Why Not Caring is a Mark of Great Leadership

by: Will Mancini

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Great pastors care about a lot of things and a lot of people. But with the non-stop opportunity to minister to peoples’ never ending needs, every pastor must eventually face a crazy question: “Is it possible to care too much?“

An essay I read as a young pastor marked a pivot point in my life. It was an essay by Eugene Peterson entitled, “Teach us to Care and Not to Care” in his book Subversive Spirituality (The essay title is taken from a line in the poem by T.S. Eliot,  Ash Wednesday.) The big idea is that we must let God be God and not take too much personal responsibility for the spiritual growth of others. God is the one who causes the growth, not any man’s skill as an evangelist, teacher or shepherd. Great pastors must learn not to care too much.  It was a classic call to repent of the the “messiah complex.” Jesus is the only true rescuer.

The timing of a provocative article like this is everything. A a few years earlier in ministry journey, and the essay would not have made much sense. But at that time I was overwhelmed as a spiritual formation pastor with several thousand congregants in our church. I was feeling the increasing weight, week after week, of disappointing people by trying to do too much for too many. Peterson’s exhortation “not to care” was useful in breaking my spirit of self-importance.

This important essay would expand in its meaning over the years. Not only would the words “not to care” help me learn humility, they would remind me to focus my calling. Today,  I remind myself not to care in at least four ways. I will repeat Eugene Peterson’s phrase to keep the boldness of “not caring” anchored in a fundamental call to grace and kindness.

#1 – Great pastors don’t let anything but the gospel become the power center for life change. Teach me to care and not to care if I think my personal presence in any way becomes a source of transformation for other people.

#2 – Great pastors don’t let success in  ministry distract from their presence at home. Teach me to care and not to care if my ministry career is keeping me from coming home on time.

#3 – Great pastors don’t try to help everyone personally in their sphere of influence; they look long-term to multiply their ministry by investing in a few.  Teach me to care and not to care about doing the work myself when God is calling me to develop others who will multiply the work.

#4 – Great pastors don’t let the flood of trivial tasks distract from their core calling.  Teach me to care and not to care until I have given my best energy and effort every day to my most vital responsibilities.

Warning: One way that “not to care” will backfire.

Years ago, church consultant Lyle Schaller used an important idea to describe the pastor’s foundational work. He said a pastor must “pay the rent” when it comes to the basic expectations of the church board and congregation. Showing up to preach a good sermon is paying the rent. Showing up on time at the elders meeting is paying the rent. Doing the funeral only you can do is paying the rent.

I think that the “paying the rent” work of ministry is always important to care about. If my “not caring” ever becomes lethargy or laziness, then I have crossed a dangerous line. “Not caring” cannot justify sloppiness or slothfulness

Be passionate, work hard, and  stay focused by not caring too much.

> Read more from Will.

Tags: Will Mancini, effective ministry, great ministry, healthy pastors

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Empathy: The Voice of Catalytic Leadership

by: Nancy Duarte

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Change is inevitable.

Whether we’re talking about business, society, politics, or life, we all know that trying to stay still is a recipe for stagnation.

A leaders’ job is to anticipate the future, to identify the trends that will affect their organization, and to guide and inspire people to move toward a better reality. Today more than ever, this job requires leaders to grasp the rapid rate of change in the business world and to build an organization that’s capable of continually adapting.

Nancy Duarte, CEO of the design firm Duarte, Inc., and Patty Sanchez, the Chief Strategy Officer for Duarte, have recently released their manifesto for change communications, entitled Illuminate. It has been written specifically for leaders who want to inspire others to understand and follow a vision for change, over and over again.

It’s a tricky road to navigate. Most people are more comfortable with what they know than with the unknown future. Great leaders anticipate this challenge, emphasize with that struggle, and communicate in ways that overcome resistance. Throughout this process, four tenets play a critical role in helping them to succeed in realizing their goals.

• Transform to Thrive
• Listen With Empathy
• Navigate the Journey
• Communicate Empathetically In Each Moment

Read more about these four tenets by downloading the PDF below.

You, too, have the power to shape your own epic venture and drive it to a successful conclusion.

Tags: Change, Iluminate, Nancy Duarte, change process, communicating change

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Removing the Invisible Walls in Your Leadership Team

by: Will Mancini

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Last week I was completing the Vision Frame with a church in California. They could feel the removal of what one pastor  called their “invisible walls.”  It’s an interesting comment given the fact that its a very effective church.

What is an invisible wall? It’s something your eyes can’t see that keeps your team from working better together.

• Mistrust
• Missed time
• Misalignment
• Misunderstanding

Every week brings a fresh truckload of glass bricks for your team to stack.  Busy week after busy week leads to busy semester after busy semester. No one has ill motives. No one intends to build a wall. But the walls go up without conscious notice.

The good news is that it’s NOT rocket science to take down a wall. Haven’t you noticed it’s easy (and usually fun) to tear stuff down anyway? What we need are some sledge hammers to take down this hard-to-see  barriers.

Weekly, I watch leadership teams tear down their invisible walls.  Keep in mind, I am talking about effective teams, not broken ones.In Auxano’s clarity process, teams feel like a team at a whole new level. Even though the meeting room looks the same, the real albeit unseen barriers have been removed.

How do you demolish those walls? Try these five things.

• Give permission to identify walls.
• Beyond permission, shape  a culture of authentic dialogue by how you give and receive feedback. Telling people that you are open to honesty and “push-back” isn’t enough. Permission has not truly been given until it you have done. Keep in mind if you don’t receive it well, you’ll shut down the sharing next time around.
• Schedule time dedicated to strategic conversations. Most teams don’t create enough space for important, non-urgent dialogue and decision-making. At Faithbridge over the years, the team has regularly “parked” (sometimes monthly) conversation topics for scheduled “strategic-stuff-only” meetings.
• Schedule margin in the calendar for “drop in” conversations. With the speed of ministry, it goes a long way to touch base for no “necessary” reason. It says you care. It says you are available to listen. It provides an opportunity to remove a glass brick, instead of adding one. Yesterday, I challenged a staff member pretty hard in a consulting meeting. Today I stuck my head in her office to check in and mentioned, “Hey, I pushed you pretty hard yesterday and I just wanted to acknowledge that it might have been a little too hard.”
• Make one bold feedback question a standard part of your team culture- “Have I done anything lately that has diminished the trust in our relationship?”

What other actions would you add to demolish invisible walls?

Tags: Leadership Barriers, Leadership Engine, Will Mancini, invisible walls, walls

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5 Guidelines for Conflict Resolution

by: Dan Reiland

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Conflict is no stranger within the local church. Different opinions, diverse perspectives, and opposing priorities can cause your best leaders and staff to experience conflict with each other. This is normal and virtually unavoidable amongst leaders. Leaders cause motion and motion causes friction!

The goal is not to practice avoiding conflict, instead we all need to become good at resolving conflict.

In order to be good at conflict resolution, the first step is to know the primary internal causes. When we understand what causes conflict, we can begin to recognize and deal with it before it gets the best of us.

7 primary internal causes of conflict:

1. Immaturity
2. Self-Centeredness
3. Insecurity
4. Pride
5. Controlling nature
6. Fear (Fear of loneliness, rejection, abandonment, being manipulated etc.)
7. Broken trust

The bottom line is that conflict emerges when we don’t get what we want.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

James 4:1-2

We all wrestle with some of these internal causes that lead to the more visible expressions of conflict.

7 primary external causes of team conflict:

1. Unhealthy culture
2. Unclear or misaligned vision
3. Lack of communication
4. Unclear expectations
5. Territorial attitudes
6. Unhealthy competition
7. Ineffective systems and processes

5 Guidelines to Conflict Resolution:

1) Give the benefit of the doubt.

My personal frame of reference is that our staff is made up of really smart people who are committed to the vision and work hard to do the right thing. So when something seems odd my first reaction is to assume the best. When I choose to give the benefit of the doubt and seek to understand, it’s amazing how quickly conflict dissipates.

2) Extend trust.

Your teammates need to earn your respect, but it’s important that you give them trust up front. If and when they violate that trust, that’s a different story, but until then operate in an environment of mutual trust.

3) Get the issue out on the table.

Don’t hold back. Polite harmony never advances the vision or accomplishes meaningful success. If there is a problem, get it on the table. Be candid, speak truth, but do so with kindness and honor. Seek to understand, listen carefully, and find common ground within the vision.

4) Set your agenda aside.

James 4:2 is a truth we can’t escape. We get upset when we don’t get what we want. Maybe it’s a bigger budget, or more staff, or greater recognition… and the list goes on. The Devil loves it when we fight like that. However, when we rise above our own agenda, personal ambition, and seek the best for others and the church overall, everyone wins!

5) Forgive and move on.

It doesn’t always work out happily-ever-after. Sometimes people are hurt and it takes time to heal. Forgiveness is a critical part of any healthy staff. It may take time and God’s peace to help you through the process. But in the end, restoration needs to be realized so that you may continue to model the kind of relationships that honor God.

> Read more from Dan.

Tags: Dan Reiland, conflict resolution

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5 Communication Tasks to Stop Doing

by: Rich Birch

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How your church presents itself visually is incredibly important. People are increasingly visual learners, so your church needs to ensure it presents a compelling visual aesthetic in everything you do. Even if you have a graphic designer on your staff, the increased visual needs can be difficult to keep up with. You need to keep things fresh and current, and in order to do that you need help.

In the past, we’ve talked about using Virtual Assistants in local churches. Today, we want to challenge you to “outsource” some of the graphic design tasks your church should be doing to a third-party design firm. We strongly endorse Design Pickle. They provide flat rate, unlimited design services for a fraction of what it costs to hire a full-time designer. We’d encourage your church to check it out — drop by this site to learn more. Here are five design tasks you should consider outsourcing right away:

• Social Media Graphics // To keep people engaged on social media, you need to keep feeding Facebook, Instagram and whatever other networks you connect on new visuals. Take images of your senior pastor teaching and combine them with quotes from the messages for compelling quote squares. Repurpose the announcement slides from your weekend services into social media infographics that remind people about upcoming events at your church. Both of these tasks are really template driven and disappear so quickly — it’s best to outsource them to another firm rather than having your team do them.
• Repurposed Series Graphics // Many churches create compelling series graphics that entice people to attend their church. Often a core look is created and then derivatives of that image are produced (e.g., cover for the program, Facebook cover, website header graphics, email header, Twitter square, etc.). Rather than having your team do all the “downstream” work, have them focus on the core creative work and then pass the “repurposing” on to a third-party group to do.
• Department Flyers // Your youth department has new events every few weeks. They need great looking flyers but you don’t want the youth ministry staff spending time making their flyers look pretty … you want them building up leaders and reaching students. Have your team pull together the event name, description “blurb,” and date/time/location details, along with a couple other advertisements they like, and give them to a firm like Design Pickle to do the work. The student team will be happy because they will get more design time and variety. If you have a communications department, they will be happy for not having to dream up a new approach every time.
• Sunday Morning Slides // Many churches have a “slide rotation” that plays before every service. These pre-service ads often include information about upcoming events, images of staff and general information about the church. Keeping these images up to date can be a pain, as the information on them is constantly in flux. (Not to mention that not many people are sitting in most auditoriums before the start of the service, meaning the design team has low motivation to do these graphics!) Why not email the changes on these graphics to a third-party firm every week and have them turn around what needs to be done?
• Internal Reports // You know that boring chart you send to people every month? How about that monthly report you do for your leadership team? What about those slides at your quarterly staff meeting? The people receiving your internal communications deserve it to look great. Often churches with great “external facing” graphics have really crappy looking internal communications. That shouldn’t be so! Excellent communications with your team breeds excellence as they interact with their teams. Send those internal communications pieces to a low-cost external firm to make sure they look great and communicate what you want them to.

The key to any third-party service like outsourced graphic design is thinking of it as a way to increase your reach and impact — not just as a way to decrease cost. You’re doing more for less. Look for strategically important graphic design tasks that are regular and repetitive … those are great candidates for passing off to another firm.

> Read more from Rich.

Would you like to learn more about improving your communications? Connect with an Auxano Navigator and start a conversation with our team.

Tags: Communications, Rich Birch, church communications, communication tasks

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