Next

In my conversations with current church leaders through Slingshot Group, or future church leaders through Leadership Pathway, I have found there are basically six essential factors that all of us are looking for when we are considering what is next. These are elements that can help draw us to that next position in ministry.

Place, Boss, Team, Church, Challenge, and Salary 

1. The Next Place. There are zip codes that are desirable places to be. There are towns and cities where family lives, or perhaps where our roots once were.

2. The Next Boss. We’ve read the cliché: People join organizations, but they leave their boss. This is so true. We are looking for a good connection, and someone’s leadership that will help us to thrive in a new position.  

3. The Next Team. Have you ever sat down with a group of people for a meeting or a meal and just felt right at home? We leave these encounters thinking things like I’d hang with that group again – they seem to really have a great vibe together. Or perhaps there is a lot of talent and shared experience within a team that we desire to join.

4. The Next Church (or organization). Sometimes we are looking for a vision we can really get behind, a shared philosophy or deep passion.  

5. The Next Challenge. Leaders love to solve issues. Great leaders run toward a problem, if they feel they are uniquely gifted or qualified to address it.

6. The Next Salary. God knows our context. He knows our needs, and sometimes they change within our family, or season of life.

Here’s the Real Question: Will you ever be able to get the job you want, in the place you desire, working for the boss you love, on the all-star team, at a great church you really resonate with, tackling the perfect challenge, and all for the right compensation?

The majority of the time, I would say no. There’s no perfect church. There’s no perfect candidate, and there’s no perfect scenario in your future.

I caution candidates to never move for just one reason. Just the dollars, or just the location, or just that perfect person you believe you want to work alongside. I have worked with some in those very scenarios, and when that one reason goes away, they are set up for a disappointing, and usually short, stay.

On the other hand, I have seen candidates find two, three, or four of these six factors to align, and they begin to use language like I believe God is calling us to…

So, take a look at the six elements for a place that you may be going to next, and prioritize them. What is most important to you, and/or your family for this next season of life? Prayerfully consider these before getting onsite with a potential next employer. It may actually help you see more clearly through all of the factors that go in to making the decision of where you may be going next.

When Your Senior Pastor Leaves (and it's your boss)

I’ve read a lot in recent months about succession planning of senior pastors. I won’t restate the stats here of how many Boomer pastors will be retiring since I know you’ve read the same blogs that I have.

There’ve also been some good books written on the topic which is great.  There also appears to be more than just one example of an older church that has gone through this successfully. Five years ago, I think I heard of the one good example over and over. These days I’m hearing more. This is encouraging.

But I’m yet to read anything (I think?) on what to do if you find yourself as a young leader downline on the staff of a church that just announced a well planned one to three-year succession plan (and sometimes longer).

Perhaps one of the reasons you began on that staff was because it was a stable place to learn, grow, and advance in leadership and influence. You wanted to learn from this long term leader who is now talking about an exit. Suddenly, this dynamic church begins to look inward more than out for it’s mission, it’s getting weird, everything is difficult, and you are hearing things like “this will be a long three years…”

Three years may seem like a long weekend to those looking forward to retirement, but three years is more than 10% of your entire life thus far!

I never lived this, so I asked a long-time friend (and former intern I might add) what three things he’d say to young leaders on these staffs. His name is Curtis. He’s an exec leader at a great church, he’s a good singer, karaoke-host, story teller, drummer/percussionist, funny comedian, great husband, and awesome dad with an impressive beard.

He’s also an expert on what to do when this happens because he’s lived it not just once, but now twice.

Here in his own words are his answer to the question what three things would you say to a young staff leader whose Senior Pastor just announced a long succession plan?

- Be patient…You will find that it is easy to spend many days living in the “what ifs?” Embrace 'the waiting' and don’t be too quick to jump ship for the next seemingly comfortable thing..seasons are important, how things are now will not be how things are down the road. 

- Keep an open mind to the transition that happens in your own world… if you resign to the idea that you're not changing what you do/how you work… then you’ll be planning your own exit. You will be changed through this! You will change how you work and lead! Transition is for everyone not just the Senior Leader.

- Help your church and other team members goodbye well to your pastor. You must do this and your church must do this. You can be a key here! All the new that is coming will be the tidal wave of change. If you and your team are not careful, you’ll shift focus there too soon. Don’t forget to honor them and honor them well for what they’ve done.

Remember…God knows your address. He knew this was gonna happen before you took that ministry role. Perhaps you have a unique role to play. Perhaps you’re there simply to learn, good and bad, about one of the key times in a church’ life. Perhaps you’re there to help other younger, and even newer, staffers through the transition.

Three Answers for Residency

Senior and Executive Pastors tend to say one of three things when the topic of residency comes up:

1.) “We tried that once. It worked for a season, but then went in to decline. One of our staff was tasked to do the recruiting and it overwhelmed them. We didn’t find good candidates.”
You need to fish in different ponds. Did you know Leadership Pathway can do a nationwide residency search for about as cheaply as you can send a couple of staff on a Seminary tour over one weekend? You believe you have a good program, but you can’t find good candidates…we can help with that!

#2.) “My staff tells me it's too much work. They’re not sure what to do."
A full engagement with Leadership Pathway gives you access to their Guidebook. This coaching material is designed to walk with your staff and their resident over the coming two years. It provides monthly reading suggestions, and coaching helps to have developmental conversations

3.) “We already have a killer internship program.”
We’d simply ask, have the last few interns gone on to have fruitful ministry careers? If you, or another dynamic church, have hired them on to a ministry team...by all means just keep doing what you’re doing! Normally it’s here that we ask if we can steal what you have to use in our program!

 If the first two sound a little familiar, we'd love to talk more with you at Leadership Pathway.

FIFO

There are those among us who seem to just be born with a high level of grit. They don’t stop until the task is done. They could be a number crunching CFO, a dedicated employee, an artist at a canvas, or a leader who just won’t give up no matter what.

Let’s set those amazing folks aside for a moment…

There are others of us who have ideas and think of ourselves as entrepreneurial. We love to start things and many times will walk away before it’s finished. In the church world we tend to think of these people as higher caliber leaders, but we aren’t. We just have more books (that we read the summaries of…), and most of the like-minded people are the ones who speak at conferences. They make us feel better about ourselves.

We’re the starters. We’re the quitters.

We are the First In and First Out.

I have a theory that is not backed by data anywhere because I don’t have the money, nor the grit, to study it. I just think that we’re the ones who quit too soon. We didn’t like middle school and we couldn’t wait to get to high school. Then we hated high school. We would have quit both if our mom would have let us. We wanted to play the drums, but it didn’t come naturally so we gave up after five lessons. We got to college… yeah, we hated that too and would have quit if we weren’t on scholarship and investing large sums of money.

There are hundreds (dozens?) of us nationally that just took a ministry job at a local church after finishing our education. For the first time ever no one is going to make us stay after it.  The clock is ticking and a whole bunch of us flame out before year three. We launched that ministry, we started that thing, we even started those things that had nothing to do with our job description, we got people excited…and then…the newness wore off.

For those of us who took the only job we could get, we find ourselves in a dangerous spot. This is really no different how we felt back in middle school or taking viola lessons. This is work. This takes grit. We quit, and we say that God has called us to something else. Or our shallow attitude gets the best of us and we get fired for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, or for not understanding how to do the right thing at the right time.

Some of us were fortunate enough to have some folks around us who wouldn’t let us quit by year three. This is the fundamental idea behind Leadership Pathway. When we say “stick it out for three years” to a 23-year-old they may wonder if we realize that we’re talking about more than 10% of their entire life. It sounds eternal. Later in life, we have the perspective that three years sounds more like a long weekend.

For those of us who've been down this path and lived to tell about it, it's now our turn to be First In with those coming behind us, and help them to not be the First Out.

"EEK! My Kid is Thinking About Ministry" 4 Things to Consider

In a previous post, I set up this conversation that I tend to have a lot this time of year with parents of high school juniors and seniors.  Here’s the first of four things that I tend to say over and over:

1. START WITH THE END IN MIND

There are countless books written about the topic of vision—vision for the country, world peace, a business, or a church. Let me ask, what’s your kid’s personal vision for himself or herself?

The best vision is as specific and measurable as possible. Everyone struggles with this question for their life. Most 18 – 25-year-olds struggle even more so. Most of them I talk to are impressive, and they tend to first say, “Whatever God wants.”  This should be the first answer, and I applaud it, but to get them to think more deeply, I tend to ask it this way: “If I jumped in a time traveling DeLorean and went out five years, found  a photo you took and brought it back with you, what would be in the picture?” 

I then follow up with simple questions like, Are you in a city or rural setting? Are you employed? Where? Are you married, or are you waking up alone? You are getting in a car and driving to a location at 8.30 A.M. on a Monday—is it an office? If so, to do what?

I would encourage you to have this conversation as early as possible (10th grade maybe) and re-visit it often. I remember doing the Paterson Process Thinking Wavelengths with both of my kids at this age. They are now in their mid-twenties, and we have revisited this conversation often.

So, here’s the deal…unless you are sitting on piles of cash, you may not want to haul off and finance your (or your kids’) next two decades on an education built on a foggy vision.

What lifts the cloud of vision? It is action built on self-awareness, not prayer alone, not reading alone, not studying alone but action. If your student is not actively volunteering at a local church but is voicing that he or she wants to pursue vocational ministry someday, then I’d go as far to say that this vision is not a vision at all.

Great vision is followed by a clear mission, supported by strategy, fueled by plans, and measured by metrics.  This is true of your student’s life, as well.

I suppose that if your teen was thinking about becoming a veterinarian, you’d say, “You know, honey, you should think about either getting a part-time job with a vet or just volunteer with our vet to see if you’d like it.”  My son worked a part-time job as an intern during his high school years with a single A baseball team. He’s now in his 4th season full time in baseball, moving up the ladder in professional operations.

Here’s a wrong response to a high school student who wants to go into ministry:

“Well you pray about it, and whatever the Lord wants, He will direct you.”  Don’t get take this the wrong way, you should pray about it, and the Lord will direct them. But his must be followed by action.

I’d urge you instead to encourage her to jump in, do something, volunteer, get out of high school a few hours early, and spend time in the kid’s pastor’s office. Who knows? Maybe she’ll be asked to serve as an intern there.

I’ve encountered 23-year-old students with a master’s degree from a seminary and thousands of dollars of school debt yet still unclear as ever about their vision. Now they are caught somewhere between a lack of readiness and in need of a job.

This is why we founded Leadership Pathway. We need to help fewer arrive at this point on their journeys.

Now, am I saying, your Generation Z-er, cannot move forward until they have their life fully planned? No, of course not. But, should you calibrate the investment of time, money, and distance accordingly? Yes.

Speaking of investment, the next post will cover that it doesn’t really matter which path students choose in college.

"OMG! My Kid Is Thinking about Ministry!" 4 Things to Consider...

I’m of the age now that some of my childhood friends are reaching out about their teenage kids. While they have a thousand voices to get expert advice on every topic a parent will face, I tend to get the question about ministry-specific-preparedness.

It goes something like: My daughter went forward last summer at a conference and said she wants to be a youth pastor. She’s a senior. What should she do in terms of education? Or My son has been volunteering with the student ministry guy at our church, and now says he wants to be like him…who should we do?

OH NO…!

First of all…if your kid is awesome, shows early signs of leadership, is an instigator, troublemaker, influencer, and could go do anything with their life…CONGRATS! Yes, that’s who we need in ministry, let’s do this!

I tend to blog the conversations I have over and over. And this is one of those conversations. I know parents have an ocean of information they are digging through with their high school students. I know this because we’ve had two successfully navigate high school, college, and real-world #adulting on their own, and we’ve lived to tell about it.

Here are five things (and there are probably 137) to keep in mind if your high school kid really is wanting to prepare for ministry. By “ministry” I mean fully employed vocationally at a local church someday. I don’t mean: being light in the dark, business as mission, blooming where you are planted, or even non-profit leadership. I’m talking about being compensated someday to be on staff at a local church in a role other than Senior Pastor. 

I tend to say these four things over and over:

1. Start with the end in mind.
Which is the goal: diploma or employment at a local church? There’s a huge difference. (If the goal is diploma, you don’t need to read the rest of this…)

2. The college choice means less than you think.
Christian College, State University, Seminary, or other…or even none?

3. How they use these next four years means everything.
We need wise people in ministry like never before (and it helps if they’re smart, too!)

4. They must do 2 intense years at a dynamic, growing, reach-oriented church.
The final, most important, ingredient if your answer to #1 is employment.

Now, before you shoot me an email about how there are more important things than these five (like loving Jesus, reading the Bible, character, serving the least of these and 47 other things) I say to you I totally agree. I’m simply speaking into the topics that land at my feet. There are way smarter people than I to help your student navigate those other 47 things.

My life mission is to help those who want to do this go out and do this with their life. I’m always trying to find the best/next steps for those who want to pursue it. One path does not fit all, but there are patterns and best practices and steps that will greatly enhance ones' potential to navigate successfully vs. being taken out early on the path.

Over the next few posts, I’ll blow out each of these topics. In the next post, we’ll discover how students need at least to try to start with the end in mind.

Four Things I've Learned Through the Discipline of Unplugging

I was challenged by my pastor a couple of months ago about giving. He said, “10 percent isn’t giving. 10 percent is returning…giving actually begins with the 11th percent.”   I thought that was awesome. While I feel like we’re good on the money stuff, I know that I’m not good on the topic of time.

If you consider yourself a high achiever, and you love getting stuff done, then I’m assuming, like me, you may struggle with turning it all off. If you lead anything, if you’re in sales, if you’re a pastor, self-employed, working from home or on the road this becomes infinitely more difficult.

I live in Denver. I have East Coast clients that start at 5a my time. I have West Coast friends that work well in to what I’d call quitting time. I work with many who work Saturdays.

I love what I do…too much most of the time. I love being on teams that just get it done and I’ve said things like “every email and voice mail returned by 5p” to those I lead. But then…in this time zone is that 3pm? Is it 7pm? It’s both, actually.

So, for the past several weeks I’ve been choosing one day a week to completely unplug. No laptop and no phone. For many of you right now you can click away…no need to finish reading. But for me, and many like me, this is a big deal.

I’ve heard countless sermons and opinions on the issue of taking a Sabbath Day. That’s not really what this post is about. It’s really about two ideas:

1. Returning to God a portion of what is already His in the first place. Similar to that message on money that I had heard…this is not my life.

2. I don’t need to do this. I’m not going through this discipline because I’m stressed, angry, or out of balance. I’m doing this because it is forcing my mind heavenward every time I have a thought about email, social media, or if that client has texted me yet. This feels like hundreds of times a day when I’m without my devices. (By the way…do you also feel your phone vibrate even when it’s not in your pocket?

What I’ve discovered:

1. The sun still rises and sets if I’m not plugged in. (amazing...I know)
2. ONCE I missed a critical text from a client, and I easily recovered the following day.
3. Most of the time the unreturned stuff takes care of itself.
4. I’m beginning to enjoy it…more reading, more shooting hoops, more walks, and more naps.

Now, I’m not saying this is for everyone. I’m not saying you actually should do this. I would say at the very least you’d best run it by your boss / team to make sure you aren’t letting people down.  (BTW I also have an exec who knows how to find me should something really bad happen…so far…it hasn’t.)

I am saying that if you consider yourself high-achieving and find fulfillment in how much you get done that it might be great to try and practice: The Spiritual Discipline of Unplugging.

Three Great Ways to Learn About You (and be ready for that interview)

Self-Awareness is key when taking your first or next step in ministry.  Most of the time when a ministry role is cut short (re: “fired” or “quit”) due to team fit it potentially is due from a lack of self-awareness on the part of the candidate.  There are multiple ways to go about this, but I find these are the three or four best ways when speaking with church leaders..

Take this opportunity to learn about you in the following ways:

STEP ONE:  Take the following 3 tests

// STRENGTH FINDERS 2.0
FIND IT:  On Amazon for less than $20.00 and a quick download you can identify your top strengths and what this means in terms of your relatability to others. Want to go deeper with Strength Finders email Stef Row here, she is a certified Strength Finders coach with a high get it factor of church leadership.

 Typically, those who understand their Strengths will talk in terms of their “top five.”
 

// DISC
FIND IT: Just google search “Free DISC Assessments” and you’ll have a variety. Learn your combination of Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness. Cost should be free on this one, unless you’d like to pay for a deeper assessment.  There are also coaches available for a deeper dive in DISC as well.

Typically, those who understand their DISC will speak in terms such as “I’m a high D” or “I’m a S with a little bit of C.”
 

// PERSONALITY
FIND IT: you can find a free personality test here.

Typically, those who understand their personality type will talk in letters “I’m an ISTJ.”’

 // OPTION: THINKING WAVELENGTHS
FIND IT: I can take you through this in under an hour. Or find someone who is a certified Strat Ops supervisor. Tom Paterson developed the Paterson process of Strat Ops planning.  A core function of this training is the mapping of teams.  This test centers on how you naturally are wired to solve problems. 

STEP TWO:  Focus the picture

These three tests should lead you to be able to understand your strengths and give you a framework to talk about yourself. Those who’ve gone through these tests, and are used to talking about it, may say something like “I’m an Activator, Maximizer, & Strategist (Strength Finder) who is a High D/I with little S/C (DISC) and I’m a 7/8 on the Wavelengths.”

You should expect to have to read over your results a few times to get clear and own it. What is surprising? What is affirming?

STEP THREE:  Get perspective

Once you have the picture in focus do some perspective work. How have you seen this play out in your life in good and bad ways? Get an older trusted friend/mentor who knows you well and ask them how they’ve seen this in your behaviors. Remind them to be brutally honest.

Knowing YOU is the strongest skill to take on your next step.