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Planning and Execution

Posted on by Rich

Execution is a strange word. In different contexts, it can mean killing someone, making things happen, or working intentionally. It is this last meaning that I want to elaborate. Execution is working intentionally. To work intentionally, you must:

1) Establish goals.
2) Determine how you INTEND to achieve those goals.
3) Spend your energy and time in ways that honor your intentions.

 

This sounds really simple, until we realize that we spend most of our time being distracted by administrivia, our own bad habits, and other peoples issues. Working intentionally, is plain and simply:

“bringing sufficient focus to a goal to justify ignoring the normal distractions enough to accomplish the goal.”

 

Unless you are one of those completely mission-oriented, type A personalities – you probably find this difficult. Moreover, the further the goal is away from your normal responsibilities, the harder it is to break free from the ordinary rhythm of activity to work on it. A wise man I met at my second employer used to say, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions!” While this isn’t necessarily theologically sound – it sure expresses how things often work out. Continue reading “Planning and Execution” →

Planning and Scheduling

Posted on by Rich

Most people who are not professional project managers, build plans without much rigor. For simple endeavors, this can be just enough structure to get to done.

We have already discussed in our Planning and Goals Post about defining what done looks like. In this post, we are going to talk about how to put a schedule together, and how to think about resourcing the plan. This is a conversation about When and Who.

Schedule

Schedules and resources are inextricably linked together. Your ability to accomplish the What by When of a goal, is determined by the ability and availability of the Who. But the starting point of a schedule is a sequence. These activities in some order will get to done. The order is determined by dependencies. Dependencies are simply an inability to start some activity until some other activity is finished.

What are the benefits of building the schedule to achieve a goal?

Continue reading “Planning and Scheduling” →

Planning and Delegation

Posted on by Rich

Many leaders find it hard to let go. They find it very hard to let other people run aspects of their project, their ministry. They feel a constant need to be in the center of everything, coordinating, keeping track, holding the project together. I know how this feels.

The thing is, this is a sure way to make a project fail. You inevitably become a bottleneck. People end up waiting for you to make decisions, your “say so” becomes important to the timeline. Inevitably, you will burn out, alienate people, be frustrated, and think it was everybody elses fault.

But think about this: This is not the principle on which God operates! He, being infinitely competent, and infinitely capable, has chosen to delegate the work of his Kingdom on earth to us, incompetent, incapable us. Why, because he knows that we need it in order to grow in our relationship with Him. If he does everything how will we glorify him? Continue reading “Planning and Delegation” →

Planning and Goals

Posted on by Rich

Pastors and other vocational church leadership staff are educated in many things. If they have an M.div they typically have studied the Bible very deeply. They typically have studied church history, and probably have some counseling or other shepherding in their education.

In talking with pastors and other staff that I know, neither their undergrad or seminary experience prepared them for the “normal challenges of organizational leadership”. Some of them are great leaders, but it really is innate skill or talent, undeveloped until it needed to be exercized in the heat of battle.

Today’s post is about two simple activities in organizational leadership: Planning and Goals.

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Planning is an activity that takes goals as an input, and creates action steps as an output. Goals are expressed as a what by when; some desired outcome on some desired schedule. Goals can be very simple, such as, “Preach a sermon series on marriage in May”, or they can be grandiose and complex, such as, “Convert our sunday school communities to small group communities by the end of the year.” Continue reading “Planning and Goals” →

What are Your Bottlenecks?

Posted on by Rich

I could ask the question differently. I could ask what is preventing your church from growing faster. I could ask what is preventing your congregation from growing deeper in relationship with Christ. I could ask the question relative to any specific goal you have what is preventing you from acheiving it. But I really want you to think about your ministry holistically. What are your ministry bottlenecks?

Bottleneck

Sometimes the bottleneck appears to be finances. Sometimes the bottleneck appears to be human resources or volunteers. Sometimes that bottleneck appears to be a cohesive vision. I am going to say that none of these things are really bottlenecks. All of them are symptoms of a different bottleneck. A leadership bottleneck. Continue reading “What are Your Bottlenecks?” →

Growing From a Seed

Posted on by Rich

— An Incomplete Parable or Analogy —

Jesus used all kinds of parables and analogies in His teaching to his disciples. They lived in a primarily agrarian society, so agriculture was very familiar to all the people of Jesus day. Sheep and Shepherds were common place. Growers of fruit and other crops were also common. Jesus used these very familiar images in his stories, explaining the kingdom of God, because he knew that they would be very familiar to the people around him.

They are not as familiar to us. In this post-industrial age, how many of you have ever met a shepherd, or have raised any kind of livestock or grown crops. These word pictures don’t necessarily resonate with us, the way they did with the people Jesus came into contact with. Yet we persist in using His parables, and analogies to explain spiritual things to our peers. Even in this blog, Fruit Producing Ministry, I use agrarian metaphor to reflect the mission of The Church, as an output of agriculture.

Seedlings

This is a parable of leadership. Churches grow from a seed. We already call the most common way of establishing a new church a “plant”. In fact it is more like a cutting. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The lesson in this parable is that a growing plant needs different kind of leadership at different phases of growth. Continue reading “Growing From a Seed” →

Church Marketing

Posted on by Rich

I suppose I used to think that the idea of church marketing was a bad idea. A concept from the business world, applied to a non-profit organization, whose mission is not competitive. However, I think the idea of sharing the gospel is marketing. In fact, all churches and all chrisitians are marketers. If we understand a little about sales and marketing, we realize that we use many of the same techniques and ploys in sharing the gospel that marketing and sales professionals do in their work.

We all should be marketing Christ. But along the way, we want to market our church. We want people who accept our message of hope in Christ, to also join our community. We want to recruit them to help us share that same message of hope with others. Continue reading “Church Marketing” →

Slowing Down

Posted on by Rich

I published my first post on this blog last year in March. Since then I have posted once or twice a week “religiously”. I felt that I had a lot to say about my own experience in ministry, ministry leadership, ministry volunteerism, and as a ministry participant. For a while now, I have been engaged on twitter, following a broad variety ministry leaders, ministry consultants, and pastors, and other weirdo’s like me. I have been greatly encouraged by all of you, and have been inspired to respond to some of your ideas in this blog.

I also started a new blog that is primarily about my “day job” as an IT consultant and application software development leader. More recently I started a blog about political, cultural and economic topics – in which I espouse some really oddball views.

Recently, my thoughts on ministry have slowed down, and I have been posting more biblical topics, and I don’t know that my skills and gifts lead these to benefit anyone but me. For the moment, I have decided to slow down the pace of posting on this blog from weekly to monthly – of course, I will continue to post as frequently as I am led.

Shrewd Managers

Posted on by Rich

Luke 16:1-15 provides us the parable of the shrewd manager. What does this mean for us as believers, or as church leaders?

Here is my current paraphrase:

An executive was told that one of his reports was “taking some liberties” with his expense account. This manager was hauled into his boss’s office and told to pack up his stuff and get out. The manager was terrified, because the job market was bad, and he was too proud to accept a position of lower title. So he quickly contacted some of the corporation’s customers, saying, “I am losing my job, but I will cut your bill in half before I go, if you will help me find a job”, to which they readily agreed. When the executive found out, he praised the dishonest manager for being clever.

 

When I think about this, what strikes me is not the dishonesty of the manager, but the willingness of his boss and his customers to accept this practice. It tells me that then as now, worldly people are motivated by money, and they are willing to overlook improprieties, if it means that they can profit from it. Continue reading “Shrewd Managers” →

Accountability vs. Discipline

Posted on by Rich

Church Discipline is not something that the unchurched understand. This may be partially because they perceive church like a social club or a charity organization and the aspect of discipline of members seems very cultish. They may also not understand the relationship of accountability that is formed between disciple and discipler. I had no idea about church discipline before I was a member of a church and watched one of my fellow members undergo such a proceding. Continue reading “Accountability vs. Discipline” →