What would I do in that situation?

Last week I was completely obsessed with the story out of Zainesville, Ohio.  If you’ve been living in a cave..HERE’s a link.

Here’s the basic set-up.

You’re the Sheriff in a small town and a call comes across the radio that many exotic animals are running lose from a local piece of property you’ve been to before.

You know there are over 50 wild animals in that “zoo.”  You know there are MANY Lions…MANY Tigers….Wolves….and Grizzly Bears.

You know…when you were on the property before that the animals were aggressive…

It’s getting to be dusk….

It’s raining…

The next call over the radio is asking permission to “Shoot to Kill.”

What do you do?

You can read the article if you want to know what was decided.

I just think the whole situation illustrates some pretty amazing things about decision making when there is no clear way to make it all go away.

Here are some thoughts.

1.  You have to know your priorities!  Can you imagine if this Sheriff stopped to look at his old Police Leadership books in order to figure out what to do in this situation.  We will all face decisions in which there is no precedence.  I’m guessing the little plaque on his desk that says “To Protect and Serve” came in handy as the Sheriff was weighing his options.

2.  You’re not going to make everyone happy.  Here’s a little piece of wisdom I picked up from my last boss.  He said, “if everyone understands a tough decision you made…you waited too long to make it.”  He went on to say that a leader has to make decisions before people have enough information to understand it.  Can you imagine if this Sheriff was worried about keeping everybody happy?

3.  If you don’t have to hurry…don’t rush the decision.  If you have to hurry…don’t be too proud to change your mind.  The point is to solve the problem…not to be right.   I heard, though I can’t confirm, that there was an attempt to tranquilize and one of the animals just freaked out.

4.  We live in a broken world.  Some problems don’t have a perfect solution.  As a leader you will often have to chose between two or three options that all have their downsides.  When in this situation…see #1.

 What do you think?  How do you decide when there is no clear winner?

Basically for you to understand it you need to know a few things.  It starts a few weeks ago when I was asked to sit on the leadership team for North Point Ministries.

To me, that was a very humbling, flattering, and exciting opportunity.

And so, for the last few weeks, on Tuesday mornings, I have prayed myself up and walked into a room full of very talented people to intimidate the FOOL out of me!

So…last week was supposed to be my fourth time in that meeting…BUT…the challenges of raising a young family had other plans!

For those of you who have multiple little ones…you know how this goes!

EARLY in the morning someone throws up…and then the chain reaction begins…until the sun rises on one exhausted momma.  (It’s not that I can’t help…it’s the fact that no one wants Daddy when they’re sick!)

But that wasn’t it.  As the morning came…so came the requirements of a new day.

And…as I looked at my wife…I could tell.  This was just one of those days that comes along every once in a while.  A day when my family needed me.

And I was faced with this decision.

Do I stay with my wife and family?…OR…Do I go to my fourth leadership team meeting?

Or…maybe a better way to put it…my choice was this.

Do I let down my wife and family?…OR…Do I let down the members of the Leadership Team and possibly look like a flake four weeks in?

Here’s the deal.

Even though I work in the church that is famous for the term “Choosing to Cheat“….

Even though, during my first month at work, my boss looked me in the eyes and told me to choose my family over him every time…

It was still a very hard decision to choose to stay home.

But I did.  I cheated on the Leadership Team!

And…then…the most amazing thing happened.

Over the next two days, as I ran into 2 high ranking members of that leadership team and they asked me where I was…So I told them.

And…they congratulated me on a good decision!

Here are a couple of observations about that whole experience.

• Choosing the Cheat is hard.  Especially when you really want to do the thing you’re skipping.  But it’s still the right thing to do.  This philosophy is more than an excuse to get me out of work I don’t really want to do.
• Choosing to Cheat may cost you your reputation.  I can’t control how people perceived my decision.  Being valiant is not always seen as that.
• Choosing to Cheat as a corporate value is a very fragile thing.  Those members of the leadership team could have easily brought it all down with one judgmental look.
• As a leader, If you believe in the concept of Choosing to Cheat, you need to make it a point to celebrate when someone chooses correctly…even if it’s your meeting they skip.

So, where are you in this whole thing?  Is Choosing to Cheat a nifty idea?

…idea you use to get out of things  you don’t want to do anyway?

…or a belief that goes beyond your reputation and pride?

So…a week or so ago we launched THIS competition.

A couple of  quick comments before we announce the winners.

I wish I could give 10 sets of tickets away…you guys (ladies included) are awesome.

I picked this winner because of a few of things…

1.  I love that this pastor spent time in Family Ministry and I don’t want him to forget!

2.  I want to help rejuvenate a church.

3.  I love that the board of the church is concerned for families.

4.  I want to give a husband and wife time away!

That being said…here is the winning letter.

My Wife and I – Crystal Patey, Youth & Children’s Pastor at Trinity Pentecostal Church, Baie Verte – have spent the last number of years in Youth & Children’s Ministry.  Now, we have taken up the challenge of being the Senior Pastors in a small church of about 100 people, in the community of Baie Verte, NL., Canada, pop. approx. 1250.  She serves as the part time youth & children’s pastor, and I serve as the Senior Pastor!

We have been given a mandate by our board to reach this community and engage young families in our church and community, in an assembly that is aging and desperately needs new life, fresh energy and renewed vision.  The Think Orange conference will be a great benefit to us, as a place where we can get new ideas, learn to think creatively, and impact the families of this community that is set to explode with new work opportunities and the possibility of many young families moving back home or moving into town to work in the area’s mining industry.

Pastor Greg Patey
Senior Pastor

Congratulations Greg and Crystal…can’t wait to meet in person.  I’ll be in touch soon.

Last year I gave away two tickets to the Orange Conference.  You can read about that HERE.  I loved it!

And I got to meet a couple of great guys, Steve and Chris who have been working hard at improving their family ministry programs at their church in Kansas.  You can read their letter HERE.

In fact…I loved it so much that we’re doing it again.

What do you say?  You in?

Here’s the official prize.

• 2 Registrations to the Orange Conference (one must be for your head pastor)
• a 2 hour consulting lunch during Orange to talk systems and volunteer recruitment with me. (I’m buying)
• 2 copies of Think Orange for you and your Head Pastor.

Here’s how you get it.

1. Must be a follower of @coachshef on Twitter.
2. Retweet this post and/or share it on Facebook (or whatever)
3. Comment on this post “I’m in!”…include your name and church….And whatever else you want to say.
4. Get your head pastor to email me telling me why they want to come to Orange with you.  (the winning email will be part of the post announcing the winner).  You can send your emails to info@coachshef.com.  Make sure the pastor mentions your church and your name.

All entries are due by September 28th The winner will be announced on September 29th.

So…Who’s in?

He then said…”You would love it!  They basically take an overwhelmed and under performing restaurant and apply some of your systems…and the make it work again!  And all in 60 minutes!”

So I watched it…and I loved it.  So I watched a few more episodes.

A theme is really starting to emerge.

On the front end…when the restaurant isn’t running well and on the brink of going out of business.

• There is usually a proud man in charge…with proud man disease.
• They have a huge menu that is complicated and almost impossible to pull off.
• They have no idea what their top sellers are or where the are making or losing money.  They don’t measure and they don’t have systems in place for the daily normal stuff that goes down.
• There is tension and backstabbing going on amongst the leadership and staff.

During the show, Robert takes them through pretty much the same processes.

• He breaks the proud man and gets him to focus on what he is good at.
• He studies what sells and doesn’t sell (Usually the data is there and nobody has ever looked at it).
• He simplifies the menu with quality, but simple items that can be replicated.
• He takes on the tensions within the staff directly (often connected to the proud man above) and they move forward.
• He gives the place a quick, inexpensive (relatively) facelift.

The show winds down as they open for a large crowed gathered to see if they can get their faces on TV.

So…the question is.  What can we learn from a show like this in ministry?

I think that many of our ministries are in very similar situations.

• The ministry is built around a personality.
• The ministry offers so many programs that the staff and volunteers can’t work on any of it because they are so quickly onto the next thing.
• Quantity of experiences is valued more than quality of experience.
• No one in the ministry could tell you if or how they are winning.  It hasn’t been specifically defined.
• The “Blame Game” is in full effect.  Strong leaders are doing what they want to do and weaker ones are frustrations for everyone else.
• And, if they were businesses, would be on the brink of going out of business.

What do you think?  Do you need a makeover?  Do you need a restart?  Do you work in a Ministry Impossible?

I’ll be back to talk about the restart soon.

I love sitting and looking out the back of the boat. You can see our trail weaving through the calm water. Waves emanating from each side of the boat…further and further out from their original position. There is no mistaking where we have been as we cruise through the calm water. You can see every turn, and, if you know what you’re looking at, you can also tell how fast or slow the boat was going at different points. You can tell a lot about the trip of the boat simply from it’s wake.

The same is true of us.

We can tell a ton about our journey as a leader by our wake.

Before you read on…stop and think about it.

Who is in your wake?

What would people say about you who are in your wake?

This is a concept that I was introduced to in the book Integrityby Henry Cloud.  In it, Cloud says there are two sides of the wake.

On one side of the wake are our tasks.  What did we accomplish?

On the other side are our relationships.  How did we deal with the people we encountered?

As I think about this I think it’s a good idea to set some goals.

Here are some things I hope to see in my wake in the future.

• A ministry that outlasts me and is not dependent on me.
• A bunch of new ideas that I said “no” to.  This will tell me if I stayed focused.
• A few new ideas and programs that worked.  This will tell me I had the guts to try new things.
• A few new ideas programs that failed (and that I had to guts to stop).  If I didn’t fail at something I’m was being too conservative.
• Good ideas that I had us stop doing before it was obvious that it was over.  This w0uld tell me I had the courage to make the hard call.
• Most of the people who would say I’m a man of character and deep conviction.  This would tell me I treated people well.
• Some people who are angry with me but respect me.  This would tell me that I made tough decisions before it was obvious.
• A few people that hate my guts.  I wasn’t called to make everyone happy.  Unhealthy people wouldn’t understand healthy decisions and probably “act” unhealthy.  This would tell me I didn’t let unhealthy people sway me and my leadership.
• A family that didn’t hate my job.

How about you?  What do you want to see in your wake.

I think it’s best to close with a few practical examples of how these help.  Here are three common “great ideas” that a youth pastor faces and the logic I would use when deciding if this distracts us or keeps us on target.

We should have a student band!

This is one of my favorites.  I love the idea of the kids getting to lead the music.  BUT…before I say “yes” we need to run it through the filter.

1.  Find great people and give them a healthy culture in which to grow and connect with students. – NO CHECK – This does nothing for helping us systematically find great small group leaders.

2.  Create shared quality experiences built around Biblical truth for the students and the small group leaders. - NO CHECK – Again, this may provide quality experiences for the four or five kids, but that is between the kids and whoever is directing the band.  Have you ever calculated how many hours it takes to direct a good student band?  I personally believe it will eat up 10-20 hours a week.

3.  Give parents access to #1 and #2.  NO CHECK – If #1 and #2 aren’t satisfied…no way this one is.

Verdict:  I won’t pursue a student band until my room is full of great small group leaders and my program is refined to giving students and small group leaders shared quality experiences around biblical truth while giving parents access to both.  Until I’m doing that well and consistently, I won’t commit the time and resources to developing a student band.

We should have a sports program at our church!

1.  Find great people and give them a healthy culture in which to grow and connect with students. – NO CHECK – This does nothing for helping us systematically find great small group leaders.

2.  Create shared quality experiences built around Biblical truth for the students and the small group leaders. - POSSIBLE CHECK – Sports do provide great experiences…there is no doubt about that.  I would have to create teams by small groups and ask my small group leaders to come another night of the week.  OR…I’d have to spend some of the time I’ve allotted to finding and feeding great small group leaders to finding new coaches.

3.  Give parents access to #1 and #2.  POSSIBLE CHECK – Coaches are often one of the most influential positions in a kids life.  This can be a huge help for a parent to have a great coach in their kids life.  Games would also provide a shared experience for everybody.

Verdict:  I won’t pursue a sports program that is managed out of the youth department.  I simply don’t have time to find another group of volunteers, create schedules, reserve fields, and communicate with parents.  If the church would like to hire someone to do that I would recommend that person NOT be a part of the student team staff as I don’t have the margin to manage another staff member at this point.  If the decision goes through from the church than I would find ways to partner with that department.

We should offer Starting Point for students!

*Starting Point is an environment for beginners and returners to the Christian Faith at our church.

1.  Find great people and give them a healthy culture in which to grow and connect with students. – NO CHECK – This does nothing for helping us systematically find great small group leaders.

2.  Create shared quality experiences built around Biblical truth for the students and the small group leaders. - DEFINITE CHECK – IF we make sure to include small group leaders in this idea we will be squarely within strategy.  Foundational Biblical truth is appropriate, relevant, and important.

3.  Give parents access to #1 and #2.  POSSIBLE CHECK – IF we make sure to include parents in this process somehow we could use this to help parents raise their children up.

Verdict:  I think there is something to explore here.  Let’s have a group of small groups leaders (those interested in this) go through starting point.  We can buy them lunch on Sunday as they work through the curriculum.  We could then use the last 30 minutes to talk about how each truth applies to middle schoolers.  Once we have that information we can move to the next step if we feel it is relevant.  I can see several iterations of this program.

• A video curriculum that parents and small group leaders use for a student who needs it.
• A curriculum that a small group leader may chose to use instead of the normal Sunday curriculum for a season.
• Integrating it into our current curriculum to make sure we are covering these foundational principles every year through our  normal pipelines.
• Something I’m not thinking of yet!

So…What do you think?  What are some other ideas that need to be run through the filter?

So, I hope that exercise brought some clarity.  If you haven’t done it, I really wish you would stop reading and take some time to do it.  There are few things more helpful than knowing this information and knowing it is what you truly believe.

As for me, this information drives my daily decisions.  This is what helps me STAY ON TARGET.

The Three Most Redemptive (Therefore Effective) Things I Can Do For Middle Schoolers.

1.  Find great people and give them a healthy culture in which to grow and connect with students.

Before I worry about the first moving light, speaker, curriculum, funny game, or camp location….before I worry about who is going to sing or communicate…. I need to make sure every student’s name is known by a caring Christian adult who is ready to spend the next season of life with this kid.  I also need enough small group leaders to know that the job is possible because the ratios are realistic.

Before I go on…I really want you to understand something.  You have to start here.  This has to be your main concern.

Think about the kid who is struggling with his/her parents divorce right now…

Think about the kid who is struggling with questions about his/her faith….

Think about the kid who is so self consumed that there is no room for God…

The best thing I can do for any of those kids is to put another Christian adult in their lives besides their parents that they can trust…for a long time!

In fact, I think if we (the collective group of student pastors)  just did this, with no programming, we’d be better off than we are right now….at least when it comes to the important stuff.

2.  Create shared quality experiences built around Biblical truth for the students and the small group leaders.

Think about the most influential people in your lives.  Go ahead….do it for a  second!

You thought about moments didn’t you?

The building blocks of relationship are shared quality experiences.  That’s just a principle.  You can work with it….or against it.  But it is true.  Use it to your advantage.

This deserves quite a long talk so I’ll write a blog about it soon….BUT…it includes your programming (music, games, speaker, camps), your speakers, your curriculum, your strategies and anything else you do for small groups.

3.  Give parents access to #1 and #2.

There is no greater gift for a parent than a small group leader with a well defined and well understood role.  If you can communicate what is going on and what the student is hearing as well than you have set the parents up for success.

So…that’s it.  What do you think?  What am I missing.

Click HERE to finish the conversation

I believe that both churches and schools suffer from the same disease.

The basic symptoms of this disease start with a sincere desire to do what’s best for the people you serve and ends in a slow frustrating death.

At the center of this disease is this…

When you’re trying to serve kids…when you’re trying to do what’s best… there are simply too many good ideas.  All of them can be rationalized into a great idea that we “HAVE” to do!

For example, in schools…

as soon as they get some momentum they start to add this program and that.  A sports program for boys needs to be balanced with a sports program for girls…then, if that’s successful, we need to add something for the non-athletes.  Then there is some sort of tragedy and we need to add a Rainbow club to teach kids to help each other with tragedy.  Then, a key parent get involved with horses and donates a chunk of money for the new Equestrian barn…and on and on we go…until the school becomes an unidentifiable-understaffed-over-budget-mass-of poorly-run-programs.

And all for good reasons…and all things we felt we had to do.

The same happens in churches…and for that matter…in individual ministries.

I don’t need to go into details…just look around.

I bet you’re overworked without a budget and your schedule is full of stuff you have to do…and you can’t do what you want to do.

I know…I’m psychic!

So…How do you stay focused?  If all these ideas are good ideas for good reason…then how do you figure out what to say “yes” to and what to say “NO” to.

Here’s a little exercise to help.

Stop reading this blog for a couple of hours and answer this question.

If I could only do 3 things…What would be the most redemptive things I could do for the people I serve in this ministry?

….OK…..I was serious about stopping your reading….Go think about it.

In my world…this is what I came up with for the three most redemptive things we can do for middle schoolers.

Psych…I really want you to think about it.  After you have…click HERE for Part 2

Boot Camp is our camp for 6th graders.  We do it over 2 weekends.  It’s a pretty big deal.  We have over 700 6th graders involved and well over 200 volunteers to coordinate.

So…packing day is where we take care of all of the little details.

We label t-shirts, put them in backs, create leader bags with guides, pencils, activities, gifts, first aid kits…etc…etc….etc.

The net of it all is that we fill 8 hours with manual labor.  It’s simply stuff that needs done.

16 golf pencils in this zip lock…add 16 cards…2 shapies…and a partridge in a pear tree.

Long story short…as we broke for lunch, Justin Grunewald, our Buckhead Middle School Director was in charge of lunch…and so he was also in charge of praying.

But…before he started…he said something like this.

“Before we start I want to take a second to tell you what you are doing.  This weekend, 100′s of kids and small group leaders are going to experience an amazing camp.  Sometime during this weekend, students are going to hear the gospel…maybe for the first time.  And, because of your work today, the small group leader who is with that student is going to be able to focus on exactly what that kid needs in that moment.  That student will not only accept Christ…but he will do it with a loving mature adult who is going to be ready to walk with him or her for the next three years.  Please don’t underestimate the importance of what you’ve done today!..Thank you so much for coming….let’s pray…”

Are you kidding me!?  Incredible leadership.  Those volunteers understood they weren’t counting pencils…they were creating an environment!  An environment with eternal consequences.

Do you think we will have trouble getting those folks back to volunteer?

I’ve come to believe that casting leadership is a lot less about the big speech…and more about comments like this. 

Casting vision is about  a focused leader…not a great communicator (which Justin is btw).

Casting vision is about constant pressure….over time.

Casting vision is a process…not an event.

Casting vision has to happen at all levels of your team.  There is no one who doesn’t need to hear how significant they are to the over-all picture.

Casting vision happens over coffee…on phone calls…and in the auditorium.

Where else have you seen vision talked about so clearly and well?