Category Archives: Leadership Development

Selecting Leaders in the Church: Nomination and Election

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The Lead Team is the highest decision-making body at First United Methodist Church Cocoa Beach. It is composed of approximately eleven people that give oversight and direction to the administrative ministries of the church, including Trustees, Finance, and Staff-Parish Relations. There is also a Lay Leader on this team that represents the laity and serves as liaison for the various discipleship ministries of the church. The process for nominating and electing leaders is prayerful and deliberate.

NOMINATION

Leaders are prayerfully discerned and nominated by the Committee on Lay Leadership (CLL). This team itself is an elected group whose members are selected using the same process detailed below. Like members of the Lead Team, members of the CLL typically serve three-year terms. So how are potential leaders identified and nominated?

Members of the CLL meditate on the criteria detailed below and enter a season of personal prayer asking God, “Who approximates these criteria, and which of these people do you, Lord, want to serve on the Lead Team in this particular season at our church?” As names come to mind in prayer, they are written in a prayer journal and kept confidential. No one shares their “prayer promptings” with others on the team until we all gather for the next scheduled meeting. This season of prayer typically lasts one to three months. When we gather to discuss our results, everyone on the CLL brings their prayer journal and shares the names that God has placed on their hearts. As one person shares a name, the meeting facilitator writes it on the board and asks, “Did anyone else come up with this name?” Then tick-marks are placed next to that name representing the number of people who independently discerned that person. The higher the number, we assume, the more likely God is moving us to give that person serious consideration. We then enter into deeper conversations around the criteria detailed below, until the group reaches consensus of their top pick and one alternate.

The criteria for nominating potential leaders: Character, Culture, Chemistry, and Competency. (See Bill Hybels)

Character: Members of the Lead Team must demonstrate the highest moral character both inside and outside the church. They must also be vested stakeholders who demonstrate faithfulness to the church membership vows. Below are the criteria provided to the CLL for their season of prayer.

 Criteria for Nominating Leaders in the Church

Since the Lead Team is the highest decision-making body in the church, we are trying to discern leaders that are spiritually and emotionally mature, internally motivated, resourceful, joyful, and committed. As Jim Collins says in his book, Good to Great, the first (and most important) task is getting the right kind of person on the leadership bus. Nominations should be led by the Holy Spirit in persistent prayer and guided by our criteria. One the biggest mistakes churches make is to recruit someone to leadership in hopes of getting them more involved in the church. If you want someone to get more involved, help them connect to a small group.

       Potential leaders should approximate the following criteria:

Must have at least one year of consistent faithfulness to the following membership vows:

Prayers:  Consistent daily devotional life.

Presence: Regular attendance in worship and active participation in a group or class.

Gifts: Percentage giving to the church, and working toward the ideal of the 10% tithe.

Service: Serving as the hands and feet of Jesus through the Engage ministries of the church according to their spiritual gifts and passions.

Witness: When clear opportunities arise, they share what God has done for them and invite people to come to church.

Culture: Potential leaders must understand, embrace, and fully support the church’s mission, vision, disciple-making process, and core values. An important part of their job will be to keep these foundational principles before the church and ensure that Lead Team decisions are aligned with them. They must also possess the ability to make key decisions based on our mission, vision, values, and process and not be unduly influenced by personal preference or a personal agenda. Since decisions are made according to what is in the best interest of the whole church, potential leaders must have the maturity to champion the group decision to the congregation even when they personally disagree.

Chemistry: It is important to consider the make-up of the current Lead Team, so we can nominate new leaders that will get along well with others. Healthy teams have good chemistry. They like and trust each other and work cooperatively to make good decisions and get things done. We also look for good theological chemistry. Does the potential leader embrace the mainline theology of the United Methodist Church and the unique theological emphases that make us who we are?

Competency: We want to recruit potential leaders to serve in their “sweet spot” of ministry, at the intersection of their natural abilities and personality, spiritual gifts, and passions, so they can make a unique contribution in helping us accomplish our mission together.

Often, we have more than one person who meets the criteria for a single leadership opening. Then the question arises, “Of all the qualified candidates, which one is the best choice given the specific season we inhabit in the life of our church? Various considerations can help the CLL make this decision.

Once the CLL develops a slate of nominations, the nominees are individually contacted to see if they will prayerfully consider the nomination. After an initial conversation, they are provided with a job description and a follow-up date is agreed upon. They are contacted on the follow-up date and asked to communicate their decision, which is relayed to the rest of the team. If they agree, the CLL includes his or her name on the nominating form in the Charge or Church Conference paperwork. If they decline, the CLL begins the recruiting process with the alternate. If the alternate declines, the team starts the discernment process over again.

 ELECTION

The Charge Conference is constituted by the Lead Team and an outside Presiding Elder, all of whom have voice and vote. Other church members can attend a Charge Conference and have voice, but only elected members can vote. A Church Conference includes all members in good standing and an outside Presiding Elder, all of whom have voice and vote. Churches are expected to have at least one Charge or Church Conference per year for important church business. Part of the agenda is electing new members of the Lead Team and CLL. The slate of nominated leaders developed by the CLL is printed and distributed to all in attendance. The conference is opened for discussion and then a vote is taken. Once elected, members cannot be removed without cause unless they resign.

If you have questions about this discerning, nominating, and electing process, please contact the Pastor or a member of the Committee on Lay Leadership.

(The same criteria is used when selecting staff)

Simple Church: The Importance of Designing a Straightforward Disciple-Making Process

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In the Great Commission, Jesus instructs his followers: “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19). This is the job description of every Christian and every church, to make more and better disciples of Jesus. This is the church’s raison d’etre.

The most important thing a church does is design a process for making more and better disciples of Jesus Christ. Everything we have and everything we do in the church is intended to be a tool for accomplishing this mission.

In the book, Simple Church, by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger, we learn that leaders in the church are called to be designers, not programmers. If church leaders take this call seriously, then they are charged with a very important responsibility: To design a simple, step-by step process that moves people through various stages of spiritual growth. This sequential process is implemented in every area of the church, including all age-level ministries, and the staff, leaders, and members are taught to fully understand the process and work together as a unified body to move people through the steps. Anything that does not directly support the disciple-making process is abandoned.

Such a process has some distinctive characteristics. It is:

  • Intentionally designed, not carelessly thrown together.
  • Straightforward and simple. (And the simplicity is fiercely protected; we don’t lengthen it, add to it, or otherwise complicate it.)
  • Strategic insofar as (1) it is tied to the mission and vision of the church, and (2) it is structured by clearly defined, sequential steps.
  • Aimed at transforming people into the image of Christ.

 

Steps in Creating a Simple Church: Process

Clarity → Movement → Alignment → Focus[1]  

 

Clarity: The ability of the process to be communicated and understood by people. Clarity eliminates confusion. Remember, understanding always precedes commitment, so if we want people to commit to our church by investing their time, talent, treasure, and witness, they need clarity about who we are, what we are trying to do, and how we intend to do it. Without clarity it’s difficult to get buy-in, and without buy-in people usually don’t give, especially if it requires sacrifice. So, the staff and leaders not only need to fully understand the process, but they must also teach it to everyone they serve.  

 

Movement: The sequential steps in the process that cause people to move to greater areas of commitment. Movement is what causes someone to go to the next step. It’s what happens in between programs.

This means that we do not evaluate the success of our ministries as isolated units but according to how people are moving through our discipleship process. For example, we don’t say, “Worship is going great because we had a 10% increase and nobody is complaining about the music or sermon.” Rather, we say, “Worship is going great because we had a 10% increase in people moving from worship into a Bible study where they are growing more deeply in their faith.” We don’t focus on the number of people who attend a program, but the number of people moving from step one, to step-two, to step-three in the process that leads them to greater maturity and commitment to Christ. Hence, “hand-offs” from one step to the next are very important. Unfortunately, the church often fails to execute (or even pay attention to) hand-offs because leaders often focus on isolated programs and work in silos. Pastors need to train their leaders to pay as much attention to handoffs as the programs themselves, because programs are only valuable insofar as they move people through a discipleship process that transforms them into the image of Christ. Therefore, every program/event/ministry must fit somewhere in the sequential process, which brings us to alignment.

 

Alignment: the way that all ministry departments embrace, submit, and attach themselves to the same overarching process. “Alignment ensures the entire church body is moving in the same direction, and in the same manner” to accomplish the same mission. Everyone is operating from the same ministry blueprint, and replicates the process in their respective areas. Without alignment, the church is not a unified body but a tangled bunch of various sub-ministries that work in silos and compete for space, money, volunteers, and time on the calendar. Leaders not only fail to work cooperatively to accomplish a single mission, but they often (even if inadvertently) work at cross purposes. Achieving and maintaining alignment is painful, but failing to address misalignment is more painful and costly in the long run. (Think about your car being out of alignment. It is cheaper to get an alignment than buy new tires. It is safer to get an alignment than to risk a blow-out and possibly suffer a car accident.)

 

Focus: the commitment to abandon everything that falls outside of the simple ministry process. We only say “yes” to the best things that help us accomplish our mission by working our process. We say “no” to things that do not directly move the process forward or that are “good” but not “the best,” knowing that extra programs will compete with and pull people away from our primary strategy for making disciples.

Focus is the most difficult element to implement. It takes deep convictions and guts. “Focus does not make church leaders popular.” As you say “no” to things that the church has always done, or “no” to new ideas that don’t directly move the process forward, people will get mad at you. Despite our best efforts to explain the importance of the simple church model and how it will lead to more fruitful ministry, staff will quit, leaders will resign, and members will leave the church as we execute focus. Leaders survive this turbulent time by focusing on being faithful to Christ, being totally committed to his mission, and having faith that God will reward our obedience by sending us the people we need, regardless of who leaves. If we can’t muster the commitment and resolve needed to execute focus, then all the work described above (clarity, movement, and alignment) will be for nothing. The process will quickly get buried in clutter and soon be forgotten.

So leaders must be careful to “count the cost” before they decide to embrace the simple church model and start designing a discipleship process. Jesus says in Luke 14:

28 “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? 29 For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, 30 saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’ 31 “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33 In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.

While moving toward a simple church model will lead to growth (both deep and wide), it requires leaders to make difficult decisions that will upset people. We have to be aware of this from the beginning so that we don’t do all the work and then fail because we don’t have the resolve to see it through.

[1] This blog post is a summary of Simple Church, chapter 3.

Why Culture Is More Important Than Programs When Trying to Grow Your Church

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If you want your church to grow, you need to focus less on programs and more on culture.

Effective marketing, strategic preaching, and good online ministries can help get people through the door. If newcomers experience warm hospitality and some of their needs are met in worship, they might even stick around for a few months. But if people don’t develop a sense of belonging in the larger community within the first three months of attending, they will likely go looking somewhere else. Most people crave life-giving friendships in a genuine community of love, and this is the main reason why people stay at a church.

This is why the first part of our mission statement at First UMC Cocoa Beach is so important to me. It reads, “Our mission is to learn and practice the teachings of Jesus in ways that create communities of love . . .” In many churches, first, you are expected to believe certain things. Second, you are expected to behave in certain ways. Third, you finally get to belong, which is typically formalized in official church membership. However, if you are trying to grow your church, these priorities must be reversed. First, you should accept people where they are, so that from the beginning they experience a sense of belonging. Second, you should model how followers of Jesus treat each other when cultivating a community of love. Third, you should offer a lifegiving theology that can sustain and support deep spiritual transformation in the real world.

In growing churches, believe—behave—belong gets switched to belong—behave—believe.

The important point is that if people do not experience a sense of belonging in a community of love, then your odds of keeping them in your church will drastically decrease. And if you can’t keep them around, you will never change their beliefs or behavior.

 Communities of Love

What distinguishes a community of love has everything to do with the way that people treat each other. The New Testament is instructive.

Take for example Colossians 3-4. The author instructs followers of Jesus to die to self (ego), and to resist anger, rage, malice, slander, and abusive or critical language (3:8, CEB). He also tells them not to lie to each other (3:9).

After explaining what must be eradicated, the author goes on to say that we should treat each other with “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience” (3:12). Followers of Jesus are called to clothe themselves in love, exercise tolerance, practice forgiveness, and be united in peace (3:13-14). Our attitude should be characterized by gratitude (4:2), our speech should be gracious (4:6), and everything we do should honor Jesus (3:17).

Likewise, the author of 1 Thessalonians says that we should live in peace with one another, respect each other, and build each other up (5:11-12, CEB).

Organizational Culture

How we treat each other over time creates a unique culture. Organizational culture can be a difficult concept to grasp, but it is like the water in which fish swim. Healthy culture is like clean water in which wildlife thrive, and unhealthy culture is like toxic water that destroys an ecosystem. Another helpful metaphor is that of eyeglasses. Healthy culture is like a good prescription that helps us see our relationships accurately, and unhealthy culture is like a prescription that distorts how we see ourselves and others.

If we are not intentional about eradicating attitudes and behaviors that destroy loving community, then our church culture will be dysfunctional and toxic. Paul describes the kinds of things that characterize toxic culture: hostility, strife, jealousy, envy, conceit, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, and competition (Gal. 5:19-21). However, if we are serious about following Jesus, we can cultivate a healthy culture supportive of communities characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Gal 5:19-26)

Drawing from passages such as these, we can clearly distinguish between healthy and toxic organizational cultures.

COMMUNITIES OF LOVE COMMUNITIES OF DESTRUCTION
Positive Negative
Hopeful Despairing and Cynical
Optimistic Pessimistic
Joyful Disagreeable
Generous Withholding and Critical
Gracious Demanding
Gentle Harsh
Kind Dismissive or Nasty
Courteous Rude and Crass
Forgiving Unrelenting
Respectful Demeaning
Flexible Rigid
Helpful Obstructive
Compassionate Judgmental
Humble Arrogant
Patient Compulsive and Reactionary
Thankful Unappreciative
Builds-Up Tears-Down
Self-Sacrificial Self-Serving
Open to Feedback Defensive and Blaming
Direct, Respectful Communication Gossip and Backbiting
Peace Conflict and Anger
Unified Divided
Accountability Anything Goes

Who in their right mind would want to invest in a community characterized by the qualities in the right-hand column? A culture built around these kinds of attitudes and behaviors will run-off every single newcomer who has a modicum of emotional health. This kind of culture literally repels people.

In contrast, who in their right mind would not want to invest in a community characterized by the qualities in the left-hand column? A culture built around these kinds of attitudes and behaviors attracts people, because it creates safe environments where people can learn, grow, and change.

 Leaders as Cultural Architects

So, how do you grow a healthy culture? It starts with your leaders. The number one predictor of organizational culture is the way leaders treat each other and those they serve. If your leaders do not understand and seek to embody attitudes and behaviors that reflect the value system of the Kingdom of God, then you will probably never cultivate a culture in which communities of love can grow and flourish.

Consequently, if you want your church to grow then your number one priority should be discipleship. The pastor, staff, and leaders must seek to follow Jesus daily and be transformed in ways that make them more loving. Remember, you can’t share what you don’t have. If the pastor, staff, and lay leaders are not willing to treat everyone in ways that reflect the teachings of Jesus, your church will not grow. It’s that simple.

This means that a handful of people at the top who are left unaccountable to the gospel can poison your entire culture and keep the church from fulfilling its mission. The reason is because the attitudes and behaviors of your leaders are contagious and will create an invisible but pervasive presence that will either feel emotionally safe or dangerous. The former will attract and the latter will repel.

Since change is difficult, if you are working within an unhealthy culture you will need to do at least three things with your staff and leaders to accomplish lasting change: (1) clearly communicate the attitudes and behaviors that are acceptable and unacceptable, (2) put effective accountability systems in place, and (3) regularly and consistently apply these accountability systems until the culture changes and you have the right people in place. (Not to discourage you, but some studies show that creating lasting culture change can take up to seven years.) Leaders must be firm and gracious, remembering that none of us follows Jesus perfectly. However, we should cast God-sized goals for our relationships, and when we fall short of our goal it should lead to repentance and renewed effort.

Culture > Programs / Maturity > Execution of Skill

The upshot of all this, is that churches should focus less on programs and events and more on developing a healthy, loving culture reflective of the values lived and taught by Jesus. In terms of hiring, managing, and disciplining staff, supervisors should focus less on talent and execution of skill and more on attitude, commitment, and spiritual/emotional maturity. This means that the primary job of the pastor is not to be a manager of ministries, but a spiritual leader making disciples that make more disciples. So, the order of importance in evaluating staff and leaders should be: (1) faithfulness in discipleship, (2) commitment to working cooperatively to accomplish the mission of Jesus, and (3) execution of skill and accomplishing mutually agreed upon performance goals.

Accountability Tools:

There are two resources that I have found helpful in discipling staff and leaders when trying to effect cultural change.

Faithfulness and Fruitfulness Accountability Sheets

Before a one-on-one staff meeting, I require everyone to complete a “Faithfulness and Fruitfulness Accountability Sheet.” The idea for this kind of worksheet came from Jorge Acevedo’s book, Vital. This is what we use at First UMC Cocoa Beach:

Faithfulness and Fruitfulness Accountability Sheet

Name: _____________________________

Date:   _______

  1. Faithfulness: How is it with your soul? Are you abiding with Jesus?

“Remain in me, and I will remain in you. A branch can’t produce fruit by itself, but must remain in the vine. Likewise, you can’t produce fruit unless you remain in me” (John 15:4).

  • How is your personal devotional life?
  • How have you denied Jesus this week?
  • How have you glorified Jesus this week?
  • How are your most important relationships?
  • On a scale of 1-10 how have you lived into the following biblical values:

______    I have been positive, optimistic, and hopeful

______    I have been flexible and open to feedback

______    I have been gracious, generous, compassionate, and forgiving

______    I have been humble, respectful, kind, and polite

______    I have been joyful, thankful, and content

______    I have directly shared concerns only with appropriate people (no gossip).

______    I ‘m pursuing excellence while being encouraging to those I serve.

______    I’m working cooperatively with others to accomplish the mission of the church.

  1. Fruitfulness: How is it with your ministry? Are you abounding with Jesus?

“Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).

  • Program and Administrative Staff: Where are you in your long-range strategic planning? (You should develop 3, 6, and 12 month SMART goals that will help accomplish the mission of the larger church.)
  • All Staff: What progress have you made in your work plan?
  • What do you need to Stop? Start? Continue?
  • What challenges are you facing and what do you need to be successful in your specific area of ministry?
  • How are you serving, nurturing, discipling, training, developing, and resourcing your volunteers? How are you growing those in your care individually and as a team?
  • How can I hold you accountable for your area of ministry?

 ____________________________________________________________

The day before a meeting, I ask the staff person to spend some time praying and reflecting on the questions outlined in the worksheet, writing-in short responses. At the beginning of our meeting, they give the completed sheets to me and we spend about thirty minutes on each section (totaling one hour). Every three months, I give them feedback on how I think that they are doing, creating change plans where necessary. Honesty is very important in this process.  The supervisor must be willing to initiate difficult conversations, and the leaders must be willing to receive feedback without deflecting or blaming.

Social Covenants

A second tool that is helpful in creating cultural change is the social covenant, which I learned from Rev. David McEntire. After making sure that your leaders understand and embrace the church mission, go away on a retreat and work with them to develop agreements regarding how you will treat each other. Importantly, the pastor should not write a covenant (or borrow one from another church) and impose it on their team. Rather, the pastor leads a discussion using the four questions below, which empowers the leaders to develop something that belongs to them. Ownership is critical if the covenant is going to work.

  1. How does the leader want to be treated by the team?
  2. How does the team want to be treated by the leader?
  3. How are the members of the team going to treat each other?
  4. How is the team going to resolve conflict?

Once adequate brainstorming has happened in a group setting, a couple of people from the team who are skilled writers are delegated to organize, distill, and write a rough draft. The draft is then brought back to the team for final revisions. Once a final draft has been written, all leaders sign it around the margins of the first page, which is then copied and distributed. The first ten minutes of every meeting is used to silently reflect on the covenant and publicly self-rate on a scale of 1-10. No one rates anyone else, and no feedback is given (positive or negative) unless the person sharing explicitly asks for it. If the covenant is not used in this kind of way, it will become a useless piece of paper.

Conclusion

These tools are not perfect, and there are many others you can use. But the main idea is that if you want your church to grow then you must focus on cultivating spiritual and emotional maturity in your leaders. You must help them develop the attitudes and behaviors necessary to create and nurture communities of love. Don’t focus on programs, events, and hiring a superstar staff. Focus on discipleship, spiritual maturity, and cultivating a loving culture that models the values system of the kingdom of God.