Staff meeting agenda
I'm always interested in how other church's run their staff meetings, so I'd thought Id' share our meeting agenda just in case someone else has the same interest.
We meet on Tuesdays from 9am to 5pm. Mondays are a day off. The meeting is formatted around the three main "flywheels" GBCK is pushing on: 1)discipleship, 2)Weekend services, and 3)leadership development.
9am - 10am: Leadership discussion
We use this time to discuss a book we're reading together as a staff. Currently, we're listening to Breaking Growth Barriers by Nelson Searcy.
10am - 12pm: Administration, follow-up, discipleship
We use this time to follow-up on people and tasks. We talk about what needs to be done for upcoming events, classes, or services. We also focus on following-up with people who filled out a Connection card from this past Sunday.
12pm - 2pm: Weekend services
We discuss upcoming message series, specials, music, and anything else that involves the worship and preaching. We try to get as far ahead as possible. We're always trying to make our services more compelling and comfortable.
2pm - 5pm: more discipleship and leadership
We talk about our discipleship process. We gauge how many people are moving through the process. We look for ways to improve and tweak things. We also focus on small group leadership and ministry leadership. Currently, we're talking a lot about leadership seasons, and about developing a system for progress and feedback reports.
Center of the Gospel
Re-reading A.W. Tozer's Man: The Dwelling Place of God. I appreciated his thoughts on how Christ is often presented as a "a cure to ills, a way out of troubles, a quick and easy means to the achievement of personal ends." The problem with this is selfish gain becomes the center of the gospel.
If Jesus is all about making our lives better, then why just Christianity? There are lots of other belief systems, faith practices, gurus, and techniques that can improve our lives.
The gospel is not about what we get, it's about what Christ has done. Jesus is the center of the gospel not us.
All Christ-followers are commanded to share the gospel, but let's be careful that we don't present the gospel as a benefits package, or a new and improved product. We are not salespeople, we are messengers.
Thoughts on leadership and ministry…
Yesterday we had a great "round table" meeting of the Hawaii Every Nation pastors. We meet almost every month and it's such a valuable time of sharing, inspiration, and fellowship.
Here are some takeaways from our discussion:
• Get people in their right lanes so they can function and serve effectively.
• You need people who can get things done, but you also need leaders. (For me, you need people who not only can do stuff, but who can think things through.)
• It's necessary to move people through their seasons of life, especially in a leadership context.
• Choose relationships over methods.
• Just because there's a lot of activity doesn't mean there's fruitfulness.
• Patience, it's God's church and he's working at his pace not mine.
• What I do now will shape my ministry 40 years from now.
• Leaders impart values. You can never let up on imparting the value of reaching others for Jesus.
• God is always working on the man of God. (As I grow the church grows.)
• People want to hear your heart
• Embrace the process of developing my philosophy and theology of ministry. (What do I believe?)
Change
At GBCK we are walking through a lot of change in areas of leadership, systems, spiritual growth track, and even our service times. Last Summer there was something brewing inside of me that as a church we needed to change; that is, what got us to our current state wasn't going to get to where we needed to go.
Here are some things we're learning about change, especially from mistakes we made:
• In general, people do not like change. You will always have your "early adopters", but most people adopt change slowly.
• Communication is critical to change. Communicate early. Communicate often.
• Change takes time. People don't soak up change like a sponge; change seeps in.
• Get your leaders and influencers bought into the change early. Don't assume they "got it".
• Change is a process. Plan out the steps to change and then work the plan.
• Vision is the engine to change. Vision makes change a mission. Without vision change becomes a duty.
• Change takes a lot of leadership energy at the front-end.
• Change is good, change is hard.
Bad to Good
I love how God takes a bad thing and uses it for good.
This morning I was reminded of this when reading in Judges 6 the Lord's instruction to Gideon to use the wood from the Asherah pole he just cut down to burn an offering to the Lord. The pole, used to worship the goddess Asherah, was converted to offer the Lord worship and bring him glory.
This should remind us of the Lord's saving and redemptive work in our lives. On a large scale, God took our lives broken by sin (a bad thing) and saved and redeemed us through Christ in order to honor and worship him (a good thing).
But even in our day-to-day lives we should be conscious of the redemptive potential in every situation. Pastor Matt Chandler says we should look for shadows of the Gospel in our daily lives.
Here's a question: If the Lord is in the business of taking bad and using it for good, then what's my part?
Maybe it's praying for a situation, or offering forgiveness, or showing kindness, or taking a risk on someone or something, or obeying that prompting from God, or spending more time with family, etc.
Whatever it is let's participate in God's work of taking bad and using it for good.
"You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." (Genesis 50:20) Joseph to his brothers after they sold him into Egyptian slavery.
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