7 Alternatives to Sunday Morning Announcements

by: Rich Birch

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Ministry leaders think if they just get their event or program “promoted from the stage” people will flood into it. Church communications people are peppered with requests all the time for people wanting to get “their deal” in the announcements. The urgency from those leaders leans towards desperate. However, the more you talk about on a Sunday morning the less effective the messaging for everything is. You need some solid ways to say “no” to other ministry leaders by providing alternative communication channels.

• Direct Emails // Each of your ministry areas needs to cultivate an email list of people who are interested in their area. This is a critical skill for communication today. We recently sent three emails (over three weeks) to a targeted list to promote an event before we “went public” through Sunday morning … we have 200 people sign up through the pre-registration emails and only 50 through Sunday morning.
• Cause Foyer Chaos // Church is fun … right? How could you bring a little piece of the event you are promoting to the foyer on the weekend? Taking the students on a Camping Trip? What if you figured out how to serve smores to guests? (And then hand them an info sheet on the event.) Is your small group ministry launching off for the fall? What if you brought a living room into the middle of the foyer?
• Social Media // How can you engage your people to get “talking” about the ministry program through social media channels? The goal here isn’t just to “call to action” but to create content that spreads dialogue about the ministry initiative.  Ask some questions related to the topic on Facebook. Take some pictures of your team prepping and post them on Instagram. Think conversations not signups.
• Information Cards // As people are leaving the service have your ushers hand out a small printed piece that has all the information you are attempting to communicate as well as a compelling ask to join. Make sure to train your ushers to be friendly and to ask your people if they would like the cards.
• Call People // Have you seen this new technology called “the telephone”?  It’s amazing … it’s kinda like Twitter but with audio. You can speak into it and then people on the other end can respond right away. It’s quick, basically free and ubiquitous. Why not order some pizza and pull together a group of volunteers to call people from the church to ask them about your upcoming event?
• Snail Mail // People just get bills and junk mail in their mailbox at home. What if your ministry area came up with a clever piece to send to people? It will stand out in the desert of people’s inbox.
• Kill It // If the ministry specific area is unwilling to put in the work to promote the event … then you should probably kill it. If the leadership is looking for someone else to “market” the event but they don’t do some work to generate a crowd than that is an indicator of a program that needs to go away. Less is more.

Read more from Rich here.

Tags: Attention, Awareness, Rich Birch, Sunday morning announcements

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5 Ministry Trends to Watch in 2014

by: Carey Nieuwhof

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Sometimes you can dismiss a trend as a fad. Like Crocs, the Harlem Shake, or flash mobs.

At other times to dismiss a trend is just a mistake.

As in every era, some of today’s trends will become tomorrow’s reality.

Innovative leaders aren’t afraid to embrace change and to be some of the first in on the shifts they see around them.

In that spirit, here are 5 trends you’ll no longer be able to dismiss in 2014.

Read more from Carey here.

Tags: Carey Nieuwhof, Ministry Trends, trends

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Official 2014 Church Vision Statement Generator

by: Bryan Rose

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Note from the Vision Room Curator: This post originally ran on New Years’s Eve, but it was so well-received our team decided to roll it out again today. We hope you will take a little time to enjoy this tongue-in-cheek look at church vision statements.

This last week, amidst some post-holiday-meal stupor, a myriad of Facebook feed ”name generators” caught my attention. From Elf Names to Blues Names to Wu-Tang Names, using random details to create identity has never been so easy.

In light of this, and the fact that right now, many Pastors and leaders are doing some reflecting and planning for 2014, I am pleased to present the OFFICIAL 2014 Church Vision Statement Generator (click image to enlarge).

Sadly, more often than not, it seems like actual church Vision and Mission Statements are crafted by methods just as random and meaningless.

> Truth: God has more for your church in 2014 than powerless statements disconnected from actual ministry.

This Spring, Auxano will be hosting 12 church teams as they pursue a Vision Frame for ministry that connects missional calling to disciple-making action. Together, we will pursue unique answers to the 5 Irreducible Questions of Leadership that define and align each church around its Great Commission call.

>> How will you craft meaningful vision for your church this year?

Learn more about Auxano’s Nashville Vision co::Lab here.

Tags: Bryan Rose, Vision Statement Generator

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7 Reasons Your Church Should Create an Annual Report

by: Will Mancini

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Tags: Annual Report, Brand, Elevation Church, LifeChurch, NewSpring Church

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Using Social Media to Make Change: What Pastors Can Learn from Arab Spring and Occupy Fall

by: Brian Solis

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Social media has started a revolution in how people connect, learn and communicate, and its effects cannot be undone.   – Brian Solis

In 2011, the world was introduced a powerful uprising in the Middle East that would later become known as the “Arab Spring.” Facebook, Twitter and YouTube served as the nervous system of shared repression and fed the rise against tyranny.

A few short months following the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement emerged to rally consumer discontent to protest against big businesses, corrupt financial industries, and rising unemployment.

While history books will pay credit to social networks for their role in aligning restlessness with revolt throughout the Arab Spring and Occupy movements, what’s important to not overlook or underestimate is the shared experiences and sentiment of people. It is people, not networks, who bring about transformation.

Leaders must demonstrate why their vision is important, and articulate how they will lead us toward something more substantial than we know today.

Most notably, social media is helping to facilitate real world revolutions by bringing together passionate people around social platforms to organize efforts and achieve desired outcomes.

And through each, the world learns the importance of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other emerging networks in our society. As the old saying goes, “we ain’t seen nothing yet.” Change is in the air and the ties that bind are formed through the relationships between people who share online connections, experiences, and real world aspirations.

Thought leader Brian Solis has written a manifesto for change, to bring about evolution or revolution for what it is you believe in, for what it is you wish to change in your world. This was written to spark your rallying cry. His intention was to help you unlock what it is you already possess, a vision to see things differently, the way they should be, and a heart to inspire those around you to bring your vision to life.

We are no longer bystanders. It’s time to take a stand. You are an activist for transformation. You are the change agent your organization or cause so desperately needs.

To help lead transformation and change, Solis has developed 10 steps through which a leader can become motivated and aligned with the new mission and vision.

Look in the mirror and you will see change staring back at you. And as they say, objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.

Download Brian’s manifesto on transformation here.

Tags: Brian Solis, Change, Social Media

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Build New Habits to Insure You Meet Your Goals

by: Tim Kastelle

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The problem with goals is that most of them are too big, and they take a long time, and that requires work.  That’s also what makes them worthwhile!  But on a day-to-day basis, you need to figure out how to build the habits that will eventually get you to your goals.

Charles Duhigg wrote a great book on how to break bad habits and build better ones – The Power of Habit.  Here is his flow chart for building habits (click on the image to see it full-size):

 

> If your goal is to lose weight, you need to change your eating (input) and exercise (output) habits.

> If your goal is to write a book, you need to change your writing habits.

Austin Kleon wrote a great post on breaking goals down into habits. He says to do something small, every day:

Figure out what your little daily chunk of work is, and every day, no matter what, make sure it gets done.

Don’t say you don’t have enough time. We’re all busy, but we all get 24 hours a day. People often ask me, “How do you find the time for the work?” And I answer, “I look for it.” You find time the same place you find spare change: in the nooks and crannies. You find it in the cracks between the big stuff—your commute, your lunch break, the few hours after your kids go to bed. You might have to miss an episode of your favorite TV show, you might have to miss an hour of sleep, but you can find the time to work if you look for it.

What I usually recommend: get up early. Get up early and work for a couple hours on the thing you really care about. When you’re done, go about your day…

Do the work every day. Fill the boxes on your calendar. Don’t break the chain.

This approach works pretty well for most of our personal goals.  But what if our goal is to make our organizations more innovative?

That’s a bit trickier.  The main reason is that innovation is a lot more complex.  Complex systems are trickier because they require us to approach our goals indirectly.  This excerpt from John Kay’s terrific book Obliquity outlines the issue:

If you want to go in one direction, the best route may involve going in the other. Paradoxical as it sounds, goals are more likely to be achieved when pursued indirectly. So the most profitable companies are not the most profit-oriented, and the happiest people are not those who make happiness their main aim. The name of this idea? Obliquity.

Obliquity is relevant whenever complex systems evolve in an uncertain environment, and whenever the effect of our actions depends on the ways in which others respond to them.

Innovation is another thing that we need to approach obliquely.  So what habits should we build to help?  Here are some ideas that I’ve run across in the past couple of days:

• Take care of yourself.  Jason Cohen points out that we are happier and more productive when we get enough sleep, exercise, and take time to think.
• Practice divergent thinking. It’s a mistake to jump straight to solutions when we’re trying to innovate.  First, we have to explore a broad range of ideas.  Olaf Kowalik writes about how to use divergent thinking to do this – and this is a key innovation skill.
• Read widely. Jorge Barba makes an important point at the end of his post recommending some innovation books to read:
  One more thing: everything is connected in some way, so read about anything and everything. Not just books that have “innovation” in the title.
  

To innovate, you need the process, but you also need to muddle your way through a bit.  So some of the habits you need to build are oblique – like getting enough sleep.  Others are more direct, like blocking out time for thinking and allocating resources for building your ideas.

The main point is that things that are worth doing take effort over an extended period of time.

You need to build habits that will ensure that you make that effort.

Read more from Tim here.

Tags: Innovation, Tim Kastelle, habits, ministry innovation

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Which Path Will You Choose When Dealing with the Future?

by: VRcurator

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According to Seth Godin, there are three paths to choose from when dealing with the future…

Accuracy, Resilience, and Denial

> Accuracy is the most rewarding way to deal with what will happen tomorrow–if you predict correctly. Accuracy rewards those that put all their bets on one possible outcome. The thing is, accuracy requires either a significant investment of time and money, or inside information (or luck, but that’s a different game entirely). Without a reason to believe that you’ve got better information than everyone else, it’s hard to see how you can be confident that this is a smart bet.

> Resilience is the best strategy for those realistic enough to admit that they can’t predict the future with more accuracy than others. Resilience isn’t a bet on one outcome, instead, it’s an investment across a range of possible outcomes, a way to ensure that regardless of what actually occurs (within the range), you’ll do fine.

> Denial, of course, is the strategy of assuming that the future will be just like today.

If you enter a winner-take-all competition against many other players, accuracy is generally the only rational play. Consider a cross-country ski race. If 500 people enter and all that matters is first place, then you and your support team have to make a very specific bet on what the weather will be like as you wax your skis. Picking a general purpose wax is the resilient strategy, but you’ll lose out to the team that’s lucky enough or smart enough to pick precisely the right wax for the eventual temperature.

Of course, and this is the huge of course, most competitions aren’t winner take all. Most endeavors we participate in offer long-term, generous entrants plenty of rewards. Playing the game is a form of winning the game. In those competitions, we win by being resilient.

Unfortunately, partly due to our fear of losing as well as our mythologizing of the winner-take-all, we often make two mistakes. The first is to overdo our focus on accuracy, on guessing right, on betting it all on the ‘right’ answer. We underappreciate just how powerful long-term resilience can be.

And the second mistake is to be so overwhelmed by all the choices and all the apparent risk that instead of choosing the powerful path of resilience, we choose not to play at all. Denial rarely pays.

Which path will you choose?

Tags: Decision making, Future, Seth Godin, Staff

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The 4-Point Email: Sharing Best Practices with Your Team

by: Mark Waltz

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Excellent guest service – whether in a local church, community non-profit, retail business or service industry – is really the compilation of lived-out best practices. Those benchmark behaviors that may be simple and common sense, but they are set as standards of practice by everyone in the organization.

Best practices can be produced in a board room.

• Respond to questions within 48 hours.
• Answer the phone before the fourth ring.
• Do what you do with excellence.

It can happen: best practices can come from the board room. But not most of them.

Most best practices come about in the moment. A one-time occurrence implemented by one team member that gets discovered and, because of its impact on communicating value, is repeated as a norm throughout the entire team. That’s what happened with our guest services four-point report .

A couple years ago our volunteer usher leaders began to email each other following each weekend of services. By Monday afternoon an email was circulating, celebrating highlights and asking questions about how to solve a challenge that had popped up. The email created conversation that birthed an ongoing best-practice-making machine. The Four-Point Email was born. It’s this simple:

•  Share a highlight from the weekend.
  • Anything positive counts.
  • A story about a guest interaction.
  • A high point from the service itself.
  • A nugget from a team member.
•  Tell about a challenge the team encountered and how it was solved (if one existed at all).
  • crying baby in the middle of the service.
  • The need for more wheel chairs than we had on hand.
  • An overcrowded room with standing room only.
•  Tell about a challenge the team encountered that you still need help with.
  • You dealt with it as best you could, but ultimately you know a long-term solution is still needed.
  • Not enough handicap seating.
  • Confusing signage.
  • Lack of information about an event or ministry.
•  Finally, share the name of an up-and-coming leader.
  • We’ll all pray—for that person and for the leaders who will be pouring into him/her.
  • This person may not be named an apprentice yet, but we all have our eyes open and our mentoring radar on.

This four-point email keeps the communication going well past the weekend. Weekend teams are not isolated; they are united. Unique approaches are not limited to any one leader; they are shared. Best practices are not protected by a team; they are celebrated and practiced by the entire ministry. 

How are you establishing and implementing best practices?

(Revised excerpt from How to Wow Your Church Guests: 101 Ways to Make a Meaningful First Impression, Best Practice #94, pages 131-132)

Read more from Mark here.

Tags: Best Practices, Guest Experiences, Mark Waltz, Volunteer teams

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What’s Your Disciple Making Plan for 2014?

by: Timmy Brister

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Making Disciples Is Hard

Making disciples is the call of every believer in Jesus Christ. Yet, I dare say for most of us, it has been permitted to accept a version of Christianity both personally and corporately where disciple making is virtually non-existent. Disciple making Christians should not be considered the “hard core” version of Christians or the “elite forces” of the church militant. The fact that such attributions exist reveal how non-normative disciple-making has become.

For many of us, it could be that we are simply not well taught or well trained in the words and ways of Jesus. No doubt, that is an issue. But for all of us, disciple-making is just plain hard. It’s hard because we have years of non-disciple making habits in us like inertia that need to be moved by Christ’s call of living on mission. It’s hard because we have rarely seen it modeled well before us and therefore disciple making is turned into a program or function rather than a way of life. It’s hard because we have to evaluate our lives in light of the mission and make disciple making a priority, and that can be a very painful and challenging process.

That is why I believe you and I need to have a disciple-making plan for our lives. Yes we need to pray. Yes we need to study and learn. But we also need a personal plan and process that we embrace in order to orient our lives around making, maturing, mobilizing, and multiplying disciples of Jesus Christ. It simply cannot be tangential or accidental or on the periphery of your life. It cannot be relegated to a small compartment of your life or canned program. To make disciples, you need to be “all in.”

Putting Together a Plan

Before we can begin to put together a plan, there are questions we must set before us throughout the process, questions like:

• What needs to change in my daily/weekly priorities?
• What needs to change in my thinking/perspective?
• What needs to change in my lifestyle/rhythms of life?
• What do I need to say no to in order to say yes to making disciples?

In putting together a plan, the easiest way to begin is by asking and answering the who-what-when-where–so what questions…

>> WHO – who are the people you are personally going to invest your life in? How many relationships do you have in your life that have disciple making built into them? How many non-Christians do you know and are building a relationship with?

>> WHAT – what will be your objectives or goals? What are you seeking to impart to others? What will it take to see someone develop into a disciple-making disciple?

>> WHEN – when will you find time to make disciples? What kind of margin to you have in your time management efforts? When will you schedule time to meet regularly with the people you are investing in?

>> WHERE – where will you make disciples? In your neighborhood (first place)? In your school or workplace (second place)? In the rhythms of community life and culture centers (third places)?

>> HOW – how are you going to work this out on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis? What is your strategy for making disciples? Maturing disciples? How are you being trained to do this? How are you going to train others through your life, example, influence, and instruction?

>> SO WHAT – so what if I don’t make disciples? What kind of accountability and encouragement do I have in this process? What kind of measurements of progress and growth? What kind of accessibility do others have to my life to help me keep my motivations and attitudes Christ-centered and kingdom-focused?

These are the kinds of questions we must be asking ourselves if we are going to take serious the call to disciple making. If you are thinking about putting a plan together, please do let me know. I’m working on mine now and hope to share it soon. As I’ve said earlier, it is tempting to shoot for targets that are much easier to hit, but it does not matter if the targets are nowhere near the heart of God. Making disciples has great kingdom consequence! Let’s stumble forward together in the hard, messy, and glorious work of making disciples of Jesus!

Tags: Disciplemaking, Multiplication, Timmy Brister

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Less Can Be More: How Ruthless Calendaring Will Make Your Work More Productive

by: Philip Nation

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Here are two words that you do not expect to read in a single phrase: “ruthless” and “calendaring.” But, I hope that by the end of this post, I will have made them make sense together for 2014.

Recently, I spent an hour with the managers and publishing team leaders in my area to discuss our schedules. By virtue of working in a company, meetings are necessary. At least that’s what we think most of the time. What I have found is that some of our meetings have a less than necessary reason for existence. In order to order my life better, here is some major planning for 2014. Here’s is why I plan to do it and what I hope to accomplish.

1. Curb the pop-in-the-office meetings. I am incredibly guilty of this behavior and it causes everyone in our company to have permission to do the same. I hope to stop just popping into other offices unannounced. My leaders are gracious and don’t act as if they mind it. But I think it makes for too many spur-of-the-moment decisions and just eats up time. A better schedule will help us be more intentional with our conversations.

2. Establish the major conversations. In my calendaring for the next year, I am establishing the major conversations that will take place each week and/or month with others. For my core leadership, we will meet each week. For a group of my peers where I lead a “matrix” meeting across our adult ministry work, we will meet once a month. Without a doubt, there will be emergencies that arise that will require a meeting, but a pre-planned conversation will help us know when the conversations can be most fruitful.

3. Schedule conversations. A great part of leadership is relationship. I don’t want my relationships with our team to feel contrived but I know that the vast majority of our interactions simply revolve around our assigned work. The only way for me to spend any personal time where we talk about life, faith, family, and the things we enjoy is to schedule those conversations. It will take the form of walking to a coffee shop, going to lunch, or a planned break from the up-tempo pace of our work life.

4. Show patience. When it comes to work, I can be a hard-charging personality. I don’t know that I have this natural inclination or if it is a learned behavior. I guess it does not matter… it is who I very likely am at work. By holding to my scheduled meetings and conversations, it will help me practice patience. Rather than giving in to the impulse to rush around and force conversations and decisions, I hope that my calendaring will allow me to settle down. At least a little bit.

5. Establish a reason for every meeting. My coworkers know that I hate two things about meetings: when they are long and when we leave without a reason for having met. By doing this planning ahead of time, I hope to also establish a reason for every meeting to occur. It means that each meeting will not only a reason but also a plan for discussion and/or delegation.

6. Own your calendar by refusing to let others own it. We all work off of Google Calendar where others can search for an open spot on your schedule and send an invitation. I’ve decided that just because I have “white space” does not give others permission to own it. It is okay to say “no” to a meeting or delay it to another time.

I will likely have a mixture of success and failure in all of these areas. I’ll let you know how it goes along the way.

So… what are you doing to make this year more productive in your work?

Read more from Philip here.

Tags: Meetings, Philip Nation, Staff Culture, calendaring, effectiveness

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