7 New Approaches to Talking about Generosity

by: Carey Nieuwhof

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So let me guess, every time you need to talk about money in church, you wince.

And you’re the leader.

I know, because I’ve been there.

If you’re going to be effective in ministry, you have to become comfortable talking about money.

Yet few church leaders I know are.

Here’s why.

When you talk about money, it’s like you’re setting yourself up to be shot at. You almost always take bullets when you talk about money, even when you speak about it as earnestly, biblically and honestly as you know how.

As a result, many pastors avoid the subject and only talk about it if there’s a financial crisis looming for the church.

That’s the biggest mistake you can make. It sets no one up to win: not the church, not your people, and not you as a leader.

But you have to talk about it. Why? Because there’s so much at stake if you don’t.

Pastors who refuse to talk about money can ultimately leave both their churches and their people broke.

The message we continually hear from the culture around us leads people to overextension on things that matter little in the end and can also result in dissolving families (see below).

It’s Not Hopeless…Really

I know what it’s like to lead with very meager resources as well as what it’s like to lead with more.

When I began in ministry, three small churches called me to be their pastor.

The annual budget for one of the churches was $4,000. No, I’m not kidding. No, there are no missing zeros. Added together, the budget of all three churches was less than $50,000 for the year. The doors were almost closing.

But seeing resources freed up for ministry has made a big difference. More than 2,500 people now call our church home, and we see over 1,000 of them every weekend. Today our church is vibrant, healthy and alive (and I’m so thankful for that).

What’s even better is how we’ve seen people who attend our church become financially healthy in their personal life and as that’s happened, millions of dollars have been freed for ministry.

But to get there, you have to get over your fear of talking about money.

7 Fresh Ways To Get Over Your Fear Of Talking About Money In Church

One of the best ways to talk about money is to realize why you need to talk about it. And the why will lead you to the how…giving you content for your messages and for other strategies as you connect with people.

Here are 7 fresh ways to get over your fear of talking about money in church:

1. Realize The People You Lead Talk About Money Every Day

Think about it. Do you know a person who doesn’t talk about money in some way every day?

There’s not a family in your church or community that doesn’t have some kind of daily dialogue about money.

People talk about it, argue about it, and try to make their plans around it.

Almost everyone in your church and community thinks about money daily and talks about it daily. They may even struggle with it daily. It’s just that few people step up to help them with it.

As a result, people talk about money in a theological vacuum because few church leaders will talk about it.

So start talking about it.

2. View Talking About Money As Pastoral Care

Tags: Carey Nieuwhof, Generosity, Talking about money

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4 Lessons in Leading Church Revitalization

by: Ed Stetzer

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I fell in love with church revitalization early in my ministry when I served a church of senior adults during a brief stint teaching at a seminary.

The median age of the people was 68. It seemed like there was an oxygen tank or a walker at the end of most pews.

They came to me and said, “Dr. Stetzer, help us reach the young people.”

Leading a church in revitalization has taught me some invaluable lessons. While the process is often difficult and slow moving, if approached correctly it can reinvigorate and empower God’s people to produce lasting fruit.

You Will Meet Resistance

Leadership, especially with church revitalization, is a long and slow labor of love in the face of resistance. Not every member will be on your side during revitalization.

If you want everyone to love you, go sell ice cream, don’t revitalize churches.

No matter how difficult, look past the resistance remembering that revitalization is like basic physics.

Momentum results from movement against the inertia.

Love Your People

In revitalization, you need to love, not drive people. Talk to them. Listen to them. Get them excited about God’s mission for their life and their church. Love your people, and not just as a means of getting them to do what you want.

I’ve led a few churches through revitalization and found that, in each case, when we took the time to love one another, people became excited and were more ready to go on mission.

They wanted to love their neighbors and engage the community around them.

Messy Happens

Any disconnected church that seeks to re-engage with their community will find the experience to be messy.

There may be physical messes like mud on the carpet, smudges on the walls, dirty bathrooms, or broken vases. The way of church life to which your people had grown accustomed will suddenly change.

But, there are also relational messes—things changing that some do not want to change.

In revitalization, it’s hard to transition to a missional mindset. Kids will break things. Life will change.

But in the end, it’s worth it all.

Changed Churches

Church revitalization is an opportunity to lead God’s people to a renewed focus on God’s mission. Such an endeavor will undoubtedly change lives, communities, and have a gospel impact on generations to come.

In that first experience, I fell in love with church revitalization. The church recalibrated its sense of mission and reengaged in the growingly diverse community.

I also learned that strong leadership was not driving but loving and empowering my people to make the necessary decisions to live on mission in their community.

The fact is we need a mass movement of revitalization across our context. When we do, the mission force will engage the mission field and churches will be refocused on their mission.

Read more from Ed.

Connect with an Auxano Navigator to learn more about revitalizing your church.

Tags: Church Revitalization, Ed Stetzer, Revialization

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7 Quick Ways to Cultivate a Culture of Intentional Generosity

by: Church Community Builder

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While most people want to give and want to be generous, it’s important to recognize that inspiring people to give is really only half the equation. Somehow, churches must find a way to bridge the gap between good intentions and active generosity, helping to move people from wanting to give to actively giving.

But does your church give people the opportunity to give in the way that is most natural for them? If you can meet people where they are and simplify the giving process, your church can begin to develop a culture of transformational generosity.

Here are seven things to consider to help cultivate a culture of intentional givers who will support your ministry:

1. Donations at churches that offer online and mobile giving are nearly four percent higher per person than churches that don’t. And tools like recurring gifts help make giving a habit for church members.

2. Cash gifts are less than five percent of offerings at most churches. Passing the offering plate shouldn’t be abandoned but it shouldn’t be the only way churches accept donations.

3. Your online giving tools should allow church administrators to communicate with a giver quickly and easily. A simple ‘thank you’ goes a long way to encourage people to continue giving.

4. Church members follow the examples of their leaders, even when it comes to giving. Churches should provide giving solutions that their staff and leaders use – and are excited to share.

5. Make it quick and easy for people to give in the moment generosity inspires them. Whether it’s an app or a text-to-give number, people shouldn’t have to wait for the offering plate.

6. Develop compelling ways to communicate about your congregation’s generosity. Use storytelling and media to help convey the impact of generosity.

7. Create meaningful ways for people to start giving for the first time. Whether it’s a capital campaign or a special time of giving or a mission, make the first-time gift a memorable event.

Generosity is not something that comes naturally to everyone. Encouraging a generous spirit and cheerful giving by inspiring people to give – and making it easy for them to do it – helps unleash generosity in your church and inspires a culture of intentional, transformational givers.

Learn more about generosity by connecting with an Auxano Navigator.

> Read more from Church Community Builder.

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Leading Your Team to Work Together Part Two: Culture

by: VRcurator

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How do you help your staff work together as a true team, not just a collection of individuals?

Mention the word “team” and most people think in context of a sports activity. That may be the primary association with a team – a group of people we observe or cheer for, but in some way, everyone works together with others to achieve a goal: families, schools, businesses, non-profits – these are all teams.

Your church staff is a team as well. Are your leaders functioning in unison as a team or operating individually as a collection of individuals?

When you are part of a team, you’re not giving up your individual goals or sacrificing your personal success. Instead, team members set their sights on an even higher goal in order to magnify greater success.

THE QUICK SUMMARY – WORK RULES! by Laszlo Bock

From the visionary head of Google’s innovative People Operations comes a groundbreaking inquiry into the philosophy of work-and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent to your business and ensuring that they succeed.

Drawing on the latest research in behavioral economics and a profound grasp of human psychology, WORK RULES! also provides teaching examples from a range of industries-including lauded companies that happen to be hideous places to work and little-known companies that achieve spectacular results by valuing and listening to their employees. Bock takes us inside one of history’s most explosively successful businesses to reveal why Google is consistently rated one of the best places to work in the world, distilling 15 years of intensive worker R&D into principles that are easy to put into action, whether you’re a team of one or a team of thousands.

WORK RULES! shows how to strike a balance between creativity and structure, leading to success you can measure in quality of life as well as market share. Read it to build a better company from within rather than from above; read it to reawaken your joy in what you do.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

Culture can be described as the operationalizing of an organization’s values. Culture guides employee decisions about both technical decisions and how they interact with others. Good culture creates an internal coherence in actions taken by a very diverse group of employees.

A strong, vibrant culture stimulates people to both be and do their very best and reach the highest goals. Leaders point the way forward, but they invite meaningful participation from every person at all levels of the organization

Culture is the DNA of the organization and is in large part created by the founders – not by their words so much as their actions.

Once you’ve chosen to think and act like a founder, your next decision is about what kind of culture you want to create. What are the beliefs you have about your people, and do you have the courage to treat people the way your beliefs suggest?

Google has three defining aspects of their culture: mission, transparency, and voice.

A mission that matters

Google’s mission – to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful – is the first cornerstone of their culture.

This kind of mission gives individuals’ work meaning, because it is a moral rather than a business goal. The most powerful movements in history have had moral motivations, whether they were quests for independence or equal rights.

If you believe people are good, you must be unafraid to share information with them.

Transparency is the second cornerstone of Google’s culture.

Assume that all information can be shared with the team, instead of assuming that no information can be shared. Restricting information should be conscious effort, and you’d better have a good reason for do so. The benefit of such openness is that everyone in the organization knows what’s going on.

All of us want control over our own destinies.

Voice is the third cornerstone of Google’s culture.

Voice means giving employees a real say in how the organization is run. Either you believe people are good and you welcome their input, or you don’t. For many organizations this is terrifying, but it is the only way to live in adherence to your values.

The case for finding a compelling mission, being transparent, and giving your people voice is in part a pragmatic one. The growing global cadre of talented, mobile, motivated professionals and entrepreneurs demand these kinds of environments. Over the coming decades the most gifted, hardest working, people on the planet will gravitate to places where they can do meaningful work and help shape the destiny of their organizations. But the case is also a moral one, rooted in the simplest maxim of all: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!

A NEXT STEP

For your next team meeting, create three chart tablets, titling them Mission, Transparency, and Voice.

For the first, write down your church’s mission, a clear and concise statement that defines what your church is ultimately supposed to be doing. Ask each team member to reflect on how they are contributing to the mission. Ask them to list areas where they are struggling, and have the team provide ideas and support in these areas.

For the second, discuss the level of transparency in your organization. On a scale of 1 (nobody knows anything) to 10 (our default is to be a totally open and transparent organization), where does your organization fall? Come to a group consensus about what level of transparency is important and how to improve your transparency over the next three months. Schedule a date three months from now to review this exercise.

For the third, discuss the level of voice in your organization. On a scale of 1 (team input is not welcome) to 10 (team input is welcome and expected), where does your organization fall? Come to a group consensus about improving the voice of team members over the next three months. Schedule a date three months from now to review this exercise.

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 60-2, released February 2017.

This is part of a weekly series posting content from one of the most innovative content sources in the church world: SUMS Remix Book Summaries for church leaders.

SUMS Remix takes a practical problem in the church and looks at it with three solutions; each solution is taken from a different book. As a church leader you get to scan relevant books based on practical tools and solutions to real ministry problems, not just by the cover of the book. Each post will have the edition number which shows the year and what number it is in the overall sequence. (SUMS provides 26 issues per year, delivered every other week to your inbox). 

>> Subscribe to SUMS Remix <<

Tags: Culture, Laszlo Bock, Leadership, SUMS Remix, Work Rules!

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What to do with People Who Don’t Want to Be on the Team

by: Eric Geiger

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Jeff Van Gundy has coached in the NBA and has commentated NBA games (I have always enjoyed listening to him when he does). He is well respected for his understanding of the game and his ability to coach it. He is currently coaching a mix of G-league players in their quest to qualify for the World Games (no current NBA players are on the roster).

The G-league is made up of teams filled with players who are playing each other with the sole hope of being invited to join an NBA team. On a podcast, I heard Van Gundy speak of his respect for the coaches of the league because of their unique challenge to motivate and coach players who do not want to be there. It takes great skill, according to Van Gundy, to coach players who want to be elsewhere. And no players on the G-league teams want to be on their teams.

It is not only basketball players who really want to be on another team. If your place is the norm, and depending on what stats you read, 1/3 of the people on your team or even higher would like to be somewhere else. There are likely people on your team who would really rather work somewhere else. So what is a leader to do?

1. Help people move on.

There are at least two truths about someone on your team who is not passionate for the role and the mission of the team. First, if someone on your team is not committed to the role, there is someone else who would be deeply honored to be in that role. Second, if someone is not passionate about the mission, there is likely another mission somewhere else that they would love to give themselves to. So have conversations and help people move on. It is not cruel to help people move on. It is actually cruel to keep them in roles that are not best for them or the organization. Helping these people move on serves them and the organization well. As you have conversations, focus on the next two points.

2. Point to the mission.

When folks are wrestling with their role, their passion, their gifting, and how it all fits into the overall picture—there is really only one thing that can trump the restlessness (and we have all been restless): deep-seeded belief in the mission. Wise leaders herald the mission over and over again.

3. Develop for the future.

When you develop people, you are serving them and the organization well. If they move on, you will have played an important part in their future. And you will be able to attract others who are hungry to grow and develop because you have built a reputation as someone who sends people off well.

4. Lead your team to think succession and multiplication.

This week I am leading all my direct reports through their annual review process, which includes conversations about succession for the key players on their teams. If you lead your team to think about who would or could move into new or open roles, then you are more prepared when people move on. Instead of doing all you can to hold on to people who should be moving on, thinking succession helps you prepare for those moments.

> Read more from Eric.

Connect with an Auxano Navigator to talk about developing your Leadership Pipeline.

Tags: Eric Geiger, Leadership Pipeline, Team members

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You Can’t Outgive God

by: Rick Warren

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God came up with the idea of multiplication.

If you give him your time, he multiplies it. If you give him your money, he multiplies it. If you give him your talent, he multiplies it. If you give him your energy, guess what? He multiplies it.

It’s the same principle as planting seeds. Second Corinthians 9:10 says, “God gives seed to the farmer . . . God will also give you seed and multiply it. In your lives he will increase the things you do that have his approval” (GW).

Think about that: God will increase the things you do that have his approval.

Farmers know that seed must be given away for it to increase. If you keep seed in a sack, it doesn’t do any good. But when you plant it, it multiplies. When you plant one corn seed, do you just get one corn seed back? No, you get a stalk with hundreds of corn kernels. When you plant one watermelon seed, do you only get one seed back? No, you get a bunch of watermelons with hundreds of seeds in them. God multiplies whatever little bit you give him.

“Remember that the person who plants few seeds will have a small crop. But the one who plants many seeds will have a large crop. God loves the person who gives cheerfully” (2 Corinthians 9:6-7 AP) That’s because God gives cheerfully and he wants us to be like him.

The story of Saddleback Church cannot be told without telling of the thousands of people who sacrificed financially to make the church possible. Our campus with all of its buildings didn’t just happen. Somebody sacrificed for them. People chose to give their money instead of buying things for themselves—just to make it happen.

One of the great lessons that Kay and I have learned over our years of ministry is that you cannot outgive God.

Whatever you give him, he takes and multiplies. This was a lesson we learned on a personal level. Three different times in our marriage God told us to give away our entire savings. Each time we obeyed, God would replenish it in greater ways than ever before.

In December 1987, we had to close the deal on the land for Saddleback Church. Our people had given over a million dollars, but we were still short on that last day. I thought, “God, we’re so close and our people have sacrificed beyond measure. This is the last day before we lose the property. You’re not going to let us get this close and let us fall. What are you going to do?”

Before that day was out we received a letter from a man who’d only visited Saddleback one time. He didn’t even live in Orange County. His note said, “I believe in the vision of Saddleback Church.” And in that letter was a check for a quarter-million dollars. We were able to close the deal and get the land.

God’s timing is perfect. That was the last business day of 1987. The first business day of 1988 that man—who was a banker—went to the bank and his trustees called a special meeting. They didn’t know he’d just given us a quarter-million dollars. They called him in and said, “We’ve had a record year with banner profits. We’re going to give you a one-time bonus.” And 10 days after he’d given this church a quarter-million dollars, they gave him a one-time bonus of $750,000.

He called me on the phone. “Rick, you cannot outgive God! I keep trying, but it doesn’t work.”

When I told this story to the Saddleback congregation, I said, “Don’t you wish you’d given a quarter-million dollars?”

The Bible promises, “You won’t regret it. No one who has sacrificed his home, spouse, brothers and sisters, parents, children – whatever – will lose out. It will all come back multiplied many times over in your lifetime. And then the bonus of eternal life!” (Luke 18:29-30 The Message).

That’s a promise of Jesus Christ directly from his lips. “Always give yourself fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58 NIV).

> Read more from Rick.

Connect with an Auxano Navigator to learn more about creating a Generosity Culture for your church.

Tags: Generosity, Rick Warren

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4 Tips for Spotting a Lazy Leader

by: Eric Geiger

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Lazy leadership is unfaithful stewardship. Instead of wise stewardship, lazy leaders foolishly squander resources, gifting, and opportunities rather than make the most of the brief season in which they are privileged to lead. When attempting to uncover and address laziness, people often look in the wrong places. Lazy leadership is not about office hours, email response time, and vacation days—as someone can be incredibly lazy while checking emails in the office. Here are four ways in which lazy leadership tends to manifest itself:

1. Lazy leaders dump rather than delegate.

It takes work and intentionality to effectively delegate responsibilities to another person. Training, care, and being continually available are all essential in effective delegation. Dumping responsibilities on someone else requires only laziness.

2. Lazy leaders rely on personality rather than preparation.

Here is why laziness does not always reveal itself immediately. Someone can rely on his or her personality for a while, but in time the lack of preparation is obvious.

3. Lazy leaders take on too little rather than too much.

I am not suggesting that it is wise to perpetually take on too much, but lazy leaders never get close to that threshold. They avoid overwork like the plague and err toward taking on too little.

4. Lazy leaders offer excuses rather than results.

Lazy leaders may have new excuses, but they always have excuses. Someone else is always at fault for the lack of execution or follow-through.

The people of God have always understood laziness to be a sin. Laziness is a sin because laziness fails to appreciate the gift and blessing of work and fails to make the most of the time we have been graciously given. The writer of Proverbs exhorts us:

Go to the ant, you slacker! Observe its ways and become wise. Without leader, administrator, or ruler, it prepares its provisions in summer; it gathers its food during harvest. How long will you stay in bed, you slacker? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the arms to rest, and your poverty will come like a robber, your need, like a bandit. (Proverbs 6:6-11)

Developing a Leadership Pipeline will minimize the risks of lazy leaders. Connect with an Auxano Navigator to learn more.

> More from Eric.

Tags: Eric Geiger, Lazy Leaders, Leadership Pipeline

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How Church Generosity Can Impact Your Community

by: VRcurator

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How can we ensure our giving helps those in need instead of hurting them? 

Americans continue to give to charitable organizations at a record pace. Charitable giving in 2015 was over $373 billion, according to The Giving Institute, surpassing the previous year’s amount by over four percent.

Religious giving is the top category in that total, with over $119 billion given. While much of that amount goes to internal church operations, a large percentage goes to help individuals and groups “in need.”

It’s that last phrase – “in need” – that has come under scrutiny in recent years, as churches consider how their giving to others is actually impacting their lives.

Is it possible that much of the money we give is either wasted or actually harming the people it is intended to help?

THE QUICK SUMMARY – When Helping Hurts, by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert

When Helping Hurts is a paradigm-forming contemporary classic on the subject of poverty alleviation.

Poverty is much more than simply a lack of material resources, and it takes much more than donations and handouts to solve it. When Helping Hurts shows how some alleviation efforts, failing to consider the complexities of poverty, have actually (and unintentionally) done more harm than good.

But it looks ahead. It encourages us to see the dignity in everyone, to empower the materially poor, and to know that we are all uniquely needy—and that God in the gospel is reconciling all things to Himself.

Focusing on both North American and Majority World contexts, When Helping Hurts provides proven strategies for effective poverty alleviation, catalyzing the idea that sustainable change comes not from the outside in, but from the inside out.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

The American church exists in the most prosperous and materialistic society in the world. Because of that, the church often thinks of poverty as a lack of material things – money, food, clothing, and shelter.

As a result, many think the way to alleviate poverty is to simply give material things to low-income people: money for bills, food and toys during the Christmas season, and warm clothing during cold winters. These are often presented as immediate needs, and we respond by taking care of the problem.

Or does it? In most cases, what has been taken care of is a symptom, not the underlying problem facing the individual. Repeated over long periods of time, these “charitable” actions often create crippling dependencies. To be most effective, churches need to move past the immediate and correctly diagnose the deeper causes of material poverty.

Truly helping the material poor typically requires a much greater commitment of time, resources, and energy than the common method of simply giving them handouts. Truly helping the material poor means you have to look for ways to move away from practices that create dependency and toward approaches that promote long-term positive changes.

Poor people in North America could benefit from all the following: 1) the ability to work at jobs with living wages; 2) the capacity to manage their money; and 3) the opportunity to accumulate wealth. Moreover, like all of us, poor people need the highly relational ministries – delivered through the body of Jesus Christ – that help them to overcome the effects of the fall on their individual heart, minds, and behaviors.

Employment, financial management, and wealth accumulation are all part of the “economic development” sector of poverty alleviation. While each of the economic interventions discussed play unique roles, they are similar in that they all:

Use development rather than relief, because the vast majority of poor people in North America are capable of participating in the improvement of their lives.

Improves some aspect of the economic system or enable poor people to use the existing system more effectively;

Use an asset-based approach that builds upon the skills, intelligence, labor, discipline, savings, creativity, and courage of poor people;

Have the potential to be designed, implemented, and evaluated in a participatory manner;

Provide an opportunity to use biblically abase curricula, allowing for a clear presentation of the gospel and addressing of worldview issues;

Use church-based mentoring teams that can offer love, support, and encouragement, thereby providing a relational approach that seeks to restore people’s dignity, community, stewardship, and spiritual intimacy;

Are implemented over fairly long periods of time, thereby creating space for “development,” the process of ongoing change and reconciliation, for both the “helpers” and the “”

Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, When Helping Hurts

A NEXT STEP

Think about ways your church has been working with poor people. How have you been fostering triggers for positive change or undermining them?

What has been your church’s history of using a team of supportive people to help individuals and families to change? What are some things you have learned? If you are not using teams of supportive people, what could you do to change this?

Ask any Christian business people you know if they would be willing to provide an employment opportunity to a poor person. Find out what steps you could take as a church to make this idea more palatable to these businesspeople.

Could your church provide temporary employment to poor people by opportunities to do yard work, cleaning, repairs, etc.?

Consider getting additional training for your congregation on jobs preparedness, financial education, and wealth accumulation ministries.

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 59-3, February 2017.

This is part of a weekly series posting content from one of the most innovative content sources in the church world: SUMS Remix Book Summaries for church leaders.

SUMS Remix takes a practical problem in the church and looks at it with three solutions; each solution is taken from a different book. As a church leader you get to scan relevant books based on practical tools and solutions to real ministry problems, not just by the cover of the book. Each post will have the edition number which shows the year and what number it is in the overall sequence. (SUMS provides 26 issues per year, delivered every other week to your inbox). 

>> Subscribe to SUMS Remix <<

Tags: Brian Fikkert, Community Impact, Generosity, Steve Corbett, When Helping Hurts

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7 Reasons to Incubate Your Next Campus Launch

by: Bryan Rose

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In elementary school, one of my daughter’s classrooms held an egg incubator. Over the course of a few weeks, the children learned about eggs and were able to watch their hatchlings emerge. This transparent case, with heat lamp and straw matting, become critical to the life of those little chickens, protecting them from rough handling and carefully controlling environmental conditions until the birds could begin to fend for themselves.

The multisite church movement no longer exists as a revolutionary approach to church multiplication. Campus launching is now standard practice for reaching new geographic areas and extending the gospel impact of congregations large and small. Despite the commonality of this model, it remains helpful to remember that new campuses could also benefit from the protection of an incubator early on. Holding at least two weeks of worship services on-campus at the sending church, alongside existing worship services, can be critical to the development of volunteers, leaders and staff. Carefully controlling environmental conditions in a secondary venue of worship brings benefits to both the team being sent, and those doing the sending.

Here are seven reasons to hold at least two incubator services before launching your next multisite church campus:

To Build Campus Identity by bringing the early adopters all together in worship and establishing the core team’s identity as pioneers months prior to launch.

To Sample Message Delivery by forcing communicators to think through their content and the context of their sermons. If preaching live to each campus, early incubator services help campus pastors practice applying local context in each campus or environment. For video communication, an incubator service serves as a lower-risk way to alleviate the fears of screen-driven sermon delivery.

To Bring Everyone Together by leveraging existing childcare and gathering space, usually a choir room or fellowship hall, at the sending campus. An incubator service may be the only time everyone on the launch team will worship as one body. Once launch happens, ministry volunteering and multiple services dissipate core team connectivity each week.

To See Who’s (Really) In by allowing leaders to get a feel of who is on the team and recruit or steer direction as a result. Seeing everyone in one room, without the immediacy of launch looming, brings cohesion to every one-on-one conversation. Savvy campus leaders will use an incubator to make those elusive personal connections that they have been missing.

To Share Launch Ownership by reminding the entire church body that they are being sent as one to this new frontier, represented by this group of launch pioneers. Minimizing the “them” and “that new church” language must begin as soon as possible. Incubator services reinforce a one church multiple locations mindset before launch even happens.

To Test Parallel Systems by replicating worship service processes in a controlled environment. Developing multiple teams for concurrent worship, delivering technology in a portable setting can be daunting. And while preview services on-site are helpful at debugging systems, incubator services at the sending campus can help everyone know what questions to ask in the first place.

To Train New Volunteers by creating excitement across the congregation. Seasons of launch are a natural time to bring new volunteers to the team at both the sending and multisite campus. Incubator services are effective in providing opportunities to shadow existing volunteers and learn the systems in a known environment.

WHETHER 2018 IS THE YEAR YOU ARE GOING MULTISITE FOR THE FIRST TIME, OR SENDING YOUR SEVENTH CAMPUS, CONSIDER HOLDING ONE OR TWO INCUBATOR SERVICES BEFORE YOU LAUNCH.

AT AUXANO, WE CREATE BREAK-THROUGH CLARITY FOR MULTISITE CHURCH TEAMS THROUGH A UNIQUE PROCESS OF LAUNCH EXECUTION PLANNING THAT FULLY INTEGRATES YOUR UNIQUE IDENTITY WHILE STRENGTHENING A WHOLE-CHURCH VISION. WE KNOW THAT MOST CHURCHES NEED MORE THAN ANOTHER GENERIC STRATEGIC PLAN OR NOTEBOOK OF MULTISITE BEST PRACTICES, AND HAVE HAD THE HONOR TO WORK WITH MULTISITE CHURCHES FROM 200 TO 20,000 DURING SEASONS OF LAUNCH AND GROWTH.

> Read more from Bryan.

Connect with an Auxano Navigator to start a multisite conversation today.

Tags: Bryan Rose, Church multisite, Multisite, multisite church

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Leading Your Team to Work Together Part One: Motivation

by: VRcurator

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How do you help your staff work together as a true team, not just a collection of individuals?

Mention the word “team” and most people think in context of a sports activity. That may be the primary association with a team – a group of people we observe or cheer for, but in some way, everyone works together with others to achieve a goal: families, schools, businesses, non-profits – these are all teams.

Your church staff is a team as well. Are your leaders functioning in unison as a team or operating individually as a collection of individuals?

When you are part of a team, you’re not giving up your individual goals or sacrificing your personal success. Instead, team members set their sights on an even higher goal in order to magnify greater success.

THE QUICK SUMMARY – Payoff, by Dan Ariely

Bestselling author Dan Ariely reveals fascinating new insights into motivation—showing that the subject is far more complex than we ever imagined.

Every day we work hard to motivate ourselves, the people we live with, the people who work for and do business with us. In this way, much of what we do can be defined as being “motivators.” From the boardroom to the living room, our role as motivators is complex, and the more we try to motivate partners and children, friends and coworkers, the clearer it becomes that the story of motivation is far more intricate and fascinating than we’ve assumed.

Payoff investigates the true nature of motivation, our partial blindness to the way it works, and how we can bridge this gap. With studies that range from Intel to a kindergarten classroom, Ariely digs deep to find the root of motivation—how it works and how we can use this knowledge to approach important choices in our own lives.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

As leaders, you should understand how your team members are motivated. That process begins with understanding what you can do as a leader to keep them motivated.  Motivation is often defined as “getting someone moving.”

One of the more difficult challenges for a leader is to learn how to effectively motivate those working for them.  Mastering motivation is difficult because the triggers for motivation are so individual and personal.

For example, inexperienced leaders often believe that the same factors that motivate one team member, or the leader themselves, will have the same effect on others too.  The reality is that nothing could be further from the truth.

Human motivation is not simple, but if we seek to understand it more, we will be able to better handle ourselves, our work, our relationships, and our teams. Knowing what drives us and others is an essential step toward enhancing the joy and minimizing the confusion in our lives.

Whatever our official job descriptions, we are all part-time motivators.

To motivate ourselves and others successfully, we need to provide a sense of connection and meaning – remembering that meaning is not always synonymous with personal happiness. Arguably, the most powerful motivator in the world is our connection to others.

Ultimately, this book asks you – whether you’re an executive, a parent, a salesperson, a teacher, a government official, or anyone else who seeks to motivate yourself or others – to think deeply and broadly about the effects of your approach. By understanding some of the hidden forces of motivation, we will find it easier to deploy the positive, intangible drives that affect us. After all, if a kind word can do wonders to impel people to do better, what other hidden treasures of energy, dedication, and commitment might we find if we only looked for them?

When it comes to human motivation, we can have perpetual energy as long as we invest in a sense of connection, meaning, ownership, and long-term thinking. And, if we correctly use these forces, the return on investment in human motivation will be immense.

Dan Ariely, Payoff

A NEXT STEP

If you are like most leaders, occasionally you will find yourself bored and unmotivated at work. Like Sisyphus in Greek mythology, condemned to lifetime of rolling a boulder uphill only to watch it roll back down, we end up doing the same humdrum, unrewarding task over and over.

What can we do to change the situation when it is impossible to change the circumstances? The answer: change your mental framing.

Designing a new frame around the same circumstances allows new perspectives and ideas to emerge.

If you find yourself bored and unmotivated at work, think about your situation like an onion. There are layers, and it’s best to peel one layer at time. It’s not that one problem is more important than the other, or even that you have to go in a particular order. Just decide on a particular layer that you are trying to solve today.

Create a problem brief containing four parts: the problem space, the goal space, the consequence, and the gaps and barriers.

The Problem Space: Spend time thinking about the way things are currently being done – the status quo. What is the reality or condition preventing the goal from being achieved?

The Goal Space: What is your vision of how things would work in a perfect world?

The Consequence: What’s going to change if I solve this problem?

The Gaps and Barriers: What are the reasons why the problem hasn’t been solved already? What’s missing?

These four components – what could be, what is, why it matters, and what is missing – lead to a simple, powerful beginning to reframing your current state. Once you have worked through this exercise, model and lead your staff to apply it as well. Set a future date to discuss how this reframing revealed depth of personal motivation.

Find areas of similarity to build-on or maximize, and note areas of divergence to be aware-of or minimize.

– adapted from Reframe by Mona Patel

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 60-1, published February 2017.

This is part of a weekly series posting content from one of the most innovative content sources in the church world: SUMS Remix Book Summaries for church leaders.

SUMS Remix takes a practical problem in the church and looks at it with three solutions; each solution is taken from a different book. As a church leader you get to scan relevant books based on practical tools and solutions to real ministry problems, not just by the cover of the book. Each post will have the edition number which shows the year and what number it is in the overall sequence. (SUMS provides 26 issues per year, delivered every other week to your inbox). 

>> Subscribe to SUMS Remix <<

Tags: Dan Ariely, Motivating teams, Payoff, SUMS Remix, Team Motivation

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