Here to Lead

On more than on occasion, someone has approached me after a message and told me that something I said really spoke to them. When they repeat what I said, I realized that I never said that. Maybe it was the Holy Spirit, or maybe they didn’t hear me right.

I’m reminded that we are often not as clear as we think we are. And while it may be said correctly, it’s not effective communication if it’s not received appropriately. Here’s two examples.

We use abstract language that doesn’t have meaning. Instead of saying “We’re in trouble financially” and hoping that people get the hint and give, we should say, “We are $4,000 behind budget for the month and we have these particular expenses coming up.” Instead of saying, “we need kids volunteers,” we should say “we need one person relatively good with computers to work check in from 9:30 – 10:15 on Sunday.” Specific language always connects better than vague comments.

We use language that’s clear to us, but doesn’t have meaning to others. For a while, and for theological reasons, we spoke about membership at Oak Leaf Church as partnership. We’d toss around the partner work with ease, not realizing that most people didn’t know what we were talking about. Now I believe the word partner is a more accurate description of the Biblical idea of membership, but people in Georgia know what membership means. They have a frame of reference. I think the same principle holds true when trying to redefine a church service as an “experience” or a “gathering.” Do people in your context naturally understand those terms? Do you talk about KidZone like people who don’t go to your church know what it is? When it comes to naming things and communicating information, it’s probably better to choose clear over cute.

A team gets hot towards the end of the season and makes an unexpected run into the playoffs.

A series of product launches lead a company into market domination.

A church experiences an unexplained jumps in attendance.

The bell curve of life and leadership is really a series of smaller bell curves.  A little win + a little win + another little win leads to huge momentum.  In Good to Great, Jim Collins calls this the flywheel.  Momentum in church comes from the blessing of the Holy Spirit combined with effective leadership.  It’s hard work, and you usually don’t experience a breakthrough without the build up.

If you look at our attendance trends over the past couple of years, you would notice that attendance often grows and declines with the season.  While there are stand-alone high days (like Easter), and certain spikes or declines attributed to specific events (move to the movie theater or staff member leaving), it’s helpful to look at the year from the perspective of seasons.

Two of our prime growth seasons are the first of the year (January) and back to school (August to Labor Day).  Chances are, your church has a pattern of growth as well.  And if you are smart, you will consider when you kick off a new series or plan a new initiative.

But if you’re smarter, you’ll consider the series or season before the initiative, and the series or season that comes after it as well.  If you’re doing a series on the Gospel, why not lead up to that with an entire series on evangelism or inviting?  Why not use one entire series to leverage the next one?  Instead of just advertising the coming series, let’s connect what’s coming to our people, and inspire them to invite.  Not just with an announcement or a video or by providing an invite card, but with a sermon series designed to communicate the Biblical imperative of evangelism.

And why not plan the series that immediately follows an evangelistic series around Bible reading, prayer, or other next steps? Instead of looking at one series, consider what comes before it and what comes after it.

I updated the resource tab above with several new resources that may interest you.  And in case you’re wondering, all the proceeds from these resources are going to church planting.  So not only will you get field-tested, practical stuff used in a real church, you’ll help start churches at the same time.  Here you go…

Theology 101 is a four part class that you can fully customize and teach to people in your church.  Topics include The Word of God, God the Father, God the Son and Salvation.  The $29 instant download includes the leaders guide, student guide, as well as original Word, InDesign and layered Photoshop files so you can fully customize it for your setting.

Start Here is another class, an 8-part class for new Christians or those interested in Jesus.  It’s our next step for new believers.  The $29 download includes Word and PDF versions of the Leader’s Guides, PDF and InDesign versions of the Leader’s Guide, as well as all the layered graphics.

Introduction to the Old Testament is the third class, a 4-week overview to the Old Testament.  You’ll cover the Torah, History books, Poetry and Prophets and give people a general overview of the Old Testament.  The $29 download includes Word and PDF versions of the Leaders guide, the PDF and InDesign layout of the student book, as well as all the Photoshop files so you can customize the class for your own church.

Group Leader Training is a three-week training module used at Oak Leaf Church to train children, student AND adult small group leaders.  The first two sessions are for all group leaders, and the final session is “breakout” style.  The $49 instant download includes editable versions of the student and leaders guide, original InDesign and Photoshop files, Keynote presentations of the general sessions, and video of Michael teaching the first two sessions.

Long Live the Sermon is a 50-page PDF that will guide you through the key ingredients of a Bible-based, Gospel-focused, Life-changing sermon.  You’ll learn how to write such a message in this $9 instant download.

Docs and Forms 2.0 contains our budget, bylaws, employee handbook, evaluation forms, systems, charts and strategies. You get the original Word files (and other original file formats) so you can change and customize them easily and quickly for your setting.  It’s church organization in a box for $79.

Start Strong is a 79-page curriculum for core groups and launch teams.It’s got Bible studies and practical talks that you can lead with for your group. It’s a $29 instant download.

These resources aren’t just for church planters, either.  We’re seeing a ton of great, established churches benefit from this stuff.

If someone who wanted to be a pastor came to me, I would recommend that he read these books.

• What is the Gospel
• Doctrine
• Dug Down Deep
• Vintage Church
• The Reason for God
• Spiritual Leadership
• The Next Generation Leader

You’ll notice that most of these are theological books.  That’s where we need to start, and in my opinion, many pastors need to return.  There’s nothing wrong with business books or books about the Christian life.  But our view of everything will stem from our view of God.

As pastors, we need to wrestle with the deep truths, not just look for creative sermon illustrations.  We need to know God and lead our people to know God.  Titus 2:1 tells us that we need to teach what accords with sound doctrine.  Doctrine isn’t bad – it’s important!

On a side note, I’m on a bit of a personal mission to recover aspects of theology into the  sermon and bring it back into modern worship music.  But that’s a whole different story.

I am pretty excited about this resource.

Long Live the Sermon is a 50-page PDF that will guide you through the key ingredients of a Bible-based, Gospel-focused, Life-changing sermon.  You’ll learn the keys to writing such a message and walk away with a simple outline that will frame your message.

In 1536, John Calvin said this of ministers: “Their whole task is limited to the ministry of God’s Word, their whole wisdom to the knowledge of his Word: their whole eloquence, to its proclamation.”  There is little that I do every week that is more important than preparing a sermon – and this is something that needs our focus.  We gotta stop downloading other people’s messages and focus on feeding our people from the pulpit (or cool looking table).

This instant download is just $9.  It includes the PDF booklet as well as a 15-minute MP3 where I walk through the key points.

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When the “little guy” becomes the “big guy” he often forgets that he was once the “little guy.”  So the comedian who makes it big bolts from his town for the big stage, never to return. The artist who signs the record deal doesn’t have time for the local church show.  The preacher doesn’t have time to meet with regulars in the church.

While some of this is the natural evolution of advancement, it doesn’t mean we have to like or accept it.  It may be common, but that doesn’t mean it’s best.  Maybe that’s why the Bible tells us not to despise humble or small beginnings.  Maybe that’s why mamma always tells us don’t forget where you came from.

I remember when Oak Leaf Church was 15 people in a living room, and I’m thankful for those days.  In some ways, I miss those days.

I love the story of Wikepedia, the free encyclopedia written by everybody.  This volunteer-run program basically put the poweful Microsoft Encarta (remember that?) out of business.  It shows us that the power of everybody is stronger than the influence of a few highly-educated, highly-paid professionals.

Clay Shirky, in Cognitive Surplus, estimates that people have spent more than 100 Million hours creating and updating and correcting the pages of Wikepedia.  That’s a lot of hours.  You might wonder what would compel a person to volunteer their time to write for free.  You might think that these “authors” might not have a life.  You might think that you don’t have that much time.

Then Mr. Shirky points out that Americans watch more than 200 Billion hours of TV each and every year.  Clearly, we collectively more time than we think we have – we just use it on other things.

This reminded me once again that we will always find time and money to do what is important to us.  It’s about our heart, not about our finances or our schedule.

When we announced plans to launch a second campus last November, we knew we would introduce video teaching to our organization in some way.  So we set out to look for ways to get our people used to video before just dropping it in peoples laps.  And while I am sure there will be some that don’t respond well to video teaching, hopefully, some of the things we’ve done will help people understand why we’re doing it.

It really comes down to vision.  We want to reach people all over the place, and video teaching is a tool that allows us to do that.  Like anything else, the people in the church need to understand the vision and the WHY behind a decision if you want them to buy into it.  So in addition to talking about the WHY, we made a few other strategic moves.

• We transitioned the welcome to a video welcome.  This helped people get information (not just illustrations) from the video screens.  Our video welcome is not very fancy…a guy literally stands in front of a wall.  This video frequently serves as our service opener.
• I strategically pre-recorded a few messages throughout the year and we used them when I’m out of town.  On one or two occasions, we used them even though I wasn’t out of town.
• We recorded a video that talks about why we use video.  We distributed that to our people, but we’ll also show it in a service.
• We looked for elements, other than messages, that could happen on video.  I recorded a introduction to baptism that we can show right before we baptize someone in one of the services.  And here’s a giving talk that’s entirely on video.  In other words, look for elements in your service that could happen via video.

Introducing video into an existing setting is more difficult than starting from scratch, so you have to be a little more intentional.  I’d love to hear from anyone who made a transition like this.  What has worked well?  What are danger zones?  Leave a comment and share your story.

Let’s say our church is going to plan a big event.  Something like a summer camp, an Egg Drop, or The Man Games.  We start with an idea, move through the decision making process, then work through the event planning sheet.  The result is an Event at a Glance document.  This one or two page document contains all the basic information about the event – information that is sent to everyone on staff and also to volunteers associated with the event.

Here’s the event at a glance for Action Week (our version of VBS) and here’s the one I put together for Nuts and Bolts.

By the way, the decision making process and the event planning sheet are included in Docs and Forms 2.0. Tomorrow, I’m going to give away a set of Docs and Forms, so be sure to check back.

Five years ago, I put together a prospectus for Oak Leaf Church (PDF of original document) – a document that described the kind of church we were starting – a sort of spiritual business plan.  This document helped answer the questions of people praying about jumping in or churches thinking about financially supporting us.  A few things have changed, but our core mission has remained the same.

With new staff, new people, and new volunteers, we thought it was a good thing to create a similar document to just let everyone know who we are, what we’re doing, how we do it and where we’re going. The result was a four-page document called “Oak Leaf Church at a Glance.”  It’s a quick overview of our whole church.

If you’re interested, you can download a PDF of Oak Leaf Church at a Glance.