Life is Like Whitewater: 5 Strategies for How to Ride

by: Will Mancini

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We all want to live with purpose.

One of my very short-term mentors is Kevin McCarthy. While I was still on the pastoral staff at Clear Creek Community Church, Kevin came in to consult with us. He modeled what expert facilitation looked like and spoke with great skill about organizational vision. One of his books is the On-Purpose Person and this post is taken from it.  Kevin skillfully summarizes what I am calling five strategies for making it through life. As you consider these it will help you live with purpose.

Imagine your life to be like a boat on a river of time. You captain your vessel. Some stretches of the river are smooth and quiet; other parts are turbulent with rapids. Most of the river is an endless converging and mixing of currents and conditions that inevitably move you along. The river exists, but its flow is indifferent to your presence. The harsh reality of ‘the real world’ inevitably hits us. How we deal with it matters. I’ve given the responses nicknames: floaters, fighters, fleers, flitters, and navigators.

Strategy #1: Floaters

• Passively resign themselves to accept the river in its present condition
• Aimlessly go along for the ride
• Are unwilling to accept responsibility for altering their experience
• Complain the whole time about how unfair the world is

Strategy #2: Fighters

• Fight the forces of nature
• Glory in ‘victories’ from time to time
• Tout the virtues of perseverance and commitment
• Fail to realize how little control they possess
• Suffer from burnout, stress, and exhaustion because their strategy is futile

Strategy #3: Fleers

• Check out of all responsibility and flee the flow of society
• Fall into self-indulgent behaviors
• Retreat from society in order to cope with their fear

Strategy #4: Flitters

• Jump from job to job, person to person, or place to place
• Are always searching but rarely finding what they’re looking for in life
• Are masters at starting over but rarely take root
• Feel productive because of their busyness, but never gain traction

We may all be floaters, fighters, fleers, or flitters to some degree, but these actions should be a technique, not a way of life. Navigating life and appropriately using these methods is the point.

Strategy #5: Navigators

• Know the flow, navigate to go
• Accept the river and its ever-changing conditions
• Are not resigned to futile determinism
• Have not foolishly tried to change nature’s course
• Do not run away
• Do not panic

The difference between the floaters/fighters//fleers/flitters and the navigators is knowing the river, equipping oneself, and harnessing these resources to work with the flow of water or time. In a couple of words, it’s “lifelong learning.” It’s living with purpose.

Each of us owns unique knowledge and life experiences. Add to this our talents, strengths, and gifts and gird it all with purpose, and we gain a powerful and potent combination. When times get tough, we captain ourselves as best we can or we get a more experienced navigator to guide us. This is why so many people today turn to life coaches to help them accelerate their personal growth and professional development. Coaches are like river guides for life. They bring their perspectives and experience to the situation for our benefit.

This last year, I began my first Personal Vision Cohort–a group of 15-20 people spending 12 months working diligently on finding and aligning their call from God. If you want to follow along with tools and learnings from this cohort, just look for the the keyword “younique.” Check #younique out on Twitter or type it in the search box. It’s going to be a fun year! Let me know if you would like to be a part of the next group!

>> Read more from Will.

Tags: On Purpose Person, Will Mancini, strategies, younique

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The Announcement Dilemma: 8 Reasons Your Congregation Tunes You Out During Announcements

by: Rich Birch

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This weekend all across the country people are going to get up in front of their churches and talk about upcoming events and opportunities to connect with community. They want to move their people to action but in reality a large portion of the room will simply tune out for that part of the service and then tune back in when something more interesting comes along. You know it’s true … because you’ve done it!

We get belligerent and blame the people for not engaging in the mission. Sort of like a shepherd blaming the sheep for not going to the right pasture. We need to understand why people are stopping to listen to shifting our behavior to help them connect with what we’re talking about … here are 8 reasons people aren’t listening to your announcements:

• What’s in it for them? // We want to get them to attend our event. We need volunteers for the upcoming thing. We have a need that we are hoping they will fill. We focus too much on what’s in it for us … but people are intrinsically motivated to pay attention to things that will positively impact them. Frame your announcements in a way that shows how what you are talking about is going to make a difference to them.
• Too Much Insider Language. // Why do church leaders love cute names for programs and acronyms? These are surefire way to alienate your audience because they need a dictionary to understand what all the different “special names” are for the events and programs at your church. Work hard to ensure that you use plain language that everyone can understand.
• You need to sell not market. // Marketing is about making sure that people understand about the features and benefits of your product or service. Sales is about working with people individually to overcome their objections and get them to sign on the dotted line. Church leaders think way too much about “marketing” to people when what you need to do is think about “selling”. Who is person that is going to talk to people directly about engaging with your church?
• No Heart. // Do you feel like yawning while you’re doing the announcements? Imagine what your people are thinking! If you don’t connect your message with their heart every once and while they will stop listening. People want to know why you are passionate about what you are talking about. Move beyond dates, times and locations to the big “why” behind what you are talking about that moves you emotionally.
• Too much noise. // You want your people to take away the teaching points from the message . . . to chew on what difference that will make in their lives for the coming week. Everything can just be noise. Every time you add another announcement you add exponentially reduces it’s effectiveness in breaking through. Two announcements are 30% as effective as one … three is 90% less effective as one. How are you ensuring that you are doing the minimal number of announcements possible to ensure maximum impact?
• Bad News Bill // Is it always the same person from the finance team that gets up once a month to tell the church how much they are behind on offering? People will learn to tune out that messaging quickly. If you are always the barer of bad news … people will stop listening. Don’t “candy coat” everything … but avoid using the public stage as the place to disseminate bad news.
• Wrong Audience. // If you are announcing the up coming hiker club trip to the wilderness on Tuesday afternoon . . . which maybe 2% of the audience could possibly attend . . . you are telling 98% of the audience to ignore you. By having announcements that only focus a small part of your community your are training your people to tune you out. If your announcement doesn’t impact 50% or more of the people in the room … why are you talking about it?
• Too Much Treadmill. // When was the last time you celebrated something fun that happened at your church? If you are always taking time to market what’s coming up next you are missing an opportunity to engage (and reward) people who have been involved in something already at the church. Celebrate your people and what they are doing . . . they’ll listen more.

>> Read more from Rich.

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

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Stop Promoting. Instead, Start Telling a Story Worth Sharing

by: Seth Godin

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“Our biggest problem is awareness”

If that’s your mantra, you’re working to solve the wrong problem.

If your startup, your non-profit or your event is suffering because of a lack of awareness, the solution isn’t to figure out some way to get more hype, more publicity or more traffic. Those are funnel solutions, designed to fix an ailing process by dumping more attention at the top, hoping more conversion comes out the bottom.

The challenge with this approach is that it doesn’t scale. Soon, you’ll have no luck at all getting more attention, even with ever more stunts or funding.

No, the solution lies in re-organizing your systems, in re-creating your product or service so that it becomes worth talking about. When you do that, your customers do the work of getting you more noticed. When you produce something remarkable, more use leads to more conversation which leads to more use.

No, it won’t be a perfect virus, starting with ten people and infecting the world. But yes, you can dramatically impact the ‘more awareness’ problem by investing heavily in a funnel that doesn’t leak, in a story that’s worth spreading.

Read more from Seth here.

Tags: Attention, Awareness, Seth Godin

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Three Ways to Bring Out the Best in Others and Release Creative Leaders for Ministry

by: Rick Warren

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It’s impossible to have a healthy church that experiences multi-dimensional growth without trusting people enough to delegate leadership to them. Having said that, this remains one of the greatest bottlenecks to growth for thousands of churches. And delegation remains one of the hardest challenges for Pastors and church staff members.

One of the reasons we fail to delegate leadership is our fear of wildfire. We’re afraid things will get out of control – and indeed they will – but limiting control is actually what often fuels growth. We often encumber leaders with too much red tape. Policies and procedures have their place, but we can easily add so much structure that people don’t feel free to lead and make decisions.

The key to motivating creative people to lead ministry effectively is granting ownership. At Saddleback, as much as possible, each ministry makes its own decisions without a lot of oversight from the staff. We believe that the implementers should be the decision makers. When everything has to be passed by a committee or board, we tend to ask why? about every decision. But our initial response to the ideas of creative people should actually be why not?

There are three ways to bring out the best in others and release creative leaders for ministry.

> Give Them a Challenge

People love to live up to a big challenge. Jesus demonstrated this with the Great Commission. He took a dozen average guys and challenged them to go tell the gospel to the entire world. He knew they couldn’t do it alone and they couldn’t do it quickly, but He knew they could do it over time as the church expanded under their leadership.

> Give Them Control

People need permission. I often say that you can have control or growth, but you can’t have both. At least you can’t have a lot of both. You must have some control, obviously, but there’s always a trade-off. Growth happens in an atmosphere of freedom where leaders are encouraged to dream, to try, to experiment, and even to fail and move forward. Burnout happens when we squash every new idea with a skeptical attitude.

> Give Them Credit

It’s extremely important to affirm and encourage those who serve. Pointing out successes, providing guidance and comfort through failure, and reminding people of their calling and giftedness in Christ matters greatly to the accomplishment of the church’s mission. We are wired to respond positively to encouragement and we’re usually motivated to keep going even when things get difficult if we know that our labor is appreciated.

Would you like your church to be stronger and healthier and to grow multi-dimensionally? You must die to self, give away ministry, and empower leaders with permission. And if you’re reading this as a non-Pastor, you absolutely must give your Pastor and staff the freedom to lead and feed by taking the responsibility of ministry.

>> Read more from Rick.

Tags: Creative leaders, Leadership Development, Rick Warren

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Why You Should Listen to Your Congregation When They Vote with Their Feet

by: James Emery White

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It’s an old phrase, but one that I find extremely helpful as a leader.

It’s “voting with their feet.”

So many times we wonder about the validity or value of something when the answer is patently clear: people have voted with their feet. Meaning they aren’t coming, supporting, inviting…you fill in the quantitative blank.

The point is that they have given you the feedback you need.

I’ve had numerous conversations with leaders over the years about the value of this or that, and in the end, it comes back to a simple assessment: people have voted with their feet. They don’t want it, need it, or care about it. It doesn’t matter how good the idea was on paper, how passionate a particular individual might have been for the enterprise, or even the handful of “fruit” stories that might have emerged from its efforts.

Now, let me qualify this in two important ways.

First, this does not mean you only give people what they want. That is a consumer-driven church, and that leads to heresy. Or at least a superficial faith.

So I’m not talking about doctrine, disciplines or anything else that would be put on a “doesn’t matter whether it’s popular it’s essential” list.

But I am talking about programs and ministries that are in the “good” but “non-essential” camp that people “vote” on in a way that good leaders should pay very close attention to.

Here’s why:

You have a limited amount of energy, resources, finances, volunteers, square footage and time. You are called to fulfill the Great Commission with both tenacity and wisdom. As a result, it would be foolish to allocate anything to a non-strategic path.

Now the second qualifier applies to the above-mentioned “handful of fruit stories” comment. Jesus was very clear in the parable of the talents that we are to be shrewd investors of time, talent, treasure…anything that is ours to be managed. Of course I can mobilize 100 people to fan out across a city for door-to-door visitation and witnessing and get one or two stories of receptivity.

But what if I took that same mobilizing energy and used it in a way that resulted in over 1,000 lives changed for Christ? Isn’t that what we should be wrestling with? The Holy Spirit will honor Himself as the Word is proclaimed in whatever fashion (at least, I believe He will), but that doesn’t mean He doesn’t honor even more those efforts that seek to maximize His witness to the world in ways that are most effective.

So here’s the leadership question:

Where aren’t you paying attention to the vote?

Read more from James here.

Tags: James Emery White, Recasting Vision, priority

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How Better Listening Can Improve Your Conversations and Your Leadership

by: Judith Glaser

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For a leader, listening is perhaps the most important skill of all. As a leader, we must learn to listen while navigating along with the person speaking toward a common destination – mutual understanding.

Whether your talents are in sales, systems engineering, administration, technical support, or leadership, listening to connect with others – requires a new and powerful form of deep listening.

When having a conversation you can improve your precision listening skills by asking questions that will help you gain more insight from the speaker. By intentionally navigating through a conversation, we can move from making assumptions to gaining clarification of meaning and intent – and it happens by asking the right questions.

Judith Glaser, CEO of the Benchmarking Institution and Chair of the Creating WE Institute, has developed examples of these navigational-listening questions that will guide your next important conversation.

You can download these questions along with other practical helps for your next conversation here.

A recent release of our SUMS free book summaries also spoke directly to this topic.

Conversational Intelligence, also by Judith Glaser, advances the theory that the key to success in life and business is to become a master at “Conversational Intelligence.” It’s not about how smart you are, but how open you are to learn new and effective powerful conversational rituals that prime the brain for trust, partnership, and mutual success.

Download a copy of this free summary here.

Tags: Active Listening, Conversational Intelligence, Judith Glaser, Listening, sums

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Ten Reasons for Growing Your Year-End Giving

by: Todd McMichen

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As we enter the final month of the year, I’m frequently asked about year-end giving. Many churches will be feeling budget pressures with donations that have lagged behind expenses all year and need to catch up. Others will regularly engage in special offerings or major mission causes needing support. The bottom line request will be, “How can I best capitalize on the opportunity and increase giving?”

I’d like to expand the conversation a bit beyond just increased giving. Let’s dream about how you can begin to build a generous culture that has both increased short-term giving results along with creating a more permanent foundation for long lasting fruit.

Create a broader strategy that moves beyond a one-time offering to a full-blown vision casting and discipleship strategy. Here is a list and brief explanation of 10 ideas you can engage in to grow a long-term generous culture at your church, while increasing year-end giving.

1. Celebrate your vision.

Churches rarely take the time to celebrate and reflect on God’s goodness. Still, even fewer have a clearly articulated vision that can easily be seen connecting each weekend service, event, and program.

By November the pastor is probably speaking to a number of families who don’t know the vision clearly, have no depth of appreciation for the church story, and have yet to fully connect the purposes and dramatic impact the church has beyond their personal lives. Be a visionary, show them all God has done both in and through them. Throw a party and celebrate!

2. Express thankfulness.

Churches are often great at asking, but not so great at thanking. If you have completed a successful year of ministry impact it is because people have prayed, volunteered, attended, invited, served, and given generously. Be extremely thankful. Consistently thanking builds a better culture then just asking or sharing needs. Giving can be very private, but that doesn’t mean we need not express thanks to those who make such a difference.

3. Tell great stories.

You might consider highlighting a few ministries that received a specific or purposeful investment during the year. Be personal. Nothing is as powerful as the story of a life that was changed.

Also, take the time to tell a story about how wisely money is handled behind the scenes. People sometimes distrust how non-profits and churches handle money. Help people have confidence in your church’s high standard of accountability and practices. People remember stories better than figures.

4. Gather your leaders.

Leaders advance the vision further and faster than anyone else. You will never go wrong by strategically investing in your volunteers and leaders. Generosity studies show that those who attend church more often, give more frequently, and giver larger gifts.

If you do not have a high performing leadership pipeline you are under-achieving. Gather all your volunteers and leaders together. Show them the results of their faithfulness and give them a glimpse of the future.

5. Inspire visually.

Pick a theme to rally around that clearly communicates your vision for this season of generosity. Don’t just tell the story, but help people feel connected to it. Take a cue from non-profit organizations that often appeal with great stories, clearly articulated opportunities, and inspiring support materials. Instead of a numbers-only, budget document, create an annual report that tells the story with stunning clarity and appeals to future opportunities in inspiring ways. Someone once said, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

6. Communicate repeatedly.

It isn’t enough to just say it once. If you limit your generosity opportunity to a pre-service announcement slide or a brief mention in the worship guide, you’ll receive the expected result. People rarely remember something they see or hear only once.

You need to align your communication vehicles to repeat, repeat, repeat. Each staff member should know how to share the church’s vision in email, printed pieces, and various leadership settings. The website, e-newsletter, blog, and social media are a must. An established theme and visual brand will also help people identify and remember the message better.

7. Ask specifically.

People give for many motivational reasons. Because people come at generosity from different vantage points, it’s important to be specific. If you do not ask, you do not receive. Be specific and clear. Speak the language of the giver and don’t forget the kids. Children love to be generous. Make sure they have an opportunity as well. This will encourage their parents.

8. Pray boldly.

Tipping non-profits is pretty easy these days. The opportunity to give is everywhere. However, the believer needs to be challenged beyond the tip and past the tithe to a life of extravagant generosity.

The generous life requires sensitivity, readiness, and availability. These three elements come in part from the discipline of prayer. Establish a season of prayer that calls people to be transformed from the inside out. Your ultimate goal is not a big offering at the end of the year, but long-term generous disciples.

9. Teach about the rewards.

Too often giving is seen as a hard habit to create or a discipline to be endured. What if giving is actually the path to a preferred life? We tend to believe generous people are trusting, faithful, positive, sensitive, encouraging, supportive, available, responsive, altruistic, and just really good people. Doesn’t this list provide a strong beginning to a great disposition?

There are so many rewards to giving. It’s helpful for those who receive, but even better for those who give. God promises to provide for and protect the generous. He even promises to multiply their results. Living a big life that is crazy rewarding is definitely possible, but only through the lifestyle of generosity.

10. Go digital.

How many people sitting in your worship service have a checkbook or cash in their wallet? If you don’t have a plan that supports digital giving, you are severely limiting the potential for giving. People give more when it is convenient. This means you need to go digital. Branch out into online, app, and text giving if you haven’t already. People need to know it’s easier to give now more than ever.

You may not be able to integrate all these ideas. However, every church can do some of them. Bring your staff together for a collaborative experience. Use this time to appreciate them, reward them, and allow them to dream. By engaging them in the process you’ll be growing a more stewardship savvy team. Chasing money is fun for no one, but chasing disciples together can be fun for all.

>> Read more from Todd.

Tags: Generosity, Growing Year-End Giving, Growing a generous culture, Todd McMichen, Year-end giving

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Dream to Dedication Day: Developing a Destination that Lifts the Spirits

by: Mel McGowan

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I’ve learned repeatedly that the Kingdom is built on relationships, rather than bricks and mortar. One key relationship that God has been nurturing is my friendship with John Cissel, SIOR since he gave up his personal ownership of a major real estate brokerage firm in the Northeast US to focus on Kingdom building.

If you don’t know John yet, you will be blown away at his thought leadership. He is not only a licensed real estate broker, but also holds a General Contractor license, because doing real estate in an urban context requires a detailed understanding of how buildings go up, go down, and what it takes to renew them. This is the guy who helped Tim Keller figure out how to do multi-level urban church in a Manhattan parking structure. According to Tim (Senior Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, NY),

John is uniquely positioned to help churches and faith-based organizations in undertaking larger-scaled real estate projects – a service that is so desperately needed.  I don’t know of others who possess the background, expertise, and success in so many facets of both commercial and kingdom-centered real estate, and who are doing this work through a Christian organization that is solely focused on the faith-based non-profit community.

I’m pleased to announce that John has joined our team as President of Visioneering Real Estate.  As we’ve discovered in over a thousand faith-based developments around the world, it is not enough to have competent design and building teams. As our mission field is increasingly diverse and urban, the traditional suburban church building model of buying cheap farmland and developing out a campus has gone the way of the “Mall of Generica”…the economics and demographics just don’t make sense any more, and no-one is building them. Adding strategic real estate advisory services to our team of urban planners, architects, interior designers, branding gurus, and technical consultants is truly a needed and exciting addition to support pastors who want to pastor, rather than play “Monopoly” with the church offering.

We’ve learned the hard way that when trying to develop Christ-centered community, churches often get a cold shoulder because they are perceived as a LULU (Locally Undesirable Land Use). They are often seen by the city as a black hole in the city, taking away the ability of a site to generate sales or property taxes. They are seen by neighbors as a parking and noise problem. Gone are the days when the highest and best site was reserved for sacred space. John has discovered that our shared client base can be strategic anchor tenants for active, mixed use urban space that connects people horizontally, as well as vertically, just as sacred spaces in traditional settings, such as European cathedrals on the city’s piazzas, always have. However, it does take sophisticated financial modeling, due diligence, and clear vision-casting.

If you’d like to explore how your mission might align with our vision of helping you “develop a destination that lifts the spirit” let’s talk!

>> Read more from Mel.

Tags: John Cissel, Mel McGowan, Visioneering Studios, urban planning

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