate Davis doing some great things in CO. Click here to head to his blog.

When I first began working in student ministry, I honestly had no idea what I was suppose to be doing or why I was suppose to be doing it… I thought that hanging out with students and planning fun events was all I had to do in order to be ‘successful’… If I could get the kids to show up, I thought I was doing a pretty good job.

Now before you start thinking that I was completely foolish [although I will admit that I was a bit foolish], I did at least have a few goals that motivated me… I wanted students to know who Jesus was, and that they didn’t have to go through this life on their own. I still believe that those are great goals to have… Yet experience has taught me that having goals alone is not enough. We need methodology.

It’s imperative that we start addressing the needs [both felt and real] of the student we serve when we think about the how and why of ministry instead of focusing solely on the things that we enjoy or the things that we are good at… For this to happen we need to understand what the purpose of a student ministry even is, because deep down, we know that it’s about more than fun and games.

If we were to boil it down to a basic statement, it would look something like this… The purpose of a student ministry is to produce disciples who are following Jesus–both now, and in the future [ie after they leave high school]… Once we understand this purpose, we can start to come up with some ‘sign posts’ that will help us determine whether or not we are moving in the right direction. A good indicator of this will be the health of our ministry..

We need to be growing [spiritually and numerically] and going [serving the local community and the world at large].

Getting to a point where we are growing and going can look different based on our context, but it will still have a few basic components that will be common regardless of programs offered… So where to begin? To start, we need to think strategically about the way we program. We need to be more holistic.

I think Acts 2:42 provides us with an excellent model to work with when it describes what the early church devoted themselves to doing [apostle's teaching, breaking of bread, fellowship, and prayer] as a part of their holistic discipleship strategy. In the ministry I lead over, we have taken the things seen in Acts 2:42 and re-framed into four categories that make sense to both students and leaders:

  1. Communion [Worship--Both individual and corporate]
  2. Community [Fellowship--Meeting the 'felt' needs of our students]
  3. Character [Discipleship--Meeting the 'real' needs of our students]
  4. Commission [Mission and Evangelism--Living out our faith in the world, both local and global]

When planning any kind of program or event for our ministry, we ask ourselves how it fits into one of these four categories… If it doesn’t fit, we chuck it out. Having this framework allows us to be intentional about [1] how we program, and [2] ensuring that we aren’t lopsided [i.e. making sure we hit each of these four categories on a regular basis without focusing too much on one of them] in what we offer to students.

To produce disciples who are following Jesus years after they have left our ministry [the goal of a healthy ministry], each of these areas needs to be addressed because each one represents an important component of a disciples life.

The true measure of our success as youth workers isn’t going to be how many students we can get to show up to our programs. It won’t be how many kids we can get to go to camp… While these things can be indicators of how we are doing in the now, they don’t tell us the whole picture.

The true measure of success is going to be whether or not the students we are leading today are still following Jesus 20 years down the road…

For students to get to that point, we to make sure we are meeting ALL of their needs today–both the real, and the felt.

In Leadership, Ministry Idea, organization, personal growth, Shout Out Friday , , , , , , , ,
permalink

Being “The New Guy” on Staff (Part 2)

April 4, 2012 — Leave a comment

Last Wednesday I started talking about things pastors who are transitioning into a new ministry (me included) need to keep in mind while adjusting into the ministry. If you didn’t see that one, click HERE and you can jump to it real quick and read it. Here are some more thoughts:

 Shake Things Up A Bit- They hired you in that position for a reason. This doesn’t mean change everything right away, if you read my last post that is exactly what I don’t do. But leaders are different and you are different than the person who last had your position and in all honesty, keeping everything the same is not wise either. God has made you unique from everyone else. That means he has given you different leadership skills, creativity, passions, etc. than the last person. This makes you unique, and if you were to be exactly like how the last person was you would in a sense kill off some of the uniquess of the skills God has given you. You cant be the copy of someone else because they are not you and you are not them.

Deciding when this change needs to come is the tricky part. Trust me, I wish there was an easy textbook answer that says exactly when to apply change. Change to a certain aspect of the ministry requires prayer, planning, and seeking advice from others who can help you discern when to apply the right change and when.

Be a Sponge-  At first, you almost need to act as if you are completely new to ministry. If you are coming into a team, it really does not matter what experience you have until they begin to trust you and your leadership. Your experience counts for something, a foundation to work off of, but understanding the culture and context of the ministry is key. You will destroy everything you have planned for the ministry if you don’t first understand the culture, the ministry history, the core leaders, the core students, and the back bone of the ministry first. Take time to absorb everything around you so you understand why they do certain things a certain way to help you for when it is time to adjust some things. This first will establish trust and show you are a learner first.

Transitions are not easy, but they are necessary sometimes. These are just some things I have learned as I still am in transition. Do you have anything else to add? Any other tips?

In Leadership, personal growth, Transitions, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , ,
permalink

Being “The New Guy” on Staff (Part 1)

March 28, 2012 — 7 Comments

Being the new guy is tough. You are used to being “the guy”. The guy everyone knows and wants you to hang out. The guy everyone went too, the funny guy in videos or the guy on stage. There is none of that when you come into a new place. You are a “nobody” in a sense and can do a number on your self-esteem if you let the enemy mess with your mind. I say this because it is something I am working through with my own new transition. This is my first real transition into a new position into a new church and I am not going to lie, some areas in this transition have been tough, mostly because it is an inner battle. Don’t get me wrong, the new place is amazing, and the people are nothing but a blessing to work with, most of the difficult parts are “the new guy” learning to transition well, which I am learning as I write this.

I thought I would write down a few things I am learning during this new time to maybe help anyone else going through a transition into a new ministry.

Get to know the staff- You are going to be doing ministry together, you are going to be doing life together. There are going to be countless hours in the office together working side by side. Make it intentional to hang out with every single person on the team, one on one. To grab lunch, get a coffee, and hear their heart on life and ministry. It will help more than any other thing with transitions.

Be the tortoise, not the hare: slow and steady change- I admit I failed at moving slow when I first arrived. We just get excited to be there, all these ideas filled our head and we want to do every single one of them. I actually had to be called out by one of the team members to slow down a bit because I didn’t even realize I was doing it, and I am thankful he did. Even just the ideas in your head about switching things up can ruffle feathers and can make you loose credibility amongst the team. You need to do a good job just sitting back, being patient, and getting to know the culture of the ministry. We need to remember if we are in it for the long haul, there is no need to want to do everything all at once right now; there will be plenty of time for your ideas.

Take note of everything!- As the new guy, you come in as someone who does not know the history of “this is how we always have done it”. You have the fresh eyes to the ministry and are able to notice things or ask the questions of “why don’t you do _______?” You are able to see things that others do not because they have been doing it for the same way for a while. Take note of everything you are thinking and seeing because when you are no longer the “new guy” you will be “THE guy” and be able to bring change in ways they have not even dreamed of yet.

To be continued…next Wednesday

In God, Leadership, Transitions, Uncategorized , , , , , , ,
permalink 7 Comments