but
planning is indispensable."
When I came to Redford Aldersgate the
very first thing on my 100 Day To Do List was : Start Holding Regular Staff Meetings. Pretty revolutionary, right? You might not think so, but when I arrived the staff was not meeting on a regular basis, so beginning with my first week
on the job, I began holding regularly scheduled team meetings. (Monthly at first. Weekly now.)
The
message I wanted to communicate was simple: We are a team! We are in this together! We are going to work together to accomplish ministry in this community!
One of
the reasons churches become stagnant is that they have fallen into the trap of
becoming pastor-centered. In the pastor-centered church, the pastor does
everything. The pastor decides everything. The pastor makes every thing happen.
The
problem with a pastor-centered church is that the church can only grow as big
as the pastor can handle (usually around 150 – 175 persons in worship.) Building a team approach to ministry
communicates that while the pastor is clearly the leader – it is the team (both staff and volunteer) that makes ministry happen. In the team
approach, the pastor is not the sole leader, but becomes the leader of leaders.
In the
weeks building up to this launch, we have spent a lot of time in meetings
planning and strategizing. Here is the deal – most of these plans probably won’t come
to fruition (at least not how we envision them today.) But the time we have spent in planning
is building a team that trusts and communicates and is committed to the vision
and to each other. This kind of
team can roll with the changes and rise to the challenges when plans change –
and trust me, plans always change!
Something
to think about: Are you building
the kind of teams that will grow your ministry and roll with the inevitable
changes that you will face?
The quote at the beginning of this blog is attributed to Dwight D. Eisenhower
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