I’ve now been at Granger more than fifteen years. I’ve seen it grow from 400 to more than 5,000. I’ve served with a church staff team as small as 5 people and as many as 95. And we have never had enough staff. It has never been comfortable. We’ve always gone into every year wanting to hire more people than we’ve been able to. And over the past three years—we’ve actually had to reduce staff while the ministry continues to grow.

I’ve visited hundreds of other churches…and I’ve actually never talked to a pastor who thought he had enough staff. I’ve never met a team who had so much money they could hire anyone they wanted.

Whether yours is a church of a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand, if your goal is to accomplish the Great Commission, you will never have enough staff. If you think you’re the exception and you have enough staff, then you need to get a bigger dream. Are all the people within driving distance of your church already following Christ, growing in their faith, and taking steps in their spiritual journey? No? I didn’t think so. If you think you have enough staff, you may need to ask God for the perspective to see the need around you!

And you know what? Not having enough staff is a good thing. It forces us to our knees. It requires that we get really smart about the priorities of the church. It compels us toward creativity and innovation. And it makes us get serious about leveraging the time and talents of our volunteers.

I’ve been to churches in which the pastors do everything and the church members see it as their responsibility to warm the pews and “keep the pastor accountable.” Where is that in the Bible? Instead of agonizing over how to find the money to hire staff, what if you spent your time figuring out how to motivate the members to take part in the ministry. Your church may have a long and rich tradition of laziness. The pastors or leaders who preceded you may have bought into the lie that they were supposed to do everything. They may have spent their time teaching the congregation about the nuances of transubstantiation, but forgot to mention that God wants them actively involved in the lives of others. It may take months or years to transform your church into an army of volunteers that influences your community through service and love.

At Granger, 60% of our adults are serving—and I’m going to spend an entire day talking about volunteers (recruiting, leading, affirming, motivating, redirecting and more). It’s in Orlando during the Exponential Conference. This venue is intentionally small (probably around 50), so plenty of time to interact and address your specific question. Let me know if you plan to join me there.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ll admit–I was surprised by the response. (I shouldn’t have been…I mean it makes sense that a guy who has sold 26 million books and appears regularly on ESPN might have a few fans). But it’s probably the most energized I have seen our crowd in years about inviting their friends. We spent thousands of dollars on promotion and you could feel the momentum building. By last week, we were already talking that the Mitch Albom weekend might be bigger than Easter.

And that’s when Thursday became not just another day…

2:43am – An email is sent from a representative of Mitch’s team saying that he “just received a disturbing email.” Of course, we are all sleeping. No one gets the message.

7:04am – Mark Waltz gets the worm (he’s the early bird) and also gets the email. He forwards it to me, but of course, I’m still sleeping.

8:35am – I get the email forwarded from Waltz. It doesn’t look good. Mitch is out of the country and won’t be able to get back in time for any speaking engagements next week. (Uh, yeah, he’s supposed to be here in ten days!). We can’t tell if this is a “possibly” or “for sure” thing. Is there still an outside chance he’s coming? I call Kem Meyer (who has been our point of contact) and she is already trying to contact the rep to confirm.

9:10am – I call Jason Miller and give him a heads up. Most our team is heading out of the country, so the “weekend formerly known as Mitch Albom” is already programmed and everyone is leaving. Tomorrow.

9:40am – Jami calls our mail fulfillment house and puts the postcards set to mail today on hold. A call just a few hours later would have cost us an additional $10,000.

9:55am – Still not able to reach our contact, we start making stuff up. Seeing that Mitch was on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson just two nights previous talking about a children’s orphanage in Haiti–we assume his heart has been captured by those children and he’s refusing to do any more speaking engagements until he finishes building the orphanage. His website also seems to indicate that his focus is on Haiti. But we are just grasping at straws. We really have no idea.

10:24am – I email out a possible replacement series with the disclaimer: “Came to me in the shower. Not sure if it’s good or not.” Here is my actual proposal.

10:45am – This new idea begins to take shape. We are disappointed. Others will be disappointed. What if we talk straight about how to deal with disappointment? It fits the weekend programming pretty well. It connects to the reason we think that Mitch is canceling. Our team rallies — one of the staff suggests that we actually raise money for Mitch’s orphanage in Haiti on the weekend that he’s not here. If it has captured his heart so much that he’d cancel an engagement in front of thousands of people…let’s just get behind it and see what happens! The team starts getting excited.

11:30am – Jason and I meet with Rob Wegner and Mark Beeson and bring them up to speed: Mitch canceled. We think he’s in Haiti but haven’t confirmed. We’ve designed a new series called “When Life Sucks.” We might even raise money for his orphanage. After a few minutes of groaning (from the news, not the Moes burritos), we are all on the same page and give it a green light.

2:21pm – Mark Beeson calls me back. Still likes the concept, but having second thoughts about the title with the “S” word. I call the team, and fifteen minutes later they have a new title and are working on a new design.

4:20pm – We still don’t know if Mitch is in Haiti, so we take any mention of the orphanage off the promotion piece (knowing we can always focus on it “live”) and finalize the design which has to go to the printer before 5:00pm. See design below.

4:45pm – We begin talking about how we will give the crowd this “bad news” on the weekend. Remember, thousands of people have invited friends. It is our desire to be authentic about the disappointment without trashing anyone. We’ll make the announcement at the end of the service.

5:19pm – I send an email to our entire staff team letting them know of the news and asking them to help us communicate this weekend.

6:27pm – We finally get word on the reason for the cancellation. Mitch is not in Haiti. He’s in Singapore. Then heading to Australia and then New Zealand. Why? He is on a book tour and his team double-booked him. It was totally human error. They are very sorry. Later in the weekend Mitch calls me from Singapore to apologize. He feels very bad and is really hoping we can re-book.

And that, my friends, was the day our plans came crashing down. There is no possible way I could be prouder of our team who took very bad news on a very busy day and came up with an amazing solution. You can’t do that with stinky attitudes, low-capacity leaders or a team full of doers. They soared under pressure–and I believe God is going to use the next three weekends in ways we could never imagine.

These guys are planting a church in a town in Utah where it is 80% Mormon and there is not one Protestant church. Talk about unchurched!

Before I tell you what I think, what do you think about two guys starting a Beer and Bible study to launch a church?

• Internet filtering – Curiosity killed the cat and can do great harm to kids as well. We have used different products to filter and monitor our kids internet activities. Monitoring tells us where they are going. Filtering keeps bad stuff away that could hurt them. Currently we are using Family Safety which is a free add-on product that we have loaded on every computer they access. Not only can we restrict sites based on our values–we can also monitor what sites are capturing their attention. And we can change (ease) these restrictions as they get older.
• Computer game time — on a school day, they get 30  minutes of electronic game time (whether computer, Wii, Xbox, iPod, whatever). On non-school days, they get an hour. This limit forces them (mostly the boys) to find other things to do. They all love reading, and I think that is partially because we haven’t allowed their time to be monopolized by staring at a screen.
• Cell Phone privileges - we didn’t get cell phones for our teens until they were in 9th grade. Why then? Because that is when it became inconvenient to us that they didn’t have one. It was never really a safety issue–in middle school there was always a friend nearby who had a phone they could borrow.
• Cell Phone Limits – this is about helping them stay in the present and not always being pulled away into other conversations. Our cell phones have unlimited text messaging, but we actually pay an additional fee (called “Smart Limits” by AT&T) to limit the number of text messages and the time of day it works for phone calls (other than to us, of course).
• iPod Touch restrictions – our 7th grade son saved his money for a long time until he was able to buy an iPod Touch. The first thing I did was took it, enabled the “restrictions” feature, locked it out from Safari (internet surfing) and YouTube, set a password, and gave it back to him. I don’t need my adolescent son walking around with a pocket full of temptation.
• Email monitoring - when they first got email privileges, I restricted their incoming messages to an approved list to protect them from child predators. After awhile, I lifted that restriction but continued to monitor all their incoming and outgoing email. As the teens are getting older and more responsible, I’ve gone from 1) Monitor everything, to 2) Monitor occasionally, to 3) “You know I can monitor it if I want,” to 4) I trust you.
• Facebook monitoring – similar to email, we monitored all of their Facebook activity when they first began using it (around 8th grade). Then it was “as needed.”
• TV time — the biggest blessing to parents has been the invention of the DVR (or TIVO). Our kids don’t channel surf. There is no reason. We just keep the DVR stacked with shows that won’t hurt their hearts (which, of course, changes as they age). They get a limited time to watch, and when they do they can skip commercials (which saves time AND limits the consumer mentality from taking over). Parents: Think of a DVR as a parenting tool, not a tech gadget.

I haven’t even talked about the content of movies or shows, but the bottom line: You are the parent. If you don’t protect them from the digital world, who will? At the same time, if you don’t prepare them to live in a digital world without your oversight, who will? I am constantly doing the countdown: I know I have 17 months left to prepare Heather to totally stand on her own in the world. So we are constantly reevaluating our limits and lifting them as she is ready. It’s fun to go to the kids and say, “You’ve been doing great, making good choices. I’m going to ease the restriction in this area because I think you can handle it now.”

Parenting isn’t an exact science, so what would you add or change?

I have attended Granger for over a year now. I joined some friends who invited me to attend the sex series along with them. Wow!!!! that was not my grandma’s church service. I have felt at home from day one. I have connection with a people who long to move forward with Christ. Thru this past year God has stirred my soul to go deeper with Him, to trust Him more than I have, to surrender parts of my life I didn’t even know I was holding on to. I noticed last fall after Mark had been gone awhile from speaking that he came back with what appeared to be a new passion, a deeper desire to communicate the love he holds for the God we serve. I am glad the bar is held high to give God our all in the messages, the worship, the arts, to introduce new ways to give and new ways to engage, thru gccwired and the incredible mobile connection to GCC . I don’t know if you are told this much, but all the time spent in preparation, be it a series, the greetings, the videos does not go unnoticed. Thank you.

His email reminded me of a paragraph from Pop Goes the Church:

If you don’t offer something people need, they won’t come. If the people don’t come, you can’t teach them the truth. So an effective church is busy identifying people’s needs and letting the community know you have some help they should consider. If you speak their language, there is a better chance they will come to a service. If they do that, the odds increase significantly that they will hear how much they matter to God, and they just might respond.

If the church of Jesus Christ can offer the world help in dealing with these real needs, we can see the world change! If we can scratch them where they itch, then after they accept Christ and begin to grow in their faith, we can teach principles they don’t even know they need yet, such as memorizing scripture, becoming systematic in their giving, and learning how to pray.

Looks like that strategy, at least for this man, is working. What do you think?

We are very excited about a weekend coming up at Granger when Mitch Albom will be in our services. Who is Mitch? Here is how he has been described:

Mitch Albom is an American best-selling author, journalist, screenwriter, dramatist, radio and television broadcaster and musician. His books have sold over 26 million copies worldwide. Having achieved national recognition for his sports writing in the earlier part of his career, he is perhaps best known now for the inspirational stories and themes that weave through his books, plays and films. He is also well-known for his philanthropic work in Detroit, Michigan where he founded three charities.

Mitch isn’t a pastor. He’s not a “Christian” celebrity or speaker. But he is on a spiritual journey, as demonstrated in his recent book Have A Little Faith. And we think his story about his own journey will help give handles to thousands of people in our community who are trying to figure out their next step.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Mitch had to cancel his long-scheduled weekend with us on March 13-14. However, he is committed to making up for their error and rescheduling as soon as possible.

Below is an article I wrote for Zondervan which now appears in a book called Steering Through Chaos by Scott Wilson. The subtitle says it all: “Mapping a Clear Direction for Your Church in the Midst of Transition and Change.” This book holds a lot of fascination for me, so watch for a review in the coming weeks. For now, here is the article which was reprinted in the book.

Last month President Obama held a town hall a few minutes away from our church. He announced to the watching world that he was standing in the county with the worst unemployment rate in the nation. That wasn’t a surprise to us in Granger—we had been feeling the pain of the downward spiraling economy for nearly two years.

In fact, it led to the agonizing decision to cut eight full-time staff positions. We could no longer afford to pay them. That meant I had to fire a woman who had served us faithfully for more than ten years; and another who is a single mom with three kids; and another whose mother-in-law died the night before; and another who was my personal assistant and good friend.

I’ve long believed that more leaders mess up because of bad communication than because of bad decisions. Very few leaders fail because they made the wrong decisions. But many fail because they didn’t take the time to communicate the decision to the right people, at the right time, in the right order. In my experience, I’d say twenty-percent of leadership is making the right decisions. Eighty percent is appropriately communicating those decisions.

And appropriate communication for this transition was needed. We had people who walked into work on a Monday morning with a job, and left minutes later unemployed. We had remaining staff members who just learned they would no longer be working with their best friend. We had family members who were hurting for their dad or mom or spouse. We had eight people who we loved and cherished now entering a job climate that was harsh—where one in six people are unemployed and looking for work. We had volunteers who were rightfully in pain for their friends.

Challenging leadership transitions require great communication. But communication isn’t an exact science. It requires strategy, assessment, execution, reassessment, more execution, and finally evaluation of what worked and what didn’t.

I’m not a pro at this, but I have learned a few things in my fifteen years at Granger…

• Start with a written communication strategy.
• Don’t delay your communication. Waiting says you are hiding something.
• Consider your key influencers. Who needs to know first? Then who? Who after that?
• Be straight with people. No one will be surprised you are facing troubles. They are just watching to see how you will handle it.
• Ask people to help you. Everyone has potential to fuel the fire of gossip and bitterness or put it out. Call your leaders to be firemen and women for a short time, and provide them water (i.e. information) so they can be effective.
• Plan time for conversations to help people process. You’ve been living in the pain for awhile and are ready to move on. But they are experiencing it for the first time. Give them space to vent.

If you aren’t going through a tough transition right now—I can promise you that one is just around the corner. Spend time making the best decision you possibly can with the information you have available. But then spend most your time focusing on communication. That is where the battle is won or lost.

Last summer I changed my Twitter philosophy. Prior to that, I was following 123 friends and didn’t really care what anyone else had to say. I had no room for the extra noise in my life. But I realized I was missing out for two important reasons: 1) I was inadvertently communicating to the 2,000 people who followed me that I didn’t care what they had to say. Like talking to them was more important than listening to them. And 2) I was missing the opportunity to add value to more people than I could ever possibly meet.

So I decided at that point that I would aggressively broaden the number of people I’m following. This change led to a 1,900% increase in friends and an 815% increase in followers. Some people ask how in the world I can possibly manage that many followers.

Here is what works for me…

1. I decide which tweets come to the front of the line. To do this, I use the list feature in Twitter. Everytime I add someone, I decide whether they show up on one of my lists. My current main lists are: Family and Friends, Pastors and Leaders, Coaching Network and Pop Culture. Between these four lists I follow 150 people and read 100% of their tweets.
2. I use Tweet Deck on my computer and Twittelator Pro on my phone to view tweets from those on my lists.
3. In Tweet Deck, I also run a column with “all friends.” I breeze this a couple times a day to read tweets and scout new people to add to one of my lists. I always find interesting stuff.
4. I use Tweet Adder to find new friends to follow. For example, I ran a search for anyone who had “executive pastor” in their bio and automatically subscribed to their tweets. This system can be completely automated once you set it up.
5. I attempt to follow everyone who follows me. (I also use Tweet Adder for this, but it isn’t perfect, so please let me know if I missed you!)
6. I also use Tweet Deck to run a constant search on @timstevens. He isn’t me. But he gets LOTS of @mentions directed toward me. So I just constantly monitor his @mentions so I can see anything directed at me.
7. Most days I get more than 200 direct messages. And most of them are auto-replies, but I skim everyone looking for personal DM’s. I also look for porn sites (they usually stand out with creative avatars) and immediately “block” them. So far I’ve blocked 230 accounts.
8. About once a month I run TwitBlock on my account to check for spam or porn. It is real easy within the program to block the sites that rise to the top of the list.
9. Because I’m a stats geek, I use Twitter Counter and Twitter Analyzer to track growth, retweets, @mentions and more. Again, my goal is to add value to people, so seeing how much I’m re-tweeted or mentioned gives me an indicator of how much value I’m adding.

This probably sounds more complicated then it is. But I look at Twitter as a tool to broaden my influence as I follow Christ and lead at home and in the church.

What questions or thoughts do you have?