• Winners & Losers
Winners & Losers: Program Priority Wars
In some church ministries one can find the alarming glimpse into what we might call turf wars. Basically, it is where one area of ministry tries to maintain dominance over others. So these ministries square off with all the trappings of warfare—to do battle for positions of favor.
Some of the ministries that I have seen that attempt a competitive edge: youth vs. children, Christian education vs. Worship, or outreach/ evangelism vs. building program.
It must be said, not all program priority is by this definition wrong. However, one program can become too dominant and too entrenched. With extended dominance one ministry can become untouchable—a land mind. To take this ministry on is usually ill advised or just insurmountable.
It is true that the priority that grew the church is often an emphasis upon one program priority—Worship Service. To shift to another priority could be tentative, because of the fear of loosing some momentum. Notice, if this is the Pastor’s Pet (which all on the staff can perceive). To challenge this landmine, which might be set in stone, could be dangerous. You might want to leave it alone (for now).
The healthy way for a church to deal with program priorities is the rotate them, so that all the staff get a turn in the lime light of favor. No one program should maintain dominance all the time. When the Preschool Program remodeling is in full swing, they are the program priority for a season. Then a shift to an all-church Christmas Outreach Program for the month of December might be front and center. All other programs are subservient to that emphasis. The problem comes when a few leaders and their programs fail to get a turn at being on top.
Here are some Program Priority Indicators, some clues that might indicate this exists.
• Starting A Puppet Ministry
How to Start a Puppet-Team Ministry
So you want to begin a puppet ministry, and you have no real training or experience. So here are my suggestions on how to get started.
1. A team leader’s training and experience. The adage that “you can only lead as far as you have gone” does apply to puppetry. Either you make the effort to get some training yourself or you take someelse who is interested and invest training in them. One Way Street has an excellent Puppet Director Handbook that is well worth the price just for the forms and help.
2. A Vision for puppetry as your ministry method. Having a clear vision of what you really want to accomplish with your puppet team really dictates what will want to happen with this ministry. If you are just looking for a way for your older teens or 5th and 6th graders to minister to the younger kids that is one thing. However, if you want to form a traveling team for outreach with puppets, this is another vision. Will they only work with one group, like Children’s Church or the Preschool Department? So defining what you want to accomplish with a puppet team is central to the way you train, rehearse and ultimately the kind of puppetry you will perform. You can spend a lot of money, unnecessarily, if you have not defined this vision. You can get some outside help here, before you do anything costly.
For more suggestion continue…
• Games In’s and Out’s
The In’s and Out’s of the Game
Baseball is a game played by two teams, one out, the other in. The one that’s in sends players out, one at a time, to see if they can get in before they get out. If they get out before they get in, they come in, but it doesn’t count. If they get in, before they get out, it does count.
When the ones out get three outs from the ones in, before they get in without being out, the team that’s out comes in and the team in goes out to get those going in out, before they get in without being out. When both teams have been in and out nine times the game is over.
The team with the most in, without being out, before coming in wins, unless the ones in are equal. In which case, the last ones in go out to get the ones in out before they get in without being out. The game will end when each team has the same number of in’s out, but one team has more in without being out before coming in.
No wonder the In’s and Out’s of coaching are so difficult to explain!
A Simple Explanation of Baseball from http://www.coloradoover50baseball.org/
• Lock, Stock & Barrel
Lock, Stock & Barrel
I have successfully downsized my storage unit to only one. This week I was able to eliminate the second one in my ongoing effort to downsize 40 years of ministry materials, books, resources and equipment. Consolidating years of work has been no easy task for me, but reducing the volume and eliminating the old and unnecessary has been a daily task for me for more than two years. I only work on it about an hour a day, so it has taken a long time, but I was determined just to stay with it, and eventually, I would get it into one unit.
Well, it happened. I now have just one. This is not to say that I am really done, I still have many boxes to sort and files to go through, some old and new, but the storage cost in has been reduced. However, at this point, I am calculating that in this last couple of years I actually have had eight storage units—not all at once. I would get a big one, and then downsize to smaller ones, as I was making progress towards the reduction goal. No one told me that this would be easy, and I can attest it has not. I could only take an hour or two of the emotional energy needed to remember everything associated with whatever I would touch.
Of course, after fifty years of ministry, some things were difficult to pitch, throw or remove, but eventually, reason prevailed and it went. Some things I have managed to donate to worthy causes or persons who might benefit from the resources. But I found that the downsizing in some regards was getting easier with the process of time. I have arranged the storage unit now with a desk for me to work there—as I need to either to work or prepare for various assignments that come up. This has been a great exercise to “eliminate and concentrate” for me. What is left is considered important. But the truth is, there is still more to eliminate and sort. There are still more boxes and files to go through.
In this process I have often wondered just how my family might have handled all my stuff, should I leave the scene and it was up to them. Maybe some day they will appreciate my efforts to spare them the misery of dealing with my life’s work and memorabilia. I guess I will never know that, I can only hope the effort was helpful to them. But today, I am very happy to have ONLY ONE Storage unit, NOT TWO UNITS!
• Leadership: Isolation
Leadership: Isolation
Why would the subject of Isolation be included in a list of desirable qualities for leadership?
We are surrounded everywhere by sounds and noises, in cars, in home, in elevators, at work, answering machines, shopping malls and restaurants. Being alone in such a social world is different. Isolation is the opposite, a removing of oneself from any disturbance. Some get really nervous with the lack of sounds—we can get so used to it. Isolation is being by ones self, being removed from outside influences, people, music, and noise. Being alone in a calm quiet moment, so that God can deal with us, without any interruption or distraction.
Isolation is not a punishment of being locked in, like being in prison. It is rather, locking out the distractions that could hinder us from hearing the whisper of God in our spirit. To accomplish this, one might deliberately remove oneself from their normal environment—a desert place or a mountain cabin, a camp or a chapel, a church sanctuary, a hotel room, anywhere that might qualify as a “trysting place.”
Consider some of these Ten Great Experiences that are all associated with this Leadership Discipline of Isolation:
• Review: Power of A Whisper
The Power of a Whisper: Hearing God: Having the Guts to Respond
By Bill Hybels, Zondervan Publishers, 2007, 149 pages
Holy Discontent is another life-changing book that just might clarify and solidify your calling from God. At first, I was wondering just how this volume would impact me. But I soon realized that Bill Hybil was unpacking some of my story.
What drives leaders to embark on a relentless mission for God? Passionate purpose is illustrated with leaders like Moses, Mother Teresa, Nehemiah, Ghandi and even stories from Bill Hybil’s own life story.
Having grown up with now famous classic cartoon like Popeye, I recalled his famous line that preceded before he would go for the spinach. “That’s all I can stands, I can stands no more!” This Popeye Moment illustrates what Bill Hybil calls Holy Discontent.
I recommend this book to help you, not only find your own personal area of Holy Discontent, but to fight for and follow it, even when it takes some mid-course twists and turns.
• Moving Forward, Stepping UP
Moving Forward, Stepping UP
Sharon and I took an Alaskan Cruise this year for our vacation. Of course, the Holland America Cruise Ship Zuiderdam was just huge. One of our off repeated experiences every day was to leave our room to navigate our way from deck to deck. There were really two ways to do this: use the three sets of elevators or use the stairs. Feeling we needed the exercise, we began using the stairs. The stairs were designed like the photo above, with a landing half way up or down, and the next set of stairs connected to another floor. This stair design is the most efficient use of space, as opposed to one continuous set of stairs between decks. However, I soon realized another function of that the landing between sets of stairs.
Clearly, the majority of the passengers on this cruise were retirement age. A lot of seniors take this adventure North to Alaska. Every floor has something to offer the passengers, and traveling on the boat for a week, means a lot of stair climbing, if you choose. Lots of people were using the stairs, as we were. We soon realized that the landing was becoming the convenient resting place. Here one could stop midway, experience a momentary recovery from the energy expended and gather courage to face the next set of stairs, up or down. It was more obvious that this resting place was used more when going up. I began focusing on the one movement of my foot, either going up or down, was always forward moving. Even on the landing between stairs it was forward.
As I have thought about this idea it occurred to me that Moving Forward is a leadership issue—taking another step, moving forward. However, it is not about movement, it is more about taking another step in the right direction, up or down. At the platform in between the steps (up or down) is like the decision making process, considering our options, gathering more information, getting ready to be proactive, taking the risk, conserving our energy for the next push to step up.
So how might this impact our leadership in Children’s Ministry? Find out here…
• Blessing the Back Packs
Blessing of the Back Packs
Here is an idea that for your Back-to-School emphasis. I was reminded that our church has been doing this for several years now.
Students of all ages and stages are encouraged to wear their backpacks to the services—just for fun—where we’ll offer a prayer of dedication and blessing for both students and teachers. The Senior Pastor and the Children’s Pastor will remind us: God sticks with us wherever we go, and through every challenge we face! Each student or teacher will receive a back-to-school gift as a reminder of this important truth.
Is there something here with this idea that you can implement this year? Or perhaps you can add this idea to your Fall ministry next year?
• Camp Relational?
Camp Relational?
I had the opportunity to minister in a children’s camp in Alberta, Canada called Living Springs Camp located about 40 miles southeast of Edmonton. My first impressions of the camp were rustic, old and very remote in the countryside located alongside a rather stagnant lake called Red Deer Lake. However, as I ventured into my new assignment and I began to make some significant discoveries.
A young man named Mike Parker came to the Edmonton Airport to pick me up. He was very friendly and seemed happy to have me come to camp. We stopped for lunch at one of his favorite places, a donut shop called Tim Horton’s in Wetaskiwin. As we enjoyed our gourmet sandwich, he began telling me his story how ministry at this camp had changed his life while he was in High School. Wow, special!
At the early Sunday afternoon Staff meeting, before camp was to start, I was introduced around the group of camp leaders and counselors. There was about twenty of them, single and in their early twenties. There was a friendly welcome as I introduced myself and gave a brief overview of what my ten messages for the week might include. That is when I began the process of learning about a couple of dozen names. They were patient with my initial efforts. Their obvious interest in the speaker was impressive and I was responding to their friendly welcome.
Then the campers began coming with their parents to register for the week. I am noticing everyone seemed to know each other, or it seemed that way. Camp officially started with Sunday night dinner, following by chapel time with orientation, music and a message by me.
We had a staff meeting early the next morning and later in the night after the kids were in bed. This became the daily pattern. The camp Dean, a local Pastor, convened a brief prayer meeting about fifteen minutes before every chapel time with all the staff that could make it. All this seemed quite normal in my camp experience.
However, As camp evolved I began to notice how connected the staff was to each other.
• Is It Time to Move?
When is it Time to Move?
There are many answers to this question, however, if you have never dealt with this reality, then here are some considerations that might cause you to ponder the question: “When is it time to move?”
1. There may be a conflict with the Church vision. The leadership has declared that they want to accomplish something that is not compatible with either your vision for children’s ministry or your own personal vision. It is time to rethink your involvement going forward.
2. There might be well-intentioned Dragons who are threatening the vision and plans of your ministry work. You are not successful making any changes with these difficult leaders.
3. There might be a lack of support from the leadership that translates into making every move forward like hauling a heavy rock uphill.
4. There might be serious false attacks on your character—integrity. The Pastor may be taking the side of your critics, because they attacked and told him first—he believes them.
5. There might be promises made to you in the beginning that have not been addressed and now there is a great gap in their integrity.
6. There are serious troubles in financing the church budget, which means your budget has been restricted, which is seriously hindering your ability to run your program minimally.
Continue this article, there is more…
