SMALL GROUP DISCIPLESHIP #6: What should small group software do for you?

Hi all,
Just a reminder that this blog is about what I am learning right now.  So we are continuing this series on small groups, based on things which I have learned and am still learning.  Many churches have a dream of "being a church of small groups",  but they often fail to make this happen.  What goes wrong?

We've looked at a lot of different elements necessary for a successful small group ministry in your church.  To be successful, you need to understand the power of Christian community so much that you are committed to it as a church.  You need to apply the four core parts of small group life.  You need to follow the Old Testament principles for long-term group care.  You need to make some functional infrastructure changes in the way you do small groups in your church.  And last week's blog was really important; you must have coaches, and appropriate spans of care, and - most importantly - constant care and attention, like a gardener.

This last point is really important.  When you are running a decentralized ministry like small groups, you must have somebody (or some bodies) who are responsible to simply oversee the whole process.  If everybody is so busy leading their own small groups that they cannot look after the small group system, then the entire structure is likely to fall apart.  Now in most cases it won't collapse instantly;  it will simply begin to fray at the edges, and then people will start to drop out of groups, and then leaders will drop out and not be replaced, until the entire system has fallen apart, and you no longer function as a "church of small groups"; you are simply a church with a few disparate small groups scattered helter skelter throughout the body.  That is not what you want to have happen.

The way to prevent this from happening is through constant care and attention.  As I've said, somebody must be responsible for the care and oversight of all the small groups and leaders.  And once you have that person, you need to equip them with the tools to help them succeed.  Now the tools for success will begin with good training curriculum, regular group meetings, and some sort of small group tracking software.

It is the small group tracking software which I want to focus upon.  Here's why:  when I was serving as Pastor of Disciple Making at Wheaton EFC in Wheaton, IL, I was responsible for building up the small group ministry.  It was a church of 1,000 people with a very strong Adult Bible Fellowship system in place.  They had a handful of small groups but wanted to have more.  So we started working at it, and eventually had 25 groups before responsibilities took me elsewhere.  So these were 25 small groups in addition to the dozen or so ABF's, all of which I was responsible for.  It didn't take too long to begin to lose track of which people were in which groups.  Or which groups were still meeting consistently.  Or who was the current leader of one of the ABF's this week.  Oh, we could muddle along, but that didn't feel like excellence to me.  I thought it would be important as a caring shepherd to know what was going on.

Here's a verse that relates to this:  Be sure you know the condition of your flocks, give careful attention to your herds.  (Proverbs 27:23).

A good small group software tool at that point would have been very helpful.  Now, no group software can replace good leadership oversight; but it can make the job easier.

So what should small group software do for you?


It should ease the burden of oversight in the following ways:
Small group software should:

1 - Give you a quick overview of EVERY PERSON WHO IS LEADING a group in your church

It all rises and falls on leadership.  Your leaders are the shepherds of your sheep.

2 - Give you the names of EVERYONE in a small group in your church

This is important, but it is also kind of a preparation and set-up for the next point.

3 - Give you the names of everyone NOT IN A SMALL GROUP in your church

If you are not constantly being reminded of who is not yet in a small group, your people will fall through the cracks.  This is where the health and growth of your church is determined.  You need to help the people who are not in a group to find a group.

4 - Easily communicate with all of your small group leaders at once

Communication is important, but it can be time-consuming.  A good small group software should let you contact your leaders directly from the software.  

5 - Easily communicate with an entire small group

If you distribute your group software to the group leaders, then they can just contact their group as they are updating the group contact information, or filling out the monthly report for the small group coach.

6 - Track a history of each person's small group involvement

We quickly forget what someone is capable of, or what they have learned, or achieved, unless we have an easy way to remember.  Good small group software will show you a history of which groups your various members have been a part of.  This also assists your efforts to link people relationally or to provide pastoral care.  If you know what other groups they have been in, you will know who they know and can continue fostering those relational connections in times of need.

7 - Easily move people from group to group en masse

Rather than having to go to each person's record individually, and marking them as in a new group, small group software should be able to do this in one action.  If the entire class completed a course and then all moved on to another one, you should be able to easily "promote" everybody into the next class with one click.

8 - Track whether or not prerequisites have been completed before assigning someone to the next class in a course

If your church uses a small group system which requires completion of certain prerequisites (101 before 201, for example), then your software should prevent people from registering from one class if they have not completed the previous class.

I've been thinking a lot lately about small group software, and what it should be able to do.  There have been some churches helping me to work this out, and we have now nearly completed the work on Shepherd Care Group Discipleship Software.   We'll let you know when we get it done.

What about you?  If you lead or manage small groups, I would love to hear from you about what you need or want in small group software.   Send me a reply if you can.

Thanks and God's best to you and your ministry,

Dr. Bill
HighPowerResources.com
SermonBase.com

SMALL GROUP DISCIPLESHIP #5: Critical elements for small group success

Hi All,
Many churches have a dream of "being a church of small groups",  but they often fail to make this happen.  What goes wrong?

Keeping a small group ministry running well is a full-time job.  What makes a small group ministry distinct from other church ministries is that it is decentralized.  You could run a youth group, or a children's ministry, or a men's ministry, and basically have everyone together in the same room for teaching or worship.  But a small group ministry, by its very nature, is going to be spread out all around your city or county as people meet together in their living rooms.  The role of a small group director does not involve the same skill set as that of some other program director.  S/he needs to be much more of a nurturer, or gardener, rather than a rancher.  It involves carefully inspecting each small plant or bush, and seeing how it is progressing or growing.  The work which needs to be done is best accomplished with a small gardener's implement; not a backhoe.

So a good small group director needs to be constantly in contact with his or her various leaders.  Now, depending on the size of the church and ministry this may mean that the Director has contact with each small group, or what is more likely, the Director has contact with Coaches, who then oversee and help each specific small group.  But the point is, that since small group ministry is a decentralized ministry, you need to make accommodations for an appropriate span of care.

What do we mean when we refer to a small group coach?  A small group coach has a responsibility to oversee from three to six specific small group leaders.  The Coach needs to be there to help with problems, come up with creative ideas for outreach or service, help with 'strays', and to provide accountability.  A small group coach does not lead a small group.  His or her job is to shepherd the small group leaders within his/her span of care.  If the span of care is too large, then the Leaders aren't cared for properly.  If it is too small, the Coach may try to squeeze in another ministry focus, and then the small group focus will suffer.

If you want to know how to train the small group coaches, a good place to start would be my four-part series on coaching from earlier in the year.

So the key idea is this: if you want to have a successful small group ministry in your church, then your small group leaders will require constant attention.  This means that either you hire a staff person to oversee your small groups, or you assign a high capacity volunteer, who is not involved in any other ministries in the church, to oversee your small groups.  

And of course, the senior pastor must be involved in some significant way.  This would mean at least two things:  First,  the senior pastor is in a small group.  Second, the senior pastor must, in some small but important way, be a part of the small group leadership meetings.  It could be just a greeting, a devotional, or a teaching, but the shepherd needs to keep a close eye, and have a good relationship with the under-shepherds who are helping to care for the flock.

Next to the role of quality Biblical preaching, the health of the small groups within your church, is a deciding factor on the health of your church.  And the health of your small groups is impacted by the spiritual health of your small group leaders.  So, how are you caring for them, recruiting them, training them, and coaching them to succeed?

So, some of the critical elements for success in your small group system are:

• Decentralized Ministry Skills
• Appropriate Span of Care
• Coaches
• Constant Attention
• Senior Pastor Involvement

In summary, this is a lot of work!  But it is important work to the heath - and growth - of your congregation.  So see that it is done well.

And please, please, don't deceive yourself into thinking that things are going 'just fine' and people will talk to you if there are any problems.  Things may not be going fine, but you wouldn't know, if you don't have a good care system in place.  And people will eventually talk to you about problems, but usually not until it is too late.  That is what good small group coaches should be helping you with.  They should catch a hint of trouble early so that you can deal with it before it gets out of hand.

When your church gets to a certain size, then some good tracking software would help the task as well.  The small group director needs some tools to help oversee the flocks well.

So, I've just touched on a few of the key elements for small group success.
What else have you found is critical for success?  Send me a note.

In the mean time, God's best to your small group ministry,

Dr. Bill

SMALL GROUP DISCIPLESHIP #4: Can we really be a church of small groups?

Hi All,

Many churches have a dream of "being a church of small groups" but often fail to make this happen.  What goes wrong?
The dream is admirable.  There are some definite benefits to being "a church of small groups."
But what do we even mean when we say that?

I came across this factoid about small groups at the Church Growth Factoids section of HighPower:

“Based on lots of research over the years, there are some standard guidelines.  Ideally, you have a minimum of 60% of your adult worship attendees involved in either classes or groups.  If you can get more than 70%, you’re excelling.  Between 50 and 60% is fair, and less than 50% is poor.”

(McIntosh, Gary.  OutreachMagazine.com.  Sept/Oct. 2007.)

So the goal is to have more than half of your adults in small groups, and preferably more than 60%.  In fact, I doubt that you can even make the claim that "we are a church of small groups" unless more than half of your adults are involved in small groups.

And they question I want to ask, is 'Why limit it to adults?'  We have both our youth and our children involved in age-appropriate small groups at our church of 700.  This sets people up, and prepares them for a lifetime expectation of being in true Christian community with others.

So how many of your adults or people are in small groups in your church?

What are the Benefits of being a "Church of Small Groups"?

• 1.  True Christian Community

My first blog post in this series talks about the elements of Christian community (Acts 2:42-47) which are available through small group participation.  Imagine having a whole church of people who truly experience what it means to live in Christian community with other brothers and sisters in Christ.

• 2.  Pastoral care for everybody

Every pastor who loves his people wants them to be cared for properly.  But he also realizes that he and even the whole staff are not sufficient to meet all the needs people have in their lives.  This is the power of small groups.  Small groups do not have to be assigned pastoral care, or told to care for their people; they do it naturally.  It just happens.  And so a "church of small groups", is a church of good pastoral care.

• 3.  Personally applied discipleship

Small groups apply Christian discipleship in a very personal way.  As the group works through a Bible study, or discusses the pastor's sermon, they find ways to make it relate to their lives.  It is the best application of the Word, in the context of a small group who can talk about how to make it real in their lives.

Why the dream goes awry:
But if the benefits of small groups are so great, then why does it not always happen?  What stops the dream from becoming reality, or from not being completely fulfilled?  I see three primary reasons, and if one doesn't stop a church, the others do.  They are interdependent, and intertwined as to how they prevent a church from achieving this dream.

• 1.  Saying it, but not doing it

Lots more churches say that they are a church of small groups, than really are.  "Having" small groups in your church is not the same as "being" a church of small groups.  There needs to be real intentional effort.  This is indicated by either having a staff person or a volunteer whose sole job is to oversee and guide small group creation and maintenance.

• 2.  Doing it, but making it optional

If a church begins doing small groups, but just lists it as an optional item on the menu instead of the main course, they will not achieve the goal of "being a church of small groups".  But when we say "optional", we obviously can't force people to join a small group if they don't want to.  But you can design your church infrastructure such that it is very difficult to avoid them.  Larry Osborne has a great book out, entitled "Sticky Church", in which he talks about how they focus so much on small groups, that people don't have a lot of other options if they want to meet some people or get some personal discipleship.

• 3.  Requiring it, but not streamlining programming

Third mistake which prevents the dream of "being a church OF small groups" from becoming reality, is to offer small groups and even strongly encourage it, but then also offer too many other choices on the menu.  It is difficult to choose the main course, when there are so many salads, appetizers, and desserts also available.  Take a look at all the programming in your church, and make a list.  How many other choices do you have in your church besides joining a small group?  Too many, and that's a problem.  Most churches in American are over-programmed.

How to fix it:
OK, so you want to "be a church OF small groups", and you see some of the problems in your own church, so how do you fix it?  Here are just three ideas I have, which is based on comments of experts in this field.

• 1.  Pastor must lead

This is the number one, must have, can't avoid it, requirement to become a church that truly values small groups.  Until and unless the Senior Pastor is involved in a small group it will never happen in your church.  If he gets involved, two things will happen:  First, everyone who cares will take note, and begin reshaping their own values in that direction.  Second, s/he will make reference to his/her small group in sermons and begin sharing stories of this or that, and people will hear how helpful the group is in the pastor's life, and this will make an impact.

• 2.  Infrastructure must support it

Second step is that your church infrastructure must support small groups, not work against it.  What do I mean by that?  First, as mentioned, you need to either require it, or strongly support it.  In my Chicago church plant, we made small groups the place where you became a member of the church.  If someone wanted to join the church, they had to take the membership class (which most all churches require), but then THE SMALL GROUP LEADER HAD TO LISTEN TO THE TESTIMONY AND SIGN THE MEMBERSHIP FORM.  So they had to join a small group to become a member.  How does your infrastructure support small groups?

• 3.  Dump the good for the best

As mentioned already, Larry Osborne in the book Sticky Church makes some great comments about this.  You need to get rid of a lot of other ministries to really focus on small groups.  What if you've been around for a long time as a church, and you already have a plethora of various miscellaneous ministries clogging up the discipleship system?  You will have to practice benign neglect and let some of them die, so that small groups can gain a more central focus.

Can we really become "a church OF small groups"?  Yes, I think you can, but it will take work and will not happen by accident.  You will have to be intentional, and smart, and persevering to make it happen.  (And when we finish "Shepherd Care Discipleship Group Software", you will be able to use that to help make it happen at your church.)

I would be curious to find out:  What have you seen work, or not work, when trying to apply this model?  Drop me a comment and let me know.   Thanks!

Wishing you God's best for your ministry!

Dr. Bill

SMALL GROUP DISCIPLESHIP #3: The Old Testament Pastoral Care Plan (Exodus 18)

Hi All,
This story in Exodus 18 known as "The Jethro Plan" has always fascinated me in terms of its potential for successful small group ministry.  God has revealed the plan for providing care for all the people, without burning out the pastor, and yet it seems that many churches have a difficult time putting this plan into reality.

It is a key method, not only for protecting leaders from burnout, but for applying to your church's small group ministry and care plan.

Now, here is how NOT to do it.  Many people, in reading this plan, simply decide that "what we will do is to simply divided the congregation into six or eight or ten groups (depending upon how many leaders we have in our key oversight board), and everybody will be responsible for a set number of people to call and check up on."  Has that EVER worked for anyone?  I've never seen it work.  Why?  Because it is not ORGANIC.  It is not natural; it is not in harmony with the natural human need to connect with others through a true and living relationship.  It often turns into a perfunctory phone call from one relative stranger to another relative stranger to talk about how things are going.  How successful do you think that will be?

What people often forget when they read Exodus 18 and then try to apply it to their church by this kind of artificial division is that all throughout the pentateuch, as the children of Israel were wandering around and trying to live their lives, is that they did everything in the context of family relationships.  The people were grouped by tribes, and the tribes represented actual bloodlines of relational connection to each other.

Now we obviously can't do that in the local church, but we can follow other relational connections.  For example, there is no natural relational connection between everybody whose name starts with A through D, for one elder, and E through L for another elder.  But you can begin to get some hope of relational connection if you organize the oversight of your people through your small group relationships.  At least there, we know that the people feel a connection for each other.

So organize your small group system this way.  That is, not only does each small group shepherd care for their own group, but you have some other overseers, or coaches, who care for the small group shepherds.  Who cares for your small group leaders?  What kind of span of care do you have?  That is, how many small group leaders is each one of your coaches/overseers responsible for?  Span of care is a huge issue if you want to successfully oversee your small group ministry.  When Carl George wrote his books on small groups years ago, he recommended a span of care of 5 groups per oversight shepherd.  However, Bob Logan, in the context of his coaching ministry recommends a span of care no greater than three, and often two.

Here's why:  if you want to have a successful small group ministry, which helps your leaders to overcome their problems, provide care for their people, teach, visit, outreach, etc.  then you must implement a leadership coaching plan.  That is, you must have trained coaches whose sole job is to come alongside two or three small group leaders and coach them to success.  And these coaches have to make this their primary ministry in the church.  If they try to squeeze it in with everything else they are doing it will not work.  The reason is that it takes a lot of effort to do it well.

So, the span of care needs to be small enough to work, and these overseer/coaches must be trained on how to be a good coaches so that they help the small group leaders to be stronger and better group leaders.  What you don't want to have is a case of reverse delegation going on, such that the overseer/coaches think that their job is to solve the small group leaders problems.  It's not.

So, put this all together and what do you have to provide a good pastoral care plan for your church, using the Jethro Plan of Exodus 18?

• 1st - you must have organic relationships between leaders and people.  

That is, no arbitrary lines can be drawn (at least with an American church); there must be actual relationships.

• 2nd - you must implement overseer/coaches for your small group leaders

• 3rd - you must have a small span of care of about two or three leaders per coach

• 4th - the overseer/coaches must be trained in proper coaching techniques

In my experience, I believe that these are the four principles of implementing an effective Jethro Plan in your church's small group system.

If you want to see a Bible study on small group principles from the Scripture, I have a free "Small Groups in the Bible" study in the Coaching section of HighPowerResources.  Just go to the Coaching section, and find the category on the right entitled, "Small Groups".  You will see several free resources there to help you with your small groups, including an SG Covenant, and a guide for communion in your small groups, as well as said Bible Study.

What do you think?  Is there anything that we can learn from the Jethro Plan for our churches?

By the way, our Shepherd Care Discipleship Group Software is going to be released soon, to help with this oversight process.

God's best to you and your ministry,

Dr. Bill

SMALL GROUP DISCIPLESHIP #2: How Necessary are Small Groups?

Was C.Peter Wagner right or wrong?
I had the privilege of receiving most of my doctoral courses from Dr. Wagner, and I, like many others, have read and consumed his many volumes on church growth.  One very influential book which he wrote was entitled, Your Church Can Grow.  It was originally written in the '70's and then revised in the '80's, and republished in 2001.  It is a GREAT book.  It covers the seven vital signs of church growth.  It has wonderful church growth principles in it.  It was in that book, and probably some of his others in which he talked about the need for a C-C-C church structure.

This is a reference to the three key structures necessary for a healthy church:

• C - Celebration

This is your typical Sunday or weekend worship services where everybody gathers together to worship.

• C - Congregation

This is your mid-sized group; typically a Sunday School class or Adult Bible Fellowship.  Please note that even though he uses the word  "congregation" he is not talking about the church worship service, but a gathering of part of the church.

• C - Cell

This is the small group.

Wagner's contention is that you need all three of these to have a healthy and strong church.  And he is, no doubt, right as usual, for most churches.  (Although I have read some who contend that it is very difficult to find a church which does all three of these well.  For example, when I was serving a major suburban church in Wheaton, IL, they had a very solid ABF ministry.  It was completely a part of their church culture, so much that anytime you met someone new, the second question after asking their name, was "Which ABF are you in?"  But they had a rather weak small group ministry, for a church of 1,000 people.  Even a strong effort to start small groups was met with limited success.  And the reason was that most people's social needs were met through their ABF's, which functioned as mini-congregation's within the church.  Why did they need a small group?  They had their worship, Bible teaching, fellowship, and outreach needs  (all four elements of true Christian community from last week's blog)

But my question about him being right or wrong, is specifically this:  Is that middle C (the 'congregation') absolutely necessary for church growth?  A lot of churches have pretty much focused just on the main worship service and small groups, and have done just fine.  Many of them pursue the 'two-winged' model of church, where Celebration is one wing, and Cell is the other.  And their church is able to fly quite well, thank you.  

So, is there any guidance from Scripture on this?
Well, here is one verse that makes me think:

Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ.  (Acts 5:42)

This is a great verse that highlights the balance experienced by the early church between large group life ("in the temple courts"), and small group life ("from house to house").  This clearly points to the Celebration & Cell concept, but doesn't do much for supporting the need for the mid-sized Congregation group life.

Small groups are clearly a powerful tool for people to experience Christian community, as I mentioned in last week's blog, and they are a critical element in church structure.  So is the middle-C, that is, the mid-size Congregation even needed?

But perhaps there are many churches out there who do just fine without small groups?  I'd like to hear about churches that are able to fulfill their mission without small groups.  Maybe they only need the Big C, and the Middle C?  What has worked for you?  

We will continue talking and thinking together about small groups next week as we look at the Old Testament plan for pastoral care.

Until then,
for Christ and His Kingdom,

Dr. Bill

SMALL GROUP DISCIPLESHIP #1: The Power of Christian Community (Acts 2:42-47)

The Power of Christian Community (Acts 2:42-47)

I have a suspicion that most Christians have never experienced the power of Christian community.  And this is a big problem if you are trying to create a robust small group ministry in your church.  If most people have never experienced deep Christian community, they are not likely to easily jump into the small groups that you are offering.

What percentage of people in a typical church participate in small groups?

I went to the HighPowerResources.com Church Growth Factoids page, entered "small groups" in the search field and found this:  In 1992, Leith Anderson of Wooddale Church in MN said the following:

"Small groups are not for everyone. Even those churches that heavily promote them often do not exceed 50% of their overall constituency who regularly participate in small groups."  (A Church for the 21st Century)

But I recently finished the book "Sticky Church" by Larry Osborne (see my blog post on "Sticky Church vs. Simple Church").  And in that book he speaks quite a bit about how many adults are involved in his small group ministry (partly because they apply Simple Church concepts).  Here's what he says, 

"Without cutting the competition so severely, there is no way we could have reached an 80 percent participation rate in our small group program. And without keeping things trimmed back, we wouldn't have been able to sustain it, either"  (Sticky Church).

So we have two viewpoints here.  One pastor says 50% small group involvement is tops and another says that they have reached 80% small group involvement.  I would guess that Anderson's comments about 50% is probably closer to the average success experienced by most churches, and Osborne's numbers at 80% are an exception that proves what you can do if you stay focused on it for decades as he has in his church.  But please remember that these are the best rates experienced by these churches.  What this means is that for most churches, a very large percentage of their adults, probably more than 50% have not been in small groups.

But what is it that we want them to be experiencing when they get into a small group?  Christian community.  That ideal, as I see it, is best expressed in Acts 2:42-47:

2:42   They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.  43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.  44 All the believers were together and had everything in common.  45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.  46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,  47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.   (Acts 2:42-47)

And as you know, most people see four key elements of Christian community here:
1.  Biblical study  ("devoted to the apostles' teaching)
2.  Fellowship
3.  Worship & Prayer
4.  Outreach ("And the Lord added to their number")

This is the church in microcosm.  I really believe that if we can get most people together into their living rooms to really BE the church together, they will be hooked; they will choose to stay together in Christian community because it is so fulfilling to their souls.

In my personal experience of being in small groups, I have felt more love, affection, both given and received, when in the company of a small band of brothers and sisters who take the time to get to know each other, and share honestly about what God is doing in our lives, than in most other contexts of church life.

I believe that if the pastor believes in the power of small groups, because s/he has personally experienced it, then much of the Body will follow.  Of course, as Osborne has indicated, you as the pastor also need to be making some good programming choices for your church to make it easy for them to get into a small group.

Q:  What do you think?  Do you agree or disagree that most Christians have not experienced the power of Christian community?  How about pastors?

For the Kingdom of Heaven,

Dr. Bill

COACHING BASICS: What Coaching Is & Is Not

Hi All,

Continuing from last week, where we talked about WHY you might need a coaching ministry in your church, we'll talk about WHAT exactly coaching is and isn't. Let's start with defining what Coaching is NOT.

--Coaching is NOT Counseling.
Coaching is not about focusing on the emotional trauma or difficulties of life. It is not about a focus on the problems of the past, but the opportunities of the future. Coaching is not about the past -- it is about the future.

--Coaching is NOT Consulting.
The definition of consulting is bringing in an expert who tells you what to do. And we know what the definition of an "expert" is: An "X" is a nobody, and a "spurt" is a drip under pressure! Coaching is not about telling others what you know -- it is about asking another what they know.

--Coaching is NOT Mentoring.
This is probably the hardest one to understand. But mentoring is defined as someone who has gone on before & has greater experience, and now comes alongside someone in the same career field and shows them the way.

But that is not what coaching is about. Coaching, when done right, does not require specific knowledge about a certain career field. I have coached people who have worked for IBM, as technical consultants; I've coached people who lead businesses, or are moms, or serve as media specialists; and I've never done any of those things.

Coaching is about drawing out from someone else what they want to do & need to do. They need to know their job; I don't. My job is to help coach them to their best choices. Coaching is not about leading someone, but drawing out from them.

There are two keys to Christian coaching:
First, asking powerful questions which help people to discover their true calling, motivations, goals & actions.
Second, Christian coaching includes a spiritual, upward focus in which we help people to ask God to show them His specific will for their lives.

OK, so we have defined what coaching is NOT, and what are the two keys of Christian Coaching. So let's try to put it all together in a working definition: "Christian coaching is helping people to discover God's specific will for their lives in the day-to-day responsibilities of work and life, by asking powerful questions which help people to discover their true mission, motivations, priorities, and actions."

So, in review, last week we covered WHY you might need a coaching ministry in your church, and now this week WHAT coaching is and is not. Next week, I'll take you through a sample coaching session so that you get a feel for it. Then we will finish up with HOW to get a coaching ministry started in your church.

God's best to you and your ministry,

Dr. Bill

Book Review: "How the Mighty Fall"

Hi All,

I really like Jim Collin's books; they are very readable with a lot of great business anecdotes and real-world applications - for those in business. But, the question I always ask, as I'm sure you do too, when reading a great business book like this, is how does it relate to the local church?

The full name of Jim Collin's book is "How the Mighty Fall and Why Some Companies Never Give In". The bulk of his book summarizes "The Five Stages of Decline", which are:
Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success
Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of Moore
Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril
Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation
Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death

The first question I want to ask is whether or not it is even possible for a book squarely aimed at business leaders, and filled with business stories and illustrations could have ANY application for the local church. To this, I have to say that 'yes, the principles apply for one primary reason: both businesses and churches are filled with human beings! Human nature being such as it is, people are people wherever you are.'

Now, as Christians, we believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to help people to overcome the less positive sides of their personalities, and to overcome temptations. But this book is specifically about people who, because of great success are more prone to the temptations of pride or hubris born of success, or to a greed for more, whether money, power, or fame. It has to be admitted as we look at the history of the Christian church in recent history, that it is just as possible for Christian church leaders to be overcome by pride or greed. Although the Holy Spirit is there to provide guidance and wisdom and humility, we see that not all church leaders avail themselves of His help and support.

That is why, then, I believe that there are some lessons which can be learned for us in the church from this book. So let's look at each:

Stage 1: Hubris born of success
We only need to read a few editions of Christianity Today, or USA Today, to find stories of churches which are incredibly successful, and whose leaders begin to display a taste for the trappings of success. It could be boards which give them an unprecedented raise in salary; it could be leaders who buy mansions for themselves; or begin wearing tons of bling as a conspicuous statement of success. Or in less visible displays of hubris, it could simply be the pastor of a large and fast-growing church who is walking with a little more swagger than appropriate for a Christian leader, and is a little too quick to tell you the attendance numbers of his church.

It happens. And when it does, we don't even need Collins to remind us of the consequences. For three thousand years the Holy Scriptures in Proverbs have reminded us that pride comes before a fall. (A man’s pride brings him low, but a man of lowly spirit gains honor. Proverbs 29:23)

Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More
I've seen churches get into this when their success causes them to begin to focus on other things other than making disciples. We are here to fulfill the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19-20 and make disciples. Many churches in their youthful stage focus on the main thing, but then once they become successful, they start putting on conferences, hosting seminars, and basically telling THEIR story to other churches, instead of telling HIS story to the lost.

I'm not trying to be judgmental here; just making some observations which are hard to avoid. The vast majority of churches are faithfully serving Jesus and the exceptions which make the headlines are a really small percentage.

Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril
I don't have as much experience with this one in the church world, but knowing something about human nature, I can see that there are things to learn and remember and apply to our churches from this section as well. This one could be evidenced in cases where the church begins to plateau, and maybe even decline, but the leaders are not concerned. The may believe it is only temporary, or they believe that it is unspiritual to be concerned about numbers. But if somebody doesn't get concerned, the trend is only likely to continue to go downward. It is the role of pastoral leaders to assess reality and not deny it.

Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation
Hey the church is all about helping people to find salvation, but I don't think that is what Collins has in mind here. What Collins is referring to is when the organization begins to decline and everyone knows it; it can no longer be denied. So the organization starts taking drastic action to try to address it, sometimes veering way off course from the central mission in an attempt not to die.

I've seen churches that do this in various ways. At one point, I was providing some guidance to a couple of churches that were considering a church merger. And the reason they were thinking about merger was the same as the number one reason why most churches consider the same - because they had small attendance each, and they felt that by combining they could get big, and do big things. Wisely, this merger did not happen. And the reason I say that is that you don't get big to do big things; you do big things for Jesus, and then sometimes, as a result, you get big.

Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death
Businesses do this every day, and so do, unfortunately, churches. I have a factoid in the Church Growth Factoids section that says this: "Almost three times as many churches in America are closing (3,750) as are opening (1,300) each year." [LOST IN AMERICA, Tom Clegg & Warren Bird, p. 30].

It happens, but what Collins is saying in the final chapter of his book "Well-founded Hope" is that it doesn't have to. He makes the statement, "If you've fallen into decline, get back to solid management disciplines - now!" [Jim Collins, How the Mighty Fall, p. 119]. This could be easily applied to churches. If you are experiencing decline, you need to get back to solid discipleship principles. Assess the needs of your people and start meeting them, both spiritually and otherwise.

Jesus has called us to "make disciples" (Mt. 28:19). That is the number one calling of every church. Jesus has set the mission, and we need to make certain as churches, whether we are experiencing success or decline, that we focus on this goal. Jesus has called us to win people to faith and then to teach them to follow Him. It's really a pretty simple idea, but the execution of it gets extremely tricky for churches; no doubt about that.

What I learned in reading this book is to focus on, "the main and the plain"; do what Jesus called us to do: Make Disciples.

I know it is not easy, but I wish for God's best for you in doing exactly that.

For Christ and His Kingdom,

Dr. Bill

How to decide if your church needs a coaching ministry

Hi All,

How would you know if your church needs a coaching ministry?
Just try this test; has this ever happened to you?

Someone approaches you about a new ministry idea, and you think it sounds great. So you encourage them to get started. They find a couple of other team members, start making their plans with great excitement and zeal. They meet for a few weeks and then with great fanfare announce the start of their new ministry to the church and community at large. Their first meeting goes pretty well; not quite as great as they hoped, but OK. So they continue with the ministry and you check in with them every now and then, assuring them of your prayers. As the weeks go on, the ministry continues, but it seems from your perspective as an outsider, that some of the enthusiasm is beginning to fade a bit. Then you hear that one of the key leaders has a scheduling conflict, and cannot continue with the ministry. The ministry continues on for a while longer, but they don't seem to be having the attendance they once did. And then eventually, you hear that they are going to discontinue the ministry, because they have too many scheduling conflicts and not enough attendance. And this happens again and again with various ministries and groups in your church.

And if this experience is yours, then that is exactly why your church needs a coaching ministry!

Consider this scenario again if you had a coaching ministry:

Someone approaches you about a new ministry idea, and you think it sounds great. So you encourage them to get started. But this time, instead of just sending them on their way with a prayer and a blessing, you assign to them a Ministry Coach. Because your church has a coaching ministry, you are able to supply coaches for any new small groups, or ministry teams, that want to get started. The Ministry Coach meets with this leader, and asks some basic planning questions that helps them to lay a good foundation. What's more, the Ministry Coach continues to meet with them during the planning questions, and helps to provide loving accountability, so that they follow through on all of their plans before launch. They meet for a few weeks and then with great fanfare announce the start of their new ministry to the church and community at large. Their first meeting goes pretty well; not quite as great as they hoped, but OK. So the Ministry Coach helps them to examine their first meeting, and what went well, and why, in particular, some parts did not go as well as they had hoped. By asking powerful questions, the coach helps them to see their ministry in a new light, as it might really be to someone who attends that ministry. And the Ministry Coach not only asks powerful questions, but doesn't solve their problems for them. By forcing the ministry team leaders to find their own solutions to the various problems they face, the Ministry Coach helps them to 'own' their own ministry; to take responsibility for fixing things and making them better.

As the weeks go on, it seems from your perspective as an outsider that the enthusiasm is actually growing. The leaders are excited and actually seem to be getting a deeper sense of satisfaction from their ministry. Yes, they encountered problems, but with each one their Ministry Coach helps them to find the cause of the problem, and brainstorm possible solutions, and set deadlines for accomplishing those solutions. The ministry goes from strength to strength, and you as a pastor couldn't be happier.

So, because you have a functioning coaching ministry in your church, your small groups and ministry teams are achieving success and people are growing spiritually, and your church is growing.

So, how do you decide if your church needs a coaching ministry?
If your experience is more like the first story, than the second, then you need a coaching ministry in your church.

That's all for now. We'll talk about coaching some more in my next few posts.

Yours for the kingdom of heaven,

Dr. Bill

Sticky Church & Simple Church

HI All,

If you've read this blog for a while, you know that I am a fan of the Simple Church concept. The book Simple Church has really changed the way we do things around at my church. Although we read the book three years ago, we are still applying its principles today. They seem to get truer the older we get as a church.

Well, I have recently finished another great book, called Sticky Church by Larry Osborne. The focus of this book is on the power of sermon-based small groups to make your church "sticky"; that is, the sort of church that people don't easily leave. Larry Osborne has been the pastor of North Coast Church for years, and his wisdom and experience as a pastor comes through many pages of this great book. It is filled with good insights about how church works and doesn't work. It is not faddish. It is based on years of personal experience. He shares in this book how his church implements sermon-based small groups and how such a focus has helped to provide both spiritual growth and assimilation 'stickiness'.

He makes an interesting observation in chapter 12, "Overcoming the Time Crunch". Here's what he says:

"As I travel across the nation, speaking to leaders from various denominational, theological, and socioeconomic backgrounds, I've found they all say the same thing. As a rule of thumb, most people will participate in only two time slots a week. No matter what the third meeting is for or when it takes place; it's hard to get anyone to show up."

(p. 92, Sticky Church)

This, of course, ties in perfectly with the insights of Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger in Simple Church.

I am learning again and again the importance of stream-lining the church calendar so that we as a church can focus on that which is most important. And for us that means weekend worship and one spiritual growth opportunity mid-week. For us that may be a small group or a short-term discipleship course. But if we add too many other events, we distract our people from what they most need for spiritual growth and events.

The question I would ask you, as I ask myself now, is 'Does this plan (for some ministry event) fit with our 'two-slot paradigm'?

If there are only two slots in most - not all - people's lives, what do you want those two slots to be? You need to make a determination of this as the pastor of the church. What is important for the spiritual health of your people? As I ask myself that question, there is not a lot that I feel is worthy of pushing out their need to fellowship and pray each week with some close Christian friends as they support one another in a small group, in the hopes of living a successful Christian life. What is more important than that?

For most churches, if they are forced to choose -- and the pace of life in most communities IS forcing you to choose -- they would pick as number one, the weekend worship, and as number two, some form of small group community for spiritual life and growth.

We all need to keep this reality in mind as we make the programming choices for our busy, busy, busy church calendars.

Yours for the Kingdom of Heaven,

Dr. Bill

Pastor's and Technology

Hi All,

I've got a special word and thoughts for the pastors reading this post. This blog is all about what I am learning related to church growth & church health, and related topics. One issue that is tangentially related to this is the issue of technology in churches and in ministry. Now by 'technology' I am not referring to all the gadgets that are being used, or could be used, for ministry enhancement, such as the accessibility provided by cell phones, or the usefulness of video projectors for class teaching purposes. No, the area I am talking about is the issue of software for ministry.

Many pastors could have their ministry enhanced and strengthened by using software tailored to their needs.

We are moving from the era of the massive software suites to the niche software targeted to specific needs. Software suites like Microsoft Office are gigantic pieces of code designed to meet the needs of everybody. And if you must meet the needs of nearly everybody, that means that it will not perfectly meet the needs of anybody. For example, look at the area of word processors. Microsoft has created Word and filled with it with tons of features so that should anybody out there possibly look for that one particular feature it will be there. But the era of the massive software suite bloated with tons of little-used features is fading away. We are now moving to more customized or niche type of software options. Instead of just a generic word processor, for example, now there are specific word processors plus, such as some designed for screen writers, which combine elements of word processing and data processing into one piece of software. Or there is the highly specialized word processing required for writing doctoral dissertations. These are examples of customized niche software for sub-groups who are looking for something more specific than just a 'word processor'. And now we have that same type of niche specialization for pastors in a piece of software called "SermonBase Message Planning software". It is a word processor plus a database combined together so that a pastor can both create a sermon using the typical word processing features for text creation and highlighting, but it also contains a database so that a pastor can archive and search for sermons based on multiple criteria including Scripture, Topic, Title, Date, or several other options. SermonBase is just one example of the way that pastor's can do a better job at ministry by accessing and using software specifically designed for what they do. Why continue to use a generic word processor which is designed for nobody in particular, when you could have something specifically designed to help you do a better job at the one activity you spend more time on than any other in a typical week: sermon preparation. Something as important as the Word of God deserves a better tool for preparing to deliver it. That is the benefit of a specifically-targeted software like "SermonBase".

Or consider the important pastoral function of tracking people who are in your church in the various small groups. Most pastors need to know who is in which group and how things are going in that group. And can you believe that some churches still try to track those groups by using an Excel spreadsheet? Why?? When there are customized tools out there specifically designed to help churches do that very important function well. There are a lot of tools out there, and you are free to research one that fits for you. But I couldn't find any that I was totally happy with, so I made my own. I call it "Shepherd Care Discipleship Group Software" (yeah I like long names). It helps to track people in the various groups, and where they are in your discipleship system or your small groups. Using the shepherd metaphor it tracks the "sheep" in various "flocks" headed by various "shepherds" (or teachers) in your church. It is made for churches so that they can do a good job at fulfilling Jesus' command to care for the sheep.

There are other things I could say about this, but I am really convinced that the church needs software specifically targeted to help the church be the church. That's why I've been working on HighPower Resources software for some time now.

For the Kingdom of Heaven,


Dr. Bill

Leadership Development: Part 4, Supervise

Leadership Development is a four-part process which includes: Recruit, Train, Delegate, & Supervise.

It is critical for churches to practice leadership development because the future of their church depends upon the capacity to add quality, spirit-filled leaders to positions of influence throughout the church.

This final week we are looking at Supervise. Many people will interpret the word 'supervise' to refer to telling other what to do. But if we are truly developing leaders, and not just workers, then another type of supervision must be put in place. Leaders have the capacity to make their own decisions, set their own goals, and execute them. So if the person you have been working on in the previous three stages of this developmental process of Recruit, Train, Delegate is a leader, you need something consistent with who a leader is in this, the final stage, of Supervision.

The way to supervise leaders, I've found, is to exercise my coaching abilities and help them to discover and find their own way through difficulties. Leaders need a coaching form of supervision. I've blogged about coaching quite a bit in this blog, because that is a key area of learning for me in the last several years.

If you want to Supervise your high-powered leaders in your church, you will need to learn how to coach them. (Please do a search on this blog for other articles about 'coaching'. Also we have many free coaching resources here.)

The end result of good coaching, is a stronger leader. If you tell, instead of coaching, what you end up doing is weakening this leader whom you have been working on for so long, and helping them to develop as a leader. Telling them what to do makes them dependent upon you. Once they've done the one task you told them to do, then they have to come running back to you like a lapdog saying, 'OK, I've done that; now what do I do next?' You don't want that. You want people who have their own dreams and goals for a particular ministry, who have enough initiative to make it happen and even invite others to make it happen.

Coaching maintains this internal drive within a leader, not by telling them what to do, but by asking, and coaxing it out of them as to what their dreams and goals are. Then coaching simply consists of helping them to develop action plans to achieve THEIR goals, not YOUR goals. That's a big difference. And that is effective supervision.

So leadership development is a critical need in churches today. Many church leaders just hope and pray that God would send them leaders. But those who know how to raise up leaders through the Recruit, Train, Delegate, and Supervise process, will be able to 'grow their own' in the name of Jesus and for His kingdom. And that makes church leadership really satisfying.

Yours for the Kingdom of Heaven,

Dr. Bill

Leadership Development: Part 3, Delegate

Leadership Development is a four-part process which includes: Recruit, Train, Delegate, & Supervise.

It is critical for churches to practice leadership development because the future of their church depends upon the capacity to add quality, spirit-filled leaders to positions of influence throughout the church.

This week we are talking about the Delegate portion of the leadership development process.

So far we have looked at the first two parts of the leadership development process, which were to Recruit & to Train. Once you have discovered someone who has leadership gifts, and have begun the process of training them, the point comes where they must actually be empowered to do the job; and that is called Delegation.

Delegation is not as easy at it looks. If your goal is to actually develop leaders, and not just lighten your work load, then delegation actually takes some planning and follow-through to do it well. You want the process of raising up leaders in your church to be successful, and you want those up-and-coming leaders to enjoy the experience of leadership development.

There are some common mistakes that many leaders make when they are attempting to delegate a ministry responsibility to someone. If the goal is to develop leaders, then here are Four Mistakes to Avoid When Delegating:

Mistake #1 - Dump & Delete
D & D means that once you hand off a ministry responsibility to someone, you pretty much wash your hands of it, and forget it. You don't want to be bothered by the responsibility anymore, and so you "dump" it onto someone, and then you "delete" it from your brain. As far as you are concerned it is gone for good.

This happens when a leader is short-sighted about what s/he is actually trying to do. If you are just trying to lighten your work load, then Dump and Delete does the trick. But if your goal is to help another Christian brother or sister in your church, to grow and develop as a leader, then D&D is totally unacceptable.

You will need to follow-up and check-in with this person to see how they are progressing. You will want to coach them through any problems and help them to feel successful.

Mistake #2 - Micro-Managing
This is the opposite of the Dump & Delete problem. Micro-managing occurs when the pastor or leader just cannot really let a responsibility go. They don't trust anyone else to do the job quite as good as they do. Their favorite phrase is 'if you want something done well, you have to do it yourself.' Micro-managers are constantly stepping in and tinkering with somebody else's ministry in an effort to 'help them out'.

The problem with micro-managing if you are truly interested in leadership development, is that your up-and-coming leader never has a chance to really learn how to lead by themselves. This robs them of self-confidence and undermines the leadership development process in their lives.

The solution is a willingness to trust people. Pray like crazy to God, and then trust the person as they serve. Check in, and keep an eye on things, but resist the urge to guide every detail. There are many ways to get the job done. Let your new leader discover their own.

Mistake #3 - Reverse Delegation
Reverse delegation occurs when your new leader encounters a problem that they don't feel they can handle alone. So they come back to you as their trainer and describe the problem to you and then ask for help from you. If you at that point say something like, "Here let me help you with that", then they have just handed their job back to you. You gave it to them when you initially delegated the responsibility, and now that they have a problem, they have, in essence, come back to you and handed it back to you and said, 'Here, fix it." That is reverse delegation.

Rather, what you should do when they encounter their first tough problem, is to practice some of your coaching skills (which I have written about quite a bit in this blog). You would respond by asking them to brainstorm some possible solutions to solve this problem. Then after they list a number of potential steps which could be taken, you ask them which one of those they want to try first. After they have selected one, you encourage them, bless them and pray for them, and then let them solve their problem. It is, after all, theirs to solve and not yours since you have delegated the ministry to them.

That is, if you did truly delegate the ministry to them. Which brings us to our fourth and final delegation mistake:

Mistake #4 - Responsibility without Authority
This occurs when someone is given the task and job to accomplish a ministry, but no true authority to make it happen. For example, they are not given financial control of the project; they must come back to someone else anytime they want to spend any money on the project or ministry. Or any significant decisions must be run through some other committee which is not even directly involved in the ministry they are trying to run.

This situation occurs very often in paid staff situations in which a staff member is hired to do a job, but then must report to a committee of volunteers for approval for most ministry actions of significance. Although the staff member is involved in the ministry every day of the week, s/he must get approval for key actions from a group of people who only attend a committee meeting once a month, and then never give a thought to the ministry in-between time.

So, in the process of training up leaders, there are four parts involved: Recruit, Train, Delegate and Supervise. Delegation is an art that requires sensitivity to the needs of the person who is getting trained. It is one part of a big goal to ask God to help raise up more leaders in your church who can serve the church, and God, well.

Next week we will look at the final part of the leadership development process, which is supervision.

Yours for the Kingdom of Heaven,

Dr. Bill

Leadership Development: Part 2, Train

Leadership Development is a four-part process which includes: Recruit, Train, Delegate, & Supervise.

It is critical for churches to practice leadership development because the future of their church depends upon the capacity to add quality, spirit-filled leaders to positions of influence throughout the church.

This week we are talking about the Train portion of the leadership development process.

Many people will automatically equate this with a lot of intellectual content. While that is a necessary part of leadership training, it is not the most important part. Adults, however, learn best by doing. So the focus for adult leadership training, rather than having a classroom, teaching sort of feel to it, needs to be more focused around "Apprentice Systems".

So what are the elements of successful Apprentice Systems:

1. Coaching -- this involves not 'telling' but 'asking'; Where do they feel the need to grow? What do they want to do to learn the leadership skills necessary?, etc. Coaching involves asking powerful questions to help others grow and develop. You can check out other blogs on coaching on this site by entering "coaching" in the search dialogue box in the upper left. I've written quite a few blogs on coaching.

2. ShowHow Training -- this involves the training method explained in 2 Timothy 2:2: "And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others." That is, Paul who was writing this verse to Timothy said, "I taught you; now you teach others, who can teach others." This is called ShowHow training. It goes like this:
Step 1 -- I do it & you watch;
Step 2 -- You do it & I watch;
Step 3 -- You do it & someone else watches

3. Ministry Descriptions for everything
Pastors tend to underestimate the amount of uncertainty and nervousness which the average layperson feels when encountering a new ministry job. For most people, who have not served much in the ministry before (and if you are training leaders, you will be having an increasing number of just those sort of people), they need some specific guidance on what is expected for certain key ministry jobs. That is why you need Ministry Descriptions for everything. HighPowerResources.com has a great template for writing Ministry Descriptions. It's in the Coaching Resources section here.

4. Internal Farm Systems
A ministry culture needs to be developed which has the expectation of "each one teach one"; that each ministry is training leaders for their own ministry. A number of ministries do it this way: they form a leadership team of three people: Chair, Vice-chair, and Past-chair. After the Chair of the ministry has served for a year, they move to the Past-Chair role, so that they are still available to help the Vice-Chair, who has now moved up to the Chair role. Then a new person is added to the Vice-Chair role, and they have a year to watch before they are expected to lead (Show-How Training). And even when they become Chair, they know that the former Chair is always there in case they need help. It's a good systems and results in real strength and longevity for ministry leaders.

5. Ministry Placement Interviews
We use a system at Crossroads with a team we call the "Ministry Way Team". (It ties in to our metaphor for discipleship: Main Street, Community Circle, Ministry Way.) The team serves up spiritual gift inventories, both individually and in our SHAPE class to help people discover their calling. Then a spiritual gifts interviewer meets with them and helps them to discover the best place to use their gifts in ministry. They are armed with Ministry Descriptions, listing the spiritual gifts needed (See sample here), and open positions and contact information. It works.

Training is the second part of the four-part Leadership Development process of Recruit, Train, Delegate, and Supervise.

Next week we will cover Delegate.

Yours for the Kingdom of Heaven,

Dr. Bill

Leadership Development: Part 1, Recruit

HI All,

Leadership Development is a four-part process which includes: Recruit, Train, Delegate, & Supervise.

It is critical for churches to practice leadership development because the future of their church depends upon the capacity to add quality, spirit-filled leaders to positions of influence throughout the church.

The first part of this process is to Recruit.
I do not use the word "recruit" in the typical fashion envisioned of begging people to "fill empty slots" until they give in. Rather, I think of it in terms of Calling. This is all about calling; discovering God's calling in people's lives. The best indication of someone's calling from God is their spiritual gifts.

The Recruit portion of leadership development must be tied in to helping people to discover, understand, and use their spiritual gifts. When you find someone with spiritual gifts that can be used for leadership, you can begin the process of helping them to unwrap those gifts for the glory of God and the growth of the church. Spiritual gifts which would help in this regard are: Leadership (obviously), but also Teaching, Administration (which means 'organizing people for ministry'), and also some aspects of Exhortation & Encouragement. If someone has gifts related to Service or Helps, they may be great servants in the church, and willing to work very hard, but are probably not suited for leadership roles, which require more initiative than perhaps someone with Helps may have.

So Recruiting involves helping people to discover their gifts, and then to understand them. Some people don't know where or how or if they should use their gifts. I had one potential leader in a church, who was very, very good with up front ministry roles, tell me that he felt guilty because he liked to be in charge and be in front and talking to people. I told him there is no reason for him to feel guilty because he is simply relishing in his God-given capacity to lead people. So people have to understand the gifts which God has placed in them.

And then after discovering and understanding, they have to actually use them. This is where your role as pastoral leader comes in. You need to help the people with leadership gifts to be placed into roles where they can be used. If you don't use their gifts in the church, they will naturally gravitate to situations where they can express and use their gifts, whether in the church or not. So help them to use their God-given gifts to make a difference for eternity by leading key ministries in the church.

Recruit is the first part of the four-part process of leadership development. Recruiting is all about Calling. Your job is to help people to Discover, Understand, and Use their spiritual gifts for the glory of God and the growth of the church.

Next week we will discuss the second part of leadership development, which is Train.

Until then, for the Kingdom of God,

Dr. Bill

Leadership Development: A Four-Part Process

HI All,

You probably already know that most churches never get beyond the 150 mark. But did you know why?

There are a few key factors to help a church break beyond the so-called "200 Barrier" (more like 150 - 250). One of those factors is the pastor's leadership. The pastor has to want to, and be able to, develop leaders. Some pastors don't want to develop leaders, because they are insecure. They want all decisions to go through them, or they want to be in the 'know' about anything happening in the church. But lots of other pastors do want to grow, but don't really know how.

In both cases, if they can not or will not develop leaders, it is nearly impossible for the church to grow beyond the 200 Barrier because about 150 people is getting to be the limit in terms of most pastor's administrative and leadership and interpersonal limits. Any more than that, and the work, the decisions, the interpersonal demands begin to mount up along with everything else a pastor is required to do, besides Sunday preaching. Thus between 150 - 250 gets to be the limit. That's why 85% of churches are at or below the 250 mark.

But if you want to get beyond this, there are some things which you can do.

Let's talk about some of the steps necessary to develop more leaders in the church to help you carry the load.

If we want to break it down into its elements, leadership development has four elements: Recruit, Train, Delegate, and Supervise. (I want to thank my friend, Bill Price, Executive Pastor of Autumn Ridge Church in Rochester, MN for summarizing these for me. This blog is about what I'm learning, and currently I am learning this.)

Four parts of leadership development: Recruit, Train, Delegate, Supervise.

Ephesians 4 says that God gave some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers "to equip the saints for ministry".

The mission and the task of the church leadership is to equip others for the work of ministry. Leadership development is about equipping the saints for ministry. The way you equip saints for the ministry is through the four-part process of Recruit, Train, Delegate, Supervise. They each have a biblical form and function.

Pastors - and their staff - should be spending a significant portion of their time developing leaders. According to Dann Spader of Sonlife, it should range in the order of at least 15% of their time. Some business leaders, like Jack Welch I am told, spent the majority of their time developing up and coming executives, because they know that leaders are the future of any successful organization. As Bill Hybels says, the church is the hope of the world, and the hope of the church is its leaders.

Pastors, do you hire your staff to DO ministry or to EQUIP for ministry? Are they spending all of their time doing the Bible studies, leading the groups, presenting the talks, etc. How much time do they take to train others to do ministry? Are they practicing "Show-How" ministry training? (I have several other blogs over the last couple of years focusing on apprentice training.)

If the staff is not developing leaders, and if the pastor is not developing leaders, then the future of your church is in jeopardy. Leaders must be constantly moved into the pipeline and developed and trained and be given leadership opportunities so that your church tomorrow will be as strong or stronger than it is today.

In the next four blog posts, we will talk about each of these four elements of leadership development: Recruit, Train, Delegate and Supervise.

Until then, for the Kingdom of Heaven,

Dr. Bill

Why I need Shepherd Care

Hi All,

Coincidentally, I also have a comment this week about some other software I am developing. I mentioned SermonBase Message Planning Software last time, because I was preaching and needed some old files that I had developed before SermonBase. Well this week, something cool happened with another piece of software which we are developing, called "Shepherd Care" Group Software.

Here's what is my problem, maybe it is yours: tracking the various people who are in the various groups in the church. I've tried other software to help make this happen, and have not been satisfied. Mostly the software is overkill - both in price and installation and usability. Most of the group software which I have found is one 'module' in a gigantic software package that tracks all aspects of church life: finances, membership database, giving, groups, emails, directories, etc. But in some cases this is way more trouble than it is worth. I know, because we have some of this at our church now, and it is very cumbersome to enter & manipulate information and get reports.

Installation is overkill too, because often they are either server-based, which means I must be at church and hooked into the church's main server; or else they are web-based and slow.

I needed something that was nimble and quick; easy to access, desktop-based, and inexpensive to deploy. So then I was contacted by "Pastor Pete" from a church called "Cowboy Fellowship' in Pleasanton, TX that was growing gang-busters and needed a software package to track their progress. So we are developing a tool which I call "Shepherd Care" and it is group tracking software. It uses the metaphor of Shepherds, Sheep, and Flocks for tracking groups, and classes, and small groups in your church.

We are testing it right now in both churches and making usability improvements as we go along.

Well here is what happened just a couple weeks ago with Shepherd Care, and which is convincing me that this could be really useful software: One of the reports we've included in Shepherd Care is a monthly "Flock Report" which is emailed to the leaders each month. They complete it and send it back. One of the questions on that report is 'who did not show up this month at your group?' And the name of a particular young man was listed on the report. So our discipleship team gave that leader a call to check on why this individual did not show. When the follow-up call was then made to the young man, he said something like, "I'm going to take a break from church for awhile." The leader was able to lovingly let that young man know that that wasn't really OK with him or the group because they loved him and would miss him. Because of that conversation, the man stuck around, and it was really a joy for me to see him in church last week!

Shepherd Care helped us prevent one of our sheep from straying.

Now you may say, "Well any alert small group leader should be able to do that on their own!" And that is true; but you and I both know that doesn't always happen. People are busy, and sometimes they either don't notice, or don't get around to contacting a straying member. The value of having a piece of software like "Shepherd Care" is that it helps provide redundant systems of care, so that if one person misses the chance to follow-up a straying sheep, through monthly reports like the "Flock Report" someone else might notice a pattern and catch it. And in this case it works. It is an example of how the right easy-to-use software can make your life as a caring leader easier, not harder.

It convinced me that we need to keep fine-tuning it and getting it ready to release to churches soon, because it is useful for kingdom work. And that is what it is all about.

Yours for the Great Shepherd of the sheep!

Dr. Bill

The Preaching Proposition, Part Two

Hi All,

Last blog I talked about the definition and significance of the Proposition in your sermon. Your proposition is your sermon in a sentence. It says everything in a single sentence. Then preaching is just a matter of unpacking and releasing all that pent up meaning from your high-powered sentence into an entire sermon.

One of the foundations of preaching a good sermon is crafting a really quality propositional statement. If you do not get your proposition correct, you will be off-kilter for the entire message. If you cannot express what you want to say in a single sentence then you do not really know what you want to say. And if you spend an entire sermon of 30-40 minutes only kind of hitting at your target, you will never quite hit the mark and your listeners will be less than impressed by the time they spent with you.

But how do you form that really good proposition so that you are clearly and succinctly saying what you want to say?

The way to get at a good proposition is by clearly stating your goals.

Every single time that I preach I determine what are my goals for the sermon. I write them right at the top of my sermon sheet before I get going. From that I can begin to write a good Proposition. In fact, this is so important, that when I designed my SermonBase software, I created a separate tab just for the Message Goals. There are fill in the blank spots for Intellectual, Emotional, and Behavioral goals. Then when you have written your sermon, you hit the "Sermonate" button, and your entire sermon is printed out. And right at the top of the sheet, already printed for you by SermonBase, are your goals. That way you will not forget them as you begin your sermon.

But how do you write the goals?

Determine your Intellectual, Emotional, and Behavioral goals for every sermon. An easy way to remember this is by using the phrase, "Head, Heart, Hands". Head - what do you want them to know? This could be doctrine; it could be specific content of a Biblical passage; it could be the consequences of sin; it could be the assurance of salvation. The fact is that unless you preach and teach truth, they will not know it. You must give them some content to feed their mind.

Heart - What do you want them to feel? Emotions, as you know, are the key to behavioral change. People must feel it in their heart before they will ever change their ways. And so a sermon must challenge the heart in some way. You may want to give them a sense of joy at knowing Christ; or fear of the consequences of sin; or a sense of confidence that God will never take His love away. But if you want to make a behavioral change, the doorway is through the heart.

Hands - What do you want them to do? Changed life is the proof. Where's the fruit? One result you may want to have as a result of listening to your message is that people will behave differently.

And so you put these three together, and they form the foundation to figuring out your proposition. Let's take the example of finances and debt. Intellectual Goal (Head) - I want the congregation to understand some of the Biblical principles of finances. Emotional Goal (Heart) - I want the congregation to have a proper respect (maybe even fear) of debt. Behavioral Goal (Hands) - I want them to get out of debt!"

Put this into a propositional statement and we might get something like, "Rigorous application of the Biblical Principles of Finances will help you experience financial freedom." Although the proposition doesn't use the word debt, we use the positive side of that by mentioning "financial freedom". But we clearly get at the topic of debt by calling the sermon, "How to Get Out of Debt". You can find it in the sermons section of HighPowerResources.com. And so in this sermon their are three key parts that get at each of these goals: First, the emotional is addressed by "signs that you are in too much debt". This has enough hooks to grab most people who have any debt. The second part of the sermon teaches the actual Biblical content of the Intellectual goal by teaching seven principles of Biblical Finances. And then the third part of the message gets to the behavioral goals by addressing "Seven Steps to Financial Freedom". This sermon is unique in that each section has a completely different goal; most sermons mix up the emotional and intellectual and behavioral goals for each point. But the sermon on debt clearly shows the divisions of the goals and how they are tied in tightly to the Proposition.

Having clear goals helps you to write a proposition that gets to the heart of what you are trying to say. Then once you have the proposition you want, you are well on your way to a good sermon.

God's best to you on your sermon prep, for the sake of your listeners!

Dr. Bill

The Preaching Proposition, Part 1

Hi All,
One thing that continues to surprise me is the number of preachers who do not use, or do not understand the significance of the preaching proposition. By 'proposition', I mean it in the classical homiletical definition; that is, to put more colloquially, the proposition is the "sermon in a sentence".

How is the Proposition different from other parts of the sermon? If someone asks you, "What are you preaching on?" And you reply with a one or two word response, that is the Topic of the Sermon. If they ask you, "What passage are you preaching on?" And you reply with a book, or verse(s) of Scripture, that is the Text of the Sermon. If someone asks you, "What are you trying to achieve in your sermon?" And you reply with something you want the people to know or do, that is the Goal of the sermon. But if someone asks you, "What are you trying to say in your sermon?" If you then reply with a single sentence that summarizes your sermon fully, THAT is the Proposition.

The Proposition is the "sermon in a sentence". This single sentence should get at the heart of both the topic and the goal of the sermon. In one sense, the Proposition is the entire sermon; everything else you have to say comes out of that single sentence. That sentence is a seed; and inside of that seed is the entire sermon. As you preach, you are unpacking the meaning and depth and significance of every word in the proposition. In fact, the content of the sermon should not veer too far off from the initial proposition which you present to the congregation. It should have some emotional, or logical, or close theological connection to what you have to say in the proposition.

For example, in a series about Faith & Fear (the Topic), on a series through Joshua (the text), I had the following Proposition (sermon in a sentence) for the message on Joshua 1:6-9, called "How to Develop a Courageous Faith". The proposition was: "Your faith focus determines your future". The three points of the sermon, then, each unpacked with Biblical exposition and verses, each of those three elements: Faith, Focus, and Future. The entire thrust of the sermon was contained in that single sentence, but it took a half-hour or more to unpack the meaning and intent behind those words.

A well-crafted proposition is the foundation to a well-crafted sermon. If you know what you want to say, and where you are trying to take the congregation, you are on your way to a good sermon. On the other hand, if you cannot formulate what you are trying to say in a single moderate-length sentence, then you do not yet know what you are trying to say. PLEASE, for the sake of your listeners, know what you are trying to say before you start speaking!

One of the most important tasks, then, which you must do as you begin your message preparation work is to formulate that proposition. That is the key to everything else you have to say. It takes some time to develop a good propositional statement. Before you begin extensive work on the rest of the content of your sermon, you must develop a clear, relatively concise propositional statement. You must be able to state the sermon in a sentence.

But how do you get to that point?
In the next blog, I will share with you about the sermon funnel process; also about the significance of goal statement before you begin the sermon preparation process.

For the Kingdom of Heaven,
Dr. Bill

Church Growth & Assimilation, Part 4

This is our final installment (for now) on the topic of assimilation.  We've already examined in the previous posts the topics of how to know if assimilation is happening, how to identify people who don't identify themselves as guests, and who you should really focus your assimilation efforts upon.  

Now we have to address this tricky and difficult subject of 'churn'.  Churches don't make a lot of reference to this topic, but businesses do, especially subscription-based businesses like Netflix, for example.  Customer churn in the business world is also referred to as attrition or turnover.  It is the recognition that it is much easier to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new customer, which makes this an important concept in the business world.

How does that relate to the church?  In the church it is not about customer acquisition, or retention, it is about loving people in such a way that they feel they are cared for and a part of the family.  If they feel like they are both loved, and they have a purpose in this new-found family, then they will stick around. If either one of those two factors are not realities for them, then they will leave.   

"Churn", to use the business term, occurs after assimilation has been successful.  You can't lose them if you never had them, so churn as a concept can only occur if you have been successful at your mission to win them over to be part of your church family.  Once having done that, you might be tempted to sit back and relax and say, 'Mission accomplished.'  But such is not the case.

Let's say that you define assimilation in your church as successfully welcoming a guest into your church family, so that six months after their first visit, they are now a member of your church.  That is successful assimilation.  But the next period of time of maybe six-months to a year, are also important that you continue to help them in two areas.  They need to continue to feel cared for, and they need to have a sense of purpose in your church.  They need to know how they are an important and contributing member of the body.

This is important because sometimes churches make guests feel really welcome and in the excitement of joining a new group of people and finding out all the things your church has to offer, they jump on board with both feet, and sign up as members, and start attending regularly, and bring their kids to children's or youth events.  But once that initial warm glow wears off, they need something sustainable for the long haul.  They need to have real friends, and they need to have meaningful ministry jobs.  If either of these two are not solidly true for them, they may become your next 'churn' statistic.

So it comes down to this: church health includes having the sort of relationships and ministry in your church that are actually healthy!  That is, there must be more there for the long haul than just the initial excitement.  Your church needs to be able to have the sort of environment that helps new people to develop long-term sustainable relationships, and long-term meaningful ministry.  

Some churches have great assimilation rates, 20%, but also really high churn rates.  They keep a large percentage of guests, who join the church, but then 12 - 18 months later, the people have become inactives, or have left to go elsewhere.  Other churches may have a modest assimilation rate, like 10%, but then they seem to keep their people forever.  Which would you rather have?

Experienced people in both the business and the church world will tell us that it is much easier, and satisfying, to keep people for the long haul.  In the church world, this means that people have found their home with you, and you are becoming increasingly the family of God that Jesus wants you to be.  And that is what it is all about.

Yours for the Kingdom,

Dr. Bill

Church Growth & Assimilation, Part 3

Hi All,

Assimilation is one of those difficult to track tasks that absolutely must happen if your church is going to grow.  Moving people from being 'guests' or 'visitors' to becoming 'regulars' and then 'members' is what assimilation is all about.  Every successful church finds a way to do this well.

We've talked about how to know if assimilation is happening, and how to track people who don't announce their presence to you, in the previous two blogs on this subject.  Now we need to ask the question, 'Which visitors should I pay attention to?  Are some guests more important than others?'  (Yes, we know that everybody is important; but where should we focus our assimilation energies?) 

In this case, we must say that the second visit is the most important visit (not the first).

Now some may say that if we do a poor job on the first visit, then they will never show up for the second visit, and that is true.  No one here is suggesting that you perform a slouch job on the first visit.  But what I am suggesting is that all other things being equal, and assuming that you lovingly welcome everybody who steps through the doors of your church, visitor or not, the one you should really keep your eyes on is the person who has come back for a second look-see.  They are key to your growth.

Second-time guests are more important than first-timers for several reasons:

• First-timers can be just casual visits for any number of reasons, but a second-visit reveals a serious interest in your church.  Think of it like dating.  You might go out with him or her once, but you'll only go a second-time if you really like something about them.  
  
• Especially key is if the second visit is in the next week or two following the first visit  (of course, you won't know that unless you follow the steps outlined in part 2 of this blog)
• Second-timers are where your growth as a church will come from.  In my readings on this subject, stats show that 5-20% is good assimilation for a first visit, but if someone comes back a second time, there is more like an 80% chance they will become a regular at your church.

So, the natural question is, 'What is your plan for second-time visitors?'  You might be sending them a letter, email, or phone call for first visit.  But what about the second one?  Are you doing anything differently?  

If it is true that a second-visit indicates a more serious interest in your church, then your response should be ramped up a bit as well.  Maybe just a letter or email isn't sufficient.  It may be time for a personal phone call, or a FaceBook visit.

We have a guest card that allows indications if they are a 1st, 2nd, 3rd visitor and we have a separate response for each of those.  What's your action plan?

Next blog, we will address the final topic related to assimilation, which concerns the dark side of the assimilation problem:

• What's your "churn rate"?

Until then, God's best to you and your ministry,

Dr. Bill

What is your definition of Church Success?

Hi All,

How you define success as a church affects almost everything you do, so you need to make sure your get it right. Get it wrong, and you will be leaning your proverbial ladder up against the wrong wall. Get it right, and you can make a difference for eternity in the lives of many, and earn yourself a "Well done, good and faithful servant" from the Lord.

I'm going to cut to the chase and give you this definition as revealed in "Entrepreneurial Faith". The full name of the book is: "Entrepreneurial Faith: Launching Bold Initiatives to Expand God's Kingdom" by Walt Kallestad, Kirbyjon Caldwell, and Paul Sorensen. It's a great book; maybe I'll do a review soon. But for now, I just want you to see this definition of church success from them (in my own words as a formula): "Success = Obedience + Faith.

OBEDIENCE: Jesus told the story (Matthew 21) of the father who asked each of his sons to do something. The first son said "I will not" but then later on changed his mind and went to work in the vineyard as asked. The second son said "Yes" right away when asked, but then never did go work in the vineyard. Question asked by Jesus, "Who obeyed his father?" Summary: Obedience is key to church success, and life success. If you do not obey, nothing else matters.

But here is where we part with the clan of Christians who believe that obedience is enough. They couch it in pious terms like, "Jesus didn't call us to be successful, just faithful." And by 'faithful' they mean obedient at best, and at worst, if we just go through the motions of doing what God has called us to do then that is all He asks of us.

But this sort of mentality forgets other important verses, like the parable of the talents, in which the master was not content that his servants took care of what was his and just kept their nose clean. He was looking for a profit, for a benefit, for a result from the talents he entrusted to his servants. Those servants were expected by him to go out and invest and risk and try to do something with the vast sums of money to which they were entrusted. They were required to walk by faith and make something happen. That is, obedience alone was not sufficient; he was expecting some initiative and some valour and some courage to make a difference. Obedience for the sake of the status quo would not be enough. They were expected to exercise FAITH.

FAITH: Obedience is needed, but not only obedience. And faith is needed, but not only faith. We need them both. "Obedience puts faith into action" is one of the statements that Caldwell and Kallestad make in their book. James said "Faith without works is dead."

Why are these both needed? Because faith is what energizes all of our obedience with spiritual power. If we just dully obey God without any faith, we are like the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son, who dutifully obeyed his father by working in the fields as he should, and yet he had no love, no joy, no sense of life. The prodigal son at least sinned boldly and learned his lesson. The elder brother was just as miserable in a long-term chronic way.

Put them both together, friends: Obedience + Faith, and you've got a winning combination for Christian success and church success. BTW, if you want to buy the book you can get it in the HighPower Books section here. It's on page two of the "Church Growth" section.

That's what I've learned this week, and it's making me think.

For Christ and His Kingdom,

Dr. Bill

Church Health Resources

Hi All,

There's a lot of great help out there for pastors who want to make their churches strong and healthy.

Recently I was reading "Winning on Purpose" by Kaiser, and he had a section entitled, "Training and Coaching for the Team". He provided a list of the following sites for congregational ministry help:

Accountable Leadership (Kaiser) www.accountableleadership.org
ChurchSmart Resources (NCD) www.churchsmart.com
CoachNet (Logan) www.coachnet.org
Easum, Bandy & Associates www.easumbandy.com
GHC Network (Church Multiplication) www.ghnetwork.org
Gospel Communications www.gospelcom.net
Griffith Coaching Network www.griffithcoaching.com
Leadership Network www.leadnet.org
NexStep Coaching (Hoyt) www.nexstepcoaching.org
PastorPreneur (Jackson) www.pastorpreneur.com
Purpose-Driven Church (Warren) www.pastors.com
Willow Creek Association (Hybels) www.willowcreek.com

And, of course, my favorite, www.HighPowerResources.com, where you can find the Software, Sermons, Seminars, and Coaching to empower you for church success.

These are all great helps in building a great church.

Remember, we are all working for King Jesus to build up His Church for which He died.
We didn't die; He did.
So it matters to Him how you lead HIS Church.

God's best to you,

Dr. Bill

Simple Church Synchronicity

Adopting a simple church philosophy is the easy part. Making it work with your already existing ministry systems is the challenging part. Unless you are a church planter with no currently existing ministries to deal with, you must consider this factor if you hope to adopt a simple church model at your church.

(“Simple Church” is a reference to the book by Thom Rainier & Eric Geiger, Simple Church.)

Here is a recent discussion about applying Simple Church concepts to your announcements:

Simple Church Advocate: we don’t do any announcements unless they relate to our two core distinctives

Listener: “What about your men’s and women’s ministries? What do you do when they want to announce a new Bible study or a men’s retreat?”

Simple Church Advocate: “I ask them what the purpose is. If they say, ‘The purpose is because we’ve done it every year for the last 10 years,’ then it’s denied.

Listener: “Why would you do that?”

Simple Church Advocate: “We don’t think it is fair to our newcomers and seekers to distract and confuse them with too many messages and options. If we provide 10 different options during announcements, what are we saying about the discipleship ministries we believe will give them the most help spiritually?”

Listener: “Sounds like you are going to organize yourself simply out of existence!”


So, who is right in this exchange? It presents the challenges of synchronizing the Simple Church principle of Focus (Clarity, Movement, Alignment, Focus) with any church which already has programs in existence.

What is the best way to handle this dilemma? Is it a free-for-all for anybody who wants to promote their ministry event? How do you decide which ministries to promote or not promote, or (the unheard of), cancel a ministry that has been in existence for years?

Just a thought….

Dr. Bill

VARIETIES OF THE COACHING EXPERIENCE

Hi All,

There is something new I am learning in the realm of coaching; something that is obvious when said, but not so obvious when experienced; that is, there are varieties of coaching experiences. Or said another way, not all coaching experiences are equal. I've found that depending on the needs of the individual, the coaching experience will vary widely from person to person, or even from session to session with the same person.

Here is the ideal theory: you walk a person through the 5 R's of Bob Logan's Coachnet.org. Those 5 R's being:
Relate - reconnect relationally and find reason to celebrate
Reflect - help the client to consider where they are at in terms of their mission and goals
Refocus - help the client to consider next action steps needed to take
Resource - help the client to discover and locate any resources which will help them in their endeavors
Recommit - to the selected action steps

But the reality is that many times, depending where a person is at, a large amount of time may be spend in just one of these categories as you help someone make their way through their current dilemma. At the start of a coaching relationship more time may be spend at the Relate session. Or, if you meet w/ someone frequently enough, you may need to only apply a cursory review of the Reflect stage, if they feel they are still on track with their mission. Refocus, Resource, and Recommit will also vary from person to person.

Here is another insight; it is related to the issue of directive or non-directive coaching. Bob Logan's organization has an excellent goal to ask the client to direct the entire coaching process, through non-directive coaching. It is equivalent to always asking, "What do you want to talk about today", and then proceeding forward on that chosen path. This system works really well with highly motivated coachees, such as I often work with in the ministry field; men or women who are highly directed and goal-driven. But what I have been discovering as we branch out our coaching more broadly in the congregation, and begin involving volunteers in the process who are not full-time in ministry, is that they sometime need something a little different from their coaching. They sometimes need a little bit of direction and help. When I begin the coaching sessions with them they will sometimes say that they are quite sure what they want to talk about or work one; they ask me for some guidance. And if I am judicious with my comments, I may be able to get them back on track without interposing my own desires upon them. So, I've begun to prepare a bit for some of these encounters with volunteers who need guidance. I've prepared a "Seven Steps to Life Success" coaching guide [which you can download from my website, under Coaching Resources]. I also sometimes walk them through a mental grid of steps they are taking towards personal growth; the 'personal growth' set of coaching questions. Each of these have been helpful tools to use when people need just a bit of directed coaching.

Coaching is a very personal activity, which needs to be tailored to the needs of the individuals being coached. The recommended systems are all very good, but they are just guides which serve the needs of the coachees.

Just a thought to shine up your coaching...

Dr. Bill Miller

QUALITY COACHING WANTED!

Hi All,

Hey it is tough to develop a high-quality coaching experience on the church-wide level. It takes a lot of advance planning, excellent coordination between ministries, and a system to monitor and continuously develop existing coaches, as well as find new ones. We are making great progress in our church, but it is taking a lot of work.

Here is what we have done & are doing:
1. We received a year's worth of training in coaching from Bob Logan's coaching organization through Coachnet. This included a 3-day seminar in Hollywood, focusing on basic coaching skills, followed by a 3-day seminar in Chicago, focusing on making a movement in our organization, and developing excellence.

2. We spent one year developing our coaching curriculum. We took the things which we learned in Logan's two seminars, and then, under the supervision of one of Logan's Coachnet mentors, we developed an 8-week coaching seminar for our church.

3. Then the three of us each selected two coachees, whom we would train to be coach mentors. We signed them up on Coachnet too. We had them sign up for a two year commitment!

4. We took these trainees through our coach training small group for eight weeks.

5. Meanwhile, they each began finding two coachees, whom they would each work with for six months. These coachees were there to help our Coach Mentors have someone to practice on with their newly developing coaching skills. These Mentors in training, then signed each of their trainees up with Coachnet. (It was free for them as part of the training.)

6. We three pastors who began this process, after having received our own certification as Coach Mentors, continue to meet with each of our Mentors in training, once a month. They in turn, continue meeting with each of their two coachees once a month.

7. We three who are the current coach mentors, meet regularly to monitor the progress of our Mentors in training.

8. We are developing the final half-day seminar, called "Coaching for Excellence" (using Logan's teachings from his seminars). This we will administer this May, as an important part of the Mentors in Training experience.

9. Then each of the Mentors in Training will have to be qualified by the Coachnet organization through use of an on-line evaluation tool, which is completed by their two coachees each.

Then, and only then, we will have our first batch of Coach Mentors successfully trained!
And all of this is under the watchful eye of Logan's organization, Coachnet.
We are extremely lucky and grateful as a church to have them experimenting with the delivery of quality coaching through the local church, so we are being careful to do it right.

Look at how the number grow, and you will begin to see why it is difficult to keep the coaching quality up nice and high:
First, we started with 3 pastors, who all received Coaching Certification.
Second, each pastor found 2 coach mentors, who are in process of being certified.
Third, each Mentor in training, found 2 trainees to practice on.
So, we moved from 3 to 9 to 15 people going through coaching in just a matter of months.
Next year, when we have a total of 6 Coach Mentors, it is going to really start to get tricky to maintain quality.

And Maintaining Quality is the key goal here.
It is relatively easy to get a lot of people into coaching; many churches have tried it. But many have also failed as they let the movement grow faster than their ability to maintain quality. So we are being slow and methodical, and so far are pleased with the results. But we can see that we need to maintain constant communication and set standards continuously in order to continue with an excellent coaching process.

Just thought I would share our progress so far, in case your church is thinking about developing a coaching program.

In Christ, for the Kingdom of Heaven,

Dr. Bill

SMART Goals & Coaching

Hi all,

I've found that helping people to develop SMART goals is a useful way of enhancing the coaching experience. Most people want to do well in life, and have some vague ideas of where they want to go or what they want to accomplish. But for many people, they can be greatly helped if they will apply the hard work of developing SMART goals. This will focus their efforts toward success, and give them a greater likelihood of reaching it.

What's a SMART goal?
SMART is an acronym for five-parts to a great goal. Here they are:

S - Specific
A goal needs to be very specific, and not general. “I will lose weight”
is better than “I will improve my looks.”

M – Measurable
A goal needs to have clear & quantifiable results so that you can
know if you achieved the goal or not. “I will lose 20 lbs.” Is better than “I will
lose weight.”

A - Achievable
A goal needs to be achievable, as psychologists tell us that wins
reinforce future wins. The goal needs to be small enough to be achievable,
but large enough to be meaningful. “I will lose 10 lbs” might be a better
way to start than “I will lose 20 lbs.”.

R – Relevant
A goal needs to be relevant, or meaningful, to you in your life
situation. This answers the question of “Why?” “I will lose 10 lbs, so I can
lower my risk of heart disease” is a more powerful goal than simply “I will
lose 10 lbs”, because it warns of possible consequences in not achieving
the goal, making it very relevant.

T – Time-specific
A goal needs to be time-specific in that a deadline for achievement
needs to be set. “I will lose 10 lbs. by June 1st, so I can lower my risk of
heart disease, (and look good in a swim suit)” is a SMART goal.


Powerful coaching involves asking powerful questions. Using SMART goals as a guide for your discussion will result in some great coaching sessions.

For the Kingdom of Heaven,

Dr. Bill

LOCAL CHURCH COACHING CERTIFICATION

Crossroads Church , where I serve has just completed development of an 8-week coach certification course, in cooperation with Bob Logan and Coachnet. After sending three of us from staff to Logan's coaching training in both Chicago and Hollywood over the past year, we took that training, retooled it into an 8-week small group experience for the local church (with Logan's permission), and began training local church coaches. Over the next 6 months, those coach mentor's in training will receive one-on-one coaching from the three of us staff pastors who have already received certification. Then after they complete a final half-day seminar in May, they will be ready to coach others at our church.

We are convinced that the program will have a strong impact upon the overall health and well-being of our church. The reason is that, as Logan has often stated, the process of coaching an individual often helps them to be twice as effective as they otherwise would be. As we help people to deal with the individual blockages to their own spiritual growth, we will be on our way to developing quality Christians and future leaders of our church.

We have defined several unique end results from our efforts. The first and primary result will be "Coach Mentors" who will be certified by our church (through Logan's organization) to train other coaches, or just to coach individuals towards spiritual formation. Two other outcomes will be small group and ministry team coaches. A final outcome will be coaches who can assist Christians in a general way towards life coaching or spiritual formation.

We are keeping the numbers intentionally small and the quality high. We have been warned by Bob Logan's organization that the most common mistake for churches is that they try to coach too many people initially, and then they lose the focus on quality. So we have limited ourselves to coaching only two people at a time. So the three of us are coaching six people. By the time this year is over, our church will have 9 certified coaches. We will grow from there, and continue to focus on quality coaching experience for everybody.

I will keep you informed on the progress, but so far it has been very satisfying to see the coaches in training 'get it' and begin to understand how coaching is totally unique from other discipleship plans they may have tried in the past.

God's best to you and your ministry,

Dr. Bill

Confrontation: Speaking the Truth in Love

Most relationships, especially those of a supervisory nature, require a time for confrontation. This is a word that many people have a hard time identifying with. The Scriptures use this phrase which is quite helpful: “Speaking the Truth in Love” (Ephesians 4:15). That is probably the best definition of confrontation one could ever find.

But then the question arises, how do I speak the truth in love? Wayne Cordeiro in his great book The Dream Releasers has some great guidance for confrontation, or speaking the truth in love. (This book is available in the HighPowerResources.com book section "Church Growth books".

Four Principles of Confrontation*:

1. Confrontation must be based on relationship

2. Confront the error, not the one who erred

3. Aim for a win-win result

4. Assure the other person of their value

Let’s break that down:
1. Confrontation must be based on relationship.
That is, you cannot confront (successfully, that is) based on your position. Just because you are the ‘boss’ you may be required to confront, but if you want a successful confrontation (as a Christian), then you need to confront the person based on your personal relationship either with each other, because you care about each other, or because of your relationship with the organization (for most this will be your church), or your relationship with Christ. The person you are confronting may or may not care about you or your feelings, but s/he may be confronted about what their behavior or attitude is doing to either the organization, or to the name of Christ. If they do not care about the reputation of the church or Christ, then you have a whole other issue to deal with.

2. Confront the error, not the one who erred
This means, ‘Don’t get personal!’ Focus on the behavior displayed, not the personality flaws of the person you are confronting. Unhelpful, “You really have a problem with the way you talk to people!” Helpful, “When you speak to people in such a surly tone, it upsets them, and makes you seem unfriendly and uncaring.” Keeping the focus on the behavior helps people respond better to confrontation.

3. Aim for a win-win result
No one wants to feel like they have lost the battle or lost face. Protect their dignity while you are confronting, or speaking the truth in love. Find a way that you can get the behavior that you want, and find a way for them to feel like a success in the process.

Let’s go back to the example of our surly staff person. Maybe after some dialogue, you discover that s/he really wants to be liked by people. You can coach them on how to be more liked by people. You can help this person to speak in gentle tones and to look people in the eye, and to smile, and as a result of that you will soon be able to bring back reports of how much s/he is appreciated for their new tone. You win, by not angering the flock; the staff person wins by earning more appreciation and friends. Win – Win.


4. Assure the other person of their value
This is really the heart of it all. People want to know that they are valuable and appreciated. If the confrontation is done in such a way that the people feel undervalued, then you have over-emphasized the ‘speaking the Truth’ part, and have under-emphasized the ‘speaking in Love’ portion. You need a perfect balance between the two when you confront.

Speak the Truth in Love, and you will help your church, and help your people.

That’s all for now,
Dr. Bill

[*taken from The Dream Releasers, Wayne Cordeiro, 2002]

APPLYING SIMPLE CHURCH

Simple Church is a great book with a powerful premise. It is basically that simple, and therefore effective, church's have a clearly defined process for making disciples. And this means a complete process from the moment before a person accepts Christ, to the growth into Christian maturity. According to the book you are not a Simple Church, if you just have a bunch of hodge-podge Bible studies, small groups, and Sunday School classes randomly selected according to the whims and interests of your people. You are an effective Simple Church if you know where you are taking your people spiritually, and have a specific path to take people there. And even then you are not quite a Simple Church, until you have removed everything that is extraneous to Simple Church discipleship.

The four parts of Simple Church life is: Clarity, Movement, Alignment, and Focus.

Here is how this works out in our experience:
CLARITY -- how you define your end-product goal. We spent a year as a staff in defining our discipleship product. We did this by developing 27 character and behavior traits that we seek to achieve as a church. We've put these into three categories of Head (beliefs), Heart (attitudes), Hands (behaviors). Each of the 27 traits reference a particular Biblical trait which defines a mature disciple. We worked these through our entire leadership team, Board, Staff, and ministry leaders.

MOVEMENT -- defines your plan for moving people from non-Christian to mature Christian. And what is required here is that you actually have a plan; just hoping you have enough Bible studies and small groups to help people grow, is not a plan. You need to know what you will teach them at each level, and why, and what will be next. Here is how we are doing it at Crossroads: We have developed a three-stage process that includes Main Street (worship + evangelism), Community Circle (growth and loving care), and Ministry Way (service). These are tied in to our logo, and our purpose statement. Our purpose statement covers the five basics of Worship, Evangelism, Growth (discipleship), Loving Care, and Ministry service. And the Movement is tied in to our logo as a church. Our logo represents Main Street (going up the vertical beam of the cross), and around the heart for Community Circle, and then back along the horizontal cross beam for Ministry Way.

ALIGNMENT -- defines the process of making sure that every ministry in the church contributes somehow to the spiritual growth development process that you have defined in your Clarity and Movement stage. Here is how we are addressing the issue of Alignment. We used to have (and still do) a collection of small groups started by various people focusing upon various topics of interest. It is your usual hodge-podge of Christian discipleship selection. We still have that, as we left the old system in place; but now we are developing a new system that begins with just four key small group discipleship experiences. Those four discipleship groups are: Alpha - the well known seeker sensitive introduction to Christianity; Connections - a group focused on developing relational skills, and then using those skills to love seekers into the Kingdom. The third discipleship group is Foundations - which covers the basic Christian discipleship habits (Scripture, prayer, meditation, fasting, silence, etc.), and finally, the fourth is Shape, which introduces people to their spiritual gifts and where to serve in the local church.

The way we make this happen is that after our membership class ("On ramp"), we encourage everyone of the people in the class to take either Alpha or Connections. That is our alignment portion.

The final stage is FOCUS. This is where it gets interesting. Focus means that you as a church only promote those ministries which specifically help this process. This means that you must either ignore or eliminate any ministries which conflict with your stated purpose as a church. Most churches have a wide array of ministries which do not contribute toward their stated maturity goal (if they even have one). What we have chosen to do is simply focus on the ministries that contribute toward our stated goal, and allow the rest to continue on as long as they do not interfere with the stated goal.

We are about 15 months into our Simple Church plan. We took a full year planning it, and communicating it to the leaders. Then we did a sermon series in the spring to introduce it, and then another one in the fall to launch it. We also tried one sample Alpha class last year to test it out. Now we have launched this Fall with both an Alpha Class and a Connections Class, and are on track to ramp up all four by the time we finish out this ministry year in the Spring. So far, so good.

Learning and applying Simple Church is not so simple. It has been complicated and confusing, and challenging, but very, very good, as we wrestle with what it means as a church to have a clean and simple process for making disciples.

Blessings in Christ,
Dr. Bill

SMALL GROUPS: What's your Hospitality Index?

When it comes to small groups there is a constant tension in most groups between outreach and intimacy. Imagine, if you will a continuum, and at one end of the line is complete intimacy & togetherness, or fellowship. People know and love each other. They are sharing their burdens with one another, loving one another, confessing their sins to one another, etc. Basically, they are fulfilling all of the 'one anothers' that Scripture commands us to fulfill. It is the perfect small group, right?

There is, however, another important dimension to small group life, and it is found at the very end of that famous set of verses about small groups in Acts 2:42-47, "and the Lord daily added to their numbers". That's right, I'm talking about 'outreach'. No small group in the Scriptures lives and dies unto itself; the focus must always be upon those who are not yet walking with the Lord. They look in, and as the Bible says they "see how they love one another", and they want a piece of that. They want in. This is the built-in tension of the Hospitality Index.

At this point, every small group is faced with a choice. It does something like this, "Hey guys, I have this friend from work, and I was telling him about our group, and he's going through a rough time right now, and I was wondering if he could maybe join us once." Or, maybe the Director of Small Groups puts out an ad in the church newsletter and says that if anyone wants to join a group, to give him/her a call, and s/he will set them up with a group. Then s/he calls various groups to try to place a new person. How will the group respond? Their willingness to accept others into their group is a measurement of their "Hospitality Index".

The Hospitality Index is in constant tension. As I said, imagine a continuum. When a group begins, they are all about inviting people to their new group. So they would be way over on the Outreach side of the line. But then as the weeks go on, they get to know each other, and they begin to open up and start sharing about their lives. As they do this, the group's Hospitality Index slowly begins to move more and more closely to the Intimacy side of the continuum. Then one week, one of the members breaks down and starts crying about issues at home. At that moment, the Hospitality Index takes a big leap towards Intimacy. And so it goes. Generally, the longer the group is in existence, the more the Hospitality Index is over on the Intimacy side. Or said another way, the less hospitable they are. Oh, they gladly welcome each other, but not strangers. Because that would ruin the incredible fellowship they are currently experiencing.

Generally, if a group goes 18 months without adding anyone new, they never will. They will then either slowly implode as a group, and eventually die. Or they will calcify and become a clique that never welcomes another person into their mix.

The question is, what does your church do with new people who are interested in small groups? How do you get them into the small group system? An understanding of the Hospitality Index will help you to make the right decisions.

There are two steps which you can do to address this on-going tension in the Hospitality Index. First, you could create groups in which every "small group covenant" has a built-in clause that "this groups shall remain open and available to newcomers; that anyone is free to invite a friend into this group any week". What that does at the outset of the group as it begins is that it sets a standard or a boundary on the Hospitality Index. It says that the door will always be open for newcomers. How does this affect the Hospitality Index? Well, if the group has been slowly moving towards greater Intimacy and away from Outreach, it causes a jump back towards the Outreach side as soon as someone new walks in the door; "hey everyone, this is my friend from work that I told you about...". They welcome him, but they also clam up for the night. And they stay safe and don't share too many intimate details with the group (like they used to), until they get to know this new guy, or until he leaves. That's the HI index. So, creating Open Groups, based on the small group Covenant is one option.

There is another option as well: you could start all of your Newcomers in one group. That is, as everyone is going through the Membership Class, you could build in small group type sharing as a part of your weekend or six-week class. Then as the class goes on, they start forming up their own small groups. Then you just make sure that you seed into each of those groups, during the membership class, someone capable of leading each one. At the end of the class, you announce new groups with the leaders, and many of the newcomers will hop on board. This method is also compatible with the HI index.

So there are two methods of dealing with the natural tension in any group between Intimacy and Outreach. They are both important and Biblical needs which must be addressed, and a sensitivity to the Hospitality Index will help you do just that.

For the Kingdom,


Dr. Bill

COACHING: Quality not Quantity

I am usually all for growth in all of its forms, whether it is a larger church, better attended Bible studies, or a greater quantity of small groups in the church. But when it comes to coaching, I have been convinced of the opposite; there is great virtue in starting small and not going for it all in one shot.

Bob Logan, whose organization is helping us to get coaching started in our church has worked with many churches and denominational organizations. And one of his great learnings is that many people try to start coaching in their organization in a big way, and it is almost always a mistake. You must start small and you must achieve quality before you go forward. It is more important that you develop quality coaches, by giving them a top-notch coach training experience, than it is to train a lot of people at once.

Now the natural response of pastors in large churches, is that 'if we start small, it will take forever; do you know how large our church is?'. This is natural, but it is a mistake. Coach training takes time to learn well, and it takes very close and intense learning with a coach who already knows how to do it. It is such a subtle art, that it is too easy to think you've 'got it', when you really don't. Coaching is not like consulting, nor counseling, where you can say whatever is on your mind. The true beauty of coaching is that you are trying to help the coachee to say what is on his or her mind. The Proverbs say that a man's thoughts are deep waters, but a man of wisdom will draw them out. That is the challenge and beauty of coaching. It must be learned well.

So here is what we are doing at our church. We have a church of 750 people, but just three of us received off-site training in coaching. From there, we are developing an in-house coaching experience in our own church. But we are starting with just 7 other people. So, if we are successful in our coaching efforts this year, and we have no attrition, we will have 10 trained coaches at the end of this year. (Our coach training is 9 months long.) So we will have just 10 people out of a church of 750. The goal is quality not quantity. But if you do the math, you can see that if each of these 10 newly trained coaches train two others, that we will begin to develop some good coaching momentum in just a couple of years. And it is very important to keep quality control over the whole experience, or else the coaching movement in your church will break down due to poorly trained coaches.

That is the major goal for us: quality not quantity. We are willing to pay the price, because we believe that if those being coached, experience the true power of coaching in their own lives, and the natural life transformation which is caused by quality coaching, that they themselves will also be more committed to providing a quality coaching experience for others. And if we can touch the lives of God's church in a quality way and bring about life change, the whole church will be stronger and healthier. And that will bring glory to Christ.

In His Service,
Dr. Bill

FINANCES: How to Budget with Care

The basic rule of church financial health is that you can't spend more money than you take in. But this simple principle can get very cloudy in the rough and tumble process of annual budget negotiations. This planning process alone is tricky, but when you add in the "living by faith" principle, Christian leaders are sometimes tempted to make unwise choices in their financial planning.

Everybody seems to insist that their ministry just can't go on unless they receive a budget increase. And so it goes... By the time all the numbers and needs are in, most budgets are larger than is fiscally prudent. Many churches budget with a 'best case scenario' in mind, rather than a 'worst case'. That is, they assume that everything will go perfectly in terms of giving and expenses. And if everything goes perfectly, then they can make budget for the year. But if anything goes wrong they are in trouble. So is it better to think positively, or 'realistically'? Is one more Christian than another? Some will argue for faith as the guiding principle of budget preparation, while others will remind us that Jesus told us to count the cost and used the example of someone building a tower and not having enough money to finish it.

So, how do you put together the budget on an annual basis in such a way to meet needs, but not get into trouble?

There are several parts to this answer:
1st -- You Can't!
No one but God can predict the future. Every budget is an educated guess at best, and a shot it the dark at worst.

2nd -- Expectations must be managed.
You need to help your people face the fact that there will always be more opportunities (that is, more ways to spend money), than there will be money. This needs to be said at the outset to all involved in the ministry budgeting process.

3rd -- The most important part of the budget process is the Bottom Line.
There are many parts to a healthy budget; and most ministry leaders believe that their ministry budget line item is the most important part, and therefore they will all lobby hard to have their portion of the budget increased. But there must be one person on your budget planning team who has no allegiance or loyalty to any one ministry; his/her allegiance should only be to the bottom line. That is, you need to give one person permission to 'hold the line'. You have to let them be 'the bad guy', the person who says 'no', the person who draws the line and says "Here and no further!" Who in your church is responsible for the Bottom Line?

Next question: So how do you determine an effective Bottom Line? And by "Bottom Line", I mean this, the final figure that represents the total budget increase; the maximum amount of new dollars which you can expect from God's people in the new year. How do you determine that?

There are a number of 'rules of thumb' to guide this process:
1. $1,000 per capita
To determine the total number of dollars you can expect in the new year (not just new dollars), you can simply take the total attendance of your church (babies and visitors included; just count everybody who comes on a weekend), and multiply that average by $1,000. There's your budget. Now in some areas, this will be too high, and in others too low. And of course, if you have done church for more than one year, you have the benefit of history to compare giving and attendance in the past to determine the expected per capita giving for your particular congregation. (These numbers will be somewhat askew if you have a small congregation, and/or a congregation with a particularly big giver.) But over the years, as I have used this guideline, it has been surprisingly helpful. For example, while serving in a large suburban congregation, it actually averaged out to about $1,100 per person, while serving in a less well off congregation, it came out to about $875 per capita. Find your norm, and use it as a guide.

2. For the new year, when you expect attendance growth, use this:
Determine your Per Capita and multiply by attendance plus add in the per capita giving x the expected increase in attendance for the new year, divided by two. So the formula looks like this: (P/C x ATT) + (P/C x ATTgr / 2) = BL.

P/C = per capita giving
ATT = average annual attendance
ATTgr = expected attendance growth for the year
BL = Bottom Line

You need to divide your expected growth by two given the fact that your increasing attendance will spread out throughout the whole year. You also need to recognize that newcomers may not start giving for about a year! so don't put a lot of hopes on their giving prospects, unless you can quickly get them into membership as a church. (Remember, giving is the last to arrive and the first to go, in a family's church-going lifestyle.)

So there you have it; some rough guidelines to get on top of the numbers.
But most important: you need to pray, and seek God's leading, not only for expected giving, but for how you should spend the Lord's money.

Blessing in Christ,
Dr. Bill

Simple Church & REVEAL

Willowcreek has just released an awesome new book which "reveals" some important discoveries they have made about how people grow spiritually, and what is the role of the church in helping them to grow. It is going to be blockbuster dynamite which will alter the way churches do ministry for years to come. They just released it, and talked about it at the Leadership Summit this year. You need to read it. It is available directly from Willowcreek.

But one of the interesting aspects of this book is how closely it is tied in to "Simple Church" by Eric Geiger and Thom Rainer. In the most recent edition of the "Willow" magazine, from Summer of 2007 there is a quotation by Greg Hawkins, the Executive Pastor of Willowcreek. Here is what he says,
"We had a long-standing belief that the more involved with church activities people were, the more they'd be growing spiritually. We found that wasn't the case."

Where have you heard that before? That was totally the thesis of "Simple Church", (which you can buy from the books section of HighPowerResources.com). So the "Simple Church" message is being spread and gaining major credibility with the likes of Willowcreek coming on board.

So take a look at their new book "Reveal"; it will rock your world!

For Christ and His Church,
Dr. Bill

SIMPLE CHURCH, p. 5: FOCUS

Simple Church, Part Five: Focus

I want to keep sharing with you what I have been learning from the book Simple Church, by Eric Geiger and Thom Rainer (which you can now buy from the HPR site under "Books"). This is a great book, because it really makes you think about church systems.

In our final look at the book Simple Church, we look at what is probably the most controversial part of the book; I know it is in our church.

The chapter is entitled, “Focus: Saying No to Almost Everything”. And THAT is a hard proposition in most churches.

The book flows like this: Clarity ⇒Movement ⇒ Alignment ⇒ Focus.

Focus means eliminating everything that doesn’t fit in with your discipleship plan. Geiger states, “People assume the more that can be squeezed into the menu, the better.” But as they make abundantly clear in the book, that is not always true.

They spend some time talking about the “one thing” principle, quoting various Scripture (Psalm 27:4; Phil. 3:13-14 “But one thing I do…”; Heb. 12:2 to “fix our eyes only on Christ”)

Focus is defined as “the commitment to abandon everything that falls outside of the simple ministry process.” And that ministry process has already been clearly defined as the church has worked on Clarity – defining what they are trying to achieve; and Movement – making a simple process to move people through the discipleship process; and Alignment – brining everything to work together toward that goal. That just leaves this final step, which is eliminating those which do not apply to the discipleship process.

This is backed up by research: “According to our research there is a highly significant relationship between church vitality and the church’s focus on the process” (Simple Church, p. 203). They also quote a doctoral study (Travis Bradshaw, University of Florida) which assumed that the more programs a church had, the healthier it would be. But what the researcher actually found out was that healthier churches had LESS program than non-healthy churches.

So how do you achieve focus?
1. Eliminate – “While eliminating programs is difficult, the data indicates that vibrant church leaders have the discipline to do so” (Simple Church, p. 205). You can eliminate programs by emphasizing stewardship. To be a wise steward of your people’s time, money and energy requires that you eliminate programs which consume too much of any or all three of these commodities. Simple Church is your church’s means of safe-guarding your resources for that which is truly important.

2. Limit Adding – as hard as it is to eliminate existing programs, then make sure you do not easily add new programs.

3. Reduce Special Events – These are the events that do not fit in the normal church calendar, nor in the streamlined discipleship plan, but someone is just so excited about them that the church decides to squeeze it into the calendar. But don’t do it! Rather decide how to use the event strategically by maybe combining it with another event or tying it together with the discipleship plan. With a little work this can be done.

I’ll close by quoting the German poet Goethe who said, “The key to life is concentration and elimination.” -- German poet Goethe

Eliminate the non-essentials, and concentrate on the most important aspects of making disciples, and your church will do OK.

Later,
Dr. Bill

Coaching for Commitment

When you are coaching people, it is your job as the coach to help them develop crystal clarity as to their action plans. If they leave the meeting not quite sure of what they are going to do, the session was (almost) wasted.

Just finished a helpful book called "Coaching for Commitment" by Dennis Kinlaw. He makes this statement, "Ambivalence and confusion are the enemies of commitment" (Kinlaw, p. 11). People need to know what they are going to do before they can commit to it.

So he itemizes four ways to test a person's core values and commitments before the session is over:

1. Talk about the person's core values
It is what a person holds close to their heart which will impact future performance and behavior. What do they really value? That is what will get done. You as the coach want to check if their core values match their stated action plans. They may say that they are going to improve a particular program, but it will not happen unless they hold in high esteem the goals of that ministry or program.

2. Raise Real Problems
Talk about specific situations and ask how they would handle them. This gives you, and them, a better insight as to what is important to them.

3. Discuss Priorities
During your coaching sessions, raising up the issue of priorities, helps to surface internal values, by helping them to talk about what is important to them by comparing options. "Would you do this first, or that first?"

4. When a completed task fails to meet expectations
This is a good time to examine root values which may have led to the less than hoped for results. This is a great time to reveal values.

If a person has crystal clarity about what is important to them, and what are their highest values, or what they will never stand for, or what is the greatest good in their opinion, you will be able to help them fashion action plans which match their values and have the greatest chance of success.

This is one of your roles as a good coach.

Later,

Dr. Bill

THE TWO HALVES OF CHURCH GROWTH

Most people only focus on half of the church growth equation, and therefore get less than stellar results. If you can focus on both halves of church growth, you will see your attendance numbers rise.

Everybody knows, and focuses on getting more VISITORS to your church. People may do outreach programs of various types, or spend money on advertising, or developing such exciting events that the positive buzz just keeps new people crossing the threshold into your church. And that is all great and necessary and important. But that's only the first half of church growth.

The second part, is not about increasing the number of visitors that come to your church, but about increasing the FREQUENCY of attendance by your REGULARS. You see, for many Americans now, "regular attendance" means only 2 or 3 times a month. Some even view themselves as regulars if they show up once a month at the same church. In fact, in one article I read by Lyle Schaller, he stated that a large percentage of Americans consider two different churches to be their "church home". For example, they may go to one church for the preaching and worship service, and go to another church for the youth program. Yet both churches consider them to be 'regulars' and mark them as such on the rolls. And then each church wonders why their attendance is not any higher.

In one large suburban church where I served, the attendance was averaging about 800. But when I checked the database for a list of regulars, it came out to be 1200 people! So their entire consituency as a church numbered 1200, but they only had about 66% of that constituency show up at any one time. This brings a lot of wrinkles into program planning. That means that if you wanted to make an announcement that you wanted the entire church to hear, you had to make sure you stated it for two weeks, and thereby have a better chance of all your 'regulars' knowing what's going on.

So if more of your regulars show up at the same time - that is, if you increase the frequency of attendance - you will increase your average attendance. For example, if those other 33% of that suburban church were to show up every week, they would be running an average of 1200 instead of 800.

So how do you increase frequency? Here are a few ideas:
1. You have to increase ownership. You have to help everyone in your congregation to feel the importance of their attendance each week. First for their own sake. They need to grow spiritually. They need to meet with the Lord. They need to worship and praise and fill their lives with joy. They need to serve somewhere.

2. Teach in sermon series. Emphasize the connection of all the messages together. Give a little intro tease for next week's message, and explain why it is critical that they come back for more.

3. Sign more people up to serve more frequently. In many churches, when people are making sign up lists for services like ushers, communion servers, coffee preparers, cookie bakers, etc. they sign up a huge crew of people, so that people 'don't have to do too much'. So they get signed up for something like once every three months. That doesn't do much for encouraging frequency does it? But if you pare those lists down, you increase the frequency of times people must show up to fulfill their obligations, and then you help them to develop healthy habits.

We need to realize that as church leaders, as shepherds, we are here to care for the people. And that means helping them to "flee temptation". People are tempted by the world to do many other things each week, rather than worship. But the Lord commanded us to rest once every seven days and to come into His presence for worship and prayer. When we help people to develop healthy habits of service or attendance, we are enabling them to overcome the natural lethargy of the human condition and to make a commitment to something that is true and good and noble (Php.4:8).

And that is the real reason to pursue church growth. Numbers are a by-product of a healthy church of regular attenders who know how to worship.

In Christ,
Dr. Bill

SIMPLE CHURCH, p. 4: ALIGNMENT

"Simple Church" by Eric Geiger and T. Rainer has captured the imaginations of many people in America. They are already holding "Simple Church" conferences around the country with hundreds of people in attendance. While that is interesting, my concern is how we can take the Biblical principles from this book and apply them to any local church in order to experience growth. The growth we are looking for is both quantitative and qualitative growth. I believe the two are related.

In our continuing series as we study this book, we are on Part Four: Alignment. Alignment is defined as "the arrangement of all ministries and staff around the same simple process." According to their research, "there is a highly significant relationship between church vitality and alignment".

Alignment includes the following parts:
1) Recruit on Process - Staff & volunteers must be deeply committed to the specific discipleship process your church has selected. This is no place for lone rangers who decide they will use their own curriculum, methods, and means to do their own ministry style in their part of the church. Everybody must be using the same terms, systems and means to make disciples.

2) Offer Accountability - regular review of the process is necessary. For staff people, this may mean a weekly staff meeting. For church volunteers it needs to include a monthly leadership community meeting where the process is reviewed, and each ministry is tied in to that process. Accountability includes making sure that ministries are tied in to the overall purpose of the church.

3) Implement the Same Process Everywhere - same terminology; same spiritual growth milestones; same end-game.
You may adapt it to different groups, or ages, but the goal is essentially the same. This way unity is increased, and families experience the same process.

4) Unite around the Process - Remember the definition of a simple church: "A simple church is a congregation designed around a straightforward and strategic process that moves people through the stages of spiritual growth." Everybody is walking the same path toward spiritual growth.

5) New Ministry Alignment - This simply means don't start anything new unless it fits your process. The hardest part for you will be retooling existing ministries to align them with the discipleship process you have selected as a church. So make sure that if you start something new, that it already is in alignment, so you don't have to go back later and retool again.

After the final section of our "Simple Church" study, "Focus", I will be sharing with you the steps we have taken in our church to implement the Simple Church process. We have been studying it, and working on it for 6-months now, and we are just beginning to launch the new process with the congregation. Stay tuned for that.

Until later,
Dr. Bill

SIMPLE CHURCH: Movement, Part 3

Most churches don’t stall out because of one or two problems that they can easily fix. Most stall out because of church systems! That is, the entire way you have put your church [Christ’s church, but since you have messed it up, its ‘yours’] together is wrong. Simple Church makes you look back at the systems approach to church growth and discipleship. In our continuing series analyzing the impact of the book "Simple Church" by Eric Geiger and Thom Rainer, we are looking at the second church health principle of "Movement".

Simple Church helps you ask the question, “What is our system for making disciples here?” You do have a system don’t you? You see, even if you don’t, you still do. As Edward Deming has astutely put it, “You have the perfect system for getting exactly the results you are getting!”


Do you have weak and anemic disciples at your church? Your church system is producing weak and anemic disciples! Or are they strong and vigorous? Again, it is your system.

What is the system in your church? Can you identify it? For example, let’s say that this Sunday someone turns their life over to Christ at your church. Then they stay with you for 3 years, and then are transferred away. What do you want that disciple to look like at the end of 3 years of participating in your church discipleship system?

The focus of what we are talking about here is MOVEMENT! And Movement, is the 2nd key principle of the Simple Church Book. For an intro to Simple Church see my Jan. 16th, 2007 blog, and for the first principle of Clarity see my March 3rd, 2007 blog.

Movement is defined by Geiger & Rainer as "... the sequential steps in the process that causes people to move to greater areas of commitment."

Where do disciples start in your church and where do they go and grow? In most churches I’ve served in, there is no clear system. We just hope that they meet the Lord, start attending services and Bible studies and start growing. Isn’t that good enough? Try asking some of the big guns like Rick Warren at Saddlebback with his 4 bases. Or try asking Bill Hybels at Willowcreek with the 7 steps to maturity system and the 5 G’s. They’ve got systems in place to develop disciples.

Question: Is it enough just to copy the 4 bases of Saddleback and say that you’ve got it done? Not if you don’t understand the concept of church systems yet. Then you are just mimicking what you’ve seen, and as soon as someone tinkers with it, you will have problems.

Here’s what we are doing at our church to really put these principles into practice:

First , we answered the PRODUCT question. That is, if the example cited above of someone coming to church for 3 years and then leaving really occurred, what kind of a disciple would we want to produce? So over the course of several months, with staff, and leadership, we defined 27 character qualities of a mature disciple. These 27 character traits cover 3 broad categories related to Head, Heart, and Hands. Or put another way, we have defined Intellectual goals, and Emotional/
Attitudinal goals, and we have defined Behavioral goals.

Then, having just defined that, we are now working through all of our church programs, and determining exactly what kind of life-change we are trying to accomplish in each ministry. The question is "how does each ministry program in the church contribute to one or more of the 27 traits of spiritual maturity?

Also, we are clearly marking out our discipleship movement path for our church. We have identified a one-year path which we will encourage all new converts, new members, and seekers to pursue. (It is optional, and is also available for current regulars if they wish to join.).

Here is our path in synopsis:
First, Newcomers Dessert social
Second, On-Ramp (new members class), targeting the newcomers at the social
Third, Passport Dinner – to introduce them to the recommended “journey towards growth”
Fourth – one-full year of growth training, broke down into 4 separate discipleship groups:

This includes 4 discipleship groups which are coached, and that is a key part. Our awesome Small Groups director, Jim Troe, (he's reading this, so I had to say that;) put together this one-year plan…
-- Alpha – 10 weeks on the basics of Christianity for Seekers.
-– Connections – 8 weeks on how to develop healthy relationships with seekers.
-– Foundations – 8 weeks on basic discipleship issues like a daily quiet time, and Bible study.
-– SHAPE training – 8 weeks on discovering and using your spiritual gifts.

Fifth, Once they have completed the one-year discipleship training, we place them into long-term growth groups, which are normally “sermon-based” groups, that is, discussion and curriculum is based on the current teaching series.

Please note, these are all optional at every step of the way, although we do recommend a particular course of action.

So that is our current plan for movement. Yes, it may change, but we finally have a "clear path for discipleship", which happens to be what we call it. We know where we are going, and by God's grace and guidance we hope to get there.

NOW, how do we make sure to encourage people to follow this course of action?

That relates to the 3rd Simple Church principle, which is Alignment. I’ll update you on that next month.

Until then,
In Christ,
Dr. Bill

Simple Church: Clarity

CLARITY - STARTING WITH A MINISTRY BLUEPRINT

Hi all,
please note that the phrase “Starting with a Ministry Blueprint” and other key quotations related to Simple Church are being quoted from the book, Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger.

This has been a book that has tremendously impacted our thinking at our church. Ever since we read it last November, it has gripped us and revolutionized the way we view our current church. Here’s why:

We are in a church of about 700 people on a Sunday morning. We are right at the edge of the great American large church bureaucracy. That is, we are right at the crossroads between the two churches described in the book, “Cross Church” and “First Church”. As soon as we, the ministry staff, read it, we realized this truth. And that knowledge is what has propelled us on the Simple Church journey.

What is the Simple Church Journey?
It is the process of addressing all 4 elements of a Simple Church: Clarity, Movement, Alignment & Focus. It is the process of making sure that you are controlling the destiny of your church, rather than having the normal untamed growth process of American Christianity reshape your beautiful little church into a gigantic monstrosity of complexity as it matures.

So, the focus for today is CLARITY.

Clarity means having a blueprint for your ministry. Most churches have no clear plans for growth. Clarity is defined as “the ability of the process to be communicated and understood by the people”. This is a reference to your discipleship process. If it is not so simple and clear that the people of your church can easily communicate it to one another, then it is too complicated to work!

It must be simple enough to communicate, but the plan must have enough depth to actually create a system for discipleship. It is like the difference between brochures and blueprints, say Geiger and Rainer. Brochures are simple and cute; but blueprints are detailed. Brochures describe who you want to be as a church, but blueprints show you how to get there.

Do you have a discipleship blueprint for your ministry?

There are four parts to defining a clear discipleship plan:
1) PURPOSE
2) PRODUCT
3) PROCESS
4) PROGRAMS

1) PURPOSE
Many churches have done a good job here. They have taken the time to clearly define exactly what their purpose is as a church. Thanks to the work by Rick Warren, everybody understands the need for a ‘purpose driven church’.

But the problem comes immediately after the purpose is written. Because what happens is that the rest of the church is put together w/o any direct reference to the clarity granted through a good purpose statement. That is, the Product, Process, and Programs never refer organically back to the Purpose statement.

2) PRODUCT
The product is the type of disciple you are trying to produce. Have you ever written out with clarity exactly what a disciple from your church should look like? Let me put it this way: if someone were to come to your church this next weekend, and accept the Lord, join your church and start growing, and then they attended your church and your church’s key ministries faithfully for the next 3 years. Then they are transferred away, and you never see them again. The question I have for you is this: What will they Know, Feel, and Do as a new disciple of Jesus Christ, because of the discipleship ministry of your church?

At our church we have defined what the disciple will look like. In fact, we have specifically set up 27 traits divided into the categories of Know, Feel, Do (Knowledge, Character, Behaviors. We know what is most important to aim for as a church.

This impacts step three of gaining Clarity as a Simple Church...

3) PROCESS

At the Process Stage, you actually ask the question of HOW you will make disciples at your church. What are the stages and the process of making it happen? Rick Warren famously has his 101 to 401 classes. That is his process. Many have simply duplicated this, but there are other ways of doing it.

Here are some other Process Stages:
a) Win, Build, Send
b) Love God & Love People
c) Evangelize, Edify, Equip, Exalt
d) Attract, Attach, Activate
e) Relate, Reach, Redeem, Redeploy

But you are not done just by naming your key stages. Then you have to develop a plan to get to each stage. And that can be really complicated and tricky. It gets complicated because you have to try to separate the programs which really help your purpose from those that do not.

And that is the fourth stage of getting clarity as a simple church...

4) PROGRAMS

I would venture to say that almost every church in America is over-programmed. Yes, over, not under-programmed. There is too much stuff happening; too many activities; too many events on the church calendar.

The problem with all of these events is that if you want to be a Simple Church, you only want to keep those programs which lend themselves to achieving your Purpose, developing your Product, and following your Process.

That is why the Programs should never be addressed until you have achieved clarity on the rest of your church discipleship plan.

SUMMARY
So what we have done so far is only venture part-way into the Simple Church plan, as related to CLARITY. Clarity is the blue-print (not brochure) that defines your entire discipleship plan as a church. It includes PURPOSE, PRODUCT, PROCESS, and PROGRAMS.

Next time we will look at the second part of becoming a Simple Church, which is Movement.

Until then God’s best to your and yours,

Dr. Bill