Video Transcript: Delegating

All right, being an effective manager, managing, by the book, that's the Bible.  We're into tasks. We've looked at planning looking ahead. Planning is is like a  trial run. You get to think about what you're going to do. You run it through with  your mind and you start seeing all the steps and issues and things that you have to take care of. Eventually you get to doing stuff. And so this second task is  delegating. Delegating is where you get other people to do stuff. The problem  with being a manager, if you're a manager, it means you're talented. It means  you probably know a lot about whatever the topic is in terms of your  organization, maybe you're the pastor, you've had a lot of experience with  church, or maybe you're just starting out. You want to be a church planter, and  you're trying to manage all the different pieces of a church or an organization,  and there's just a lot of stuff, and maybe you're really talented and gifted, so you  end up doing a lot of things really well. The problem is that you're just one  person, and one person working 40 hours a week can only get so many things  done, and so at some point, especially in a nonprofit, if you're going to get paid,  a church really can't afford to pay for 40 hours worth of work, and so a paid  person in a church needs to somehow maximize their time. So if I'm getting paid for 40 hours by the church, I need to get two or three or four other people  working 20 hours or volunteering 20 hours, so that my 40 becomes 80 or 100  hours. Now the church can afford to pay the price, or the cost of 40 hours, but  they get 100 hours worth of work in the Bible. Moses versus Jethro. Moses has  led the people of Israel into the desert. They had all kinds of issues. There's  1000s upon 1000s and 1000s of people, their families, their children, the tribes,  have all come out into the desert. They don't know who they are. They don't  have an identity. They don't have land, and so God gives them the law that sort  of says, This is who I am. This is the God that you're following, and this is how  you are to treat one another. He set them in terms of tribes, put the tabernacle in the middle, and it sort of organized the people. The people felt like they were  something, that they fit in somewhere. Though they had no land, they didn't  know what their future was. They're just following Moses. So you can imagine all the issues that this group has so they don't have property. It's like 40 years of  camping and no one has a site. You know, the site isn't well marked out and  whose tent goes where and who, who owes anybody anything and the food and  the problems and the issues. And so Moses, being the leader, ended up trying to solve all the problems himself. He in terms of an organization, he was at the  center like a hub of a wheel, and every single problem were like the spokes of a  wheel coming to him, he had to deal with every single thing. And so Moses'  father in law sees that Moses is wearing out. So Jethro comes to his son in law,  Moses, this is this is that exchange Exodus 18. Moses, father in law replied,  what you're doing is no good you, and these people who come to you will only  wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you. You cannot handle it alone.  Maybe you're at that place with your church or your church plant or the 

organization that you're running, you got it started. Everything was dependent  on you, and God has blessed it. And you get to this point where you really just  simply cannot do everything. When I planted a church in Vancouver, you know, I  started out, I got early. We rented a school, and I would get there early. I would  set up the chairs, I would set up the sound system, I would practice my sermon,  and then the people would come, and then we had our service. And then,  usually I'd get some people to help take it all down, but the next Sunday, I would have to do it again, and I'd have to set up the chairs and set up the sound  system. And finally, a young man after the church service said, Hey, do you  need help with this sound system? I'm willing to take over that. Now I didn't  delegate it. I should have been looking. He could see that I'm wearing out, and  he volunteered himself, and that was a great load off of my back. So a manager  has to be thinking ahead. I cannot keep doing all these things. If I do these  things, then I can't get to other things. And as an organization grows. There's all  kinds of other things that have to be done. So Jethro recognizes Moses, you  can't handle it alone. Listen now to me, and I will give you some advice, and  may God be with you. You must be the people's representative before God and  bring their disputes to him, teach them his decrees and instructions, show them  the way they are to live and how they are to behave. This is the number one  problem for most managers. They do, do do they're worker bee type people.  They like getting things done. They like getting things done a specific way, and  then they wear out. They wear out because they don't teach. Now, teaching  takes time. I don't have time. I got to set up the sound system, I got to set up the chairs, I got to get the sermon ready. There's 10 things that I have to do, and I  don't have time to teach you. So I'll just do it again this week, and the next week, I'll just do it again, and the next week I'll just do it again. So you'll be doing it  forever, unless you take the time, extra time, and say, No, I'm going to teach  you. Why don't you come next Saturday, I'll show you how to do it, and then I'm  done with it. So you have to put in extra time so that you can be free of it. Verse  21 but select capable men from all the people, men who fear God, trustworthy  men who hate dishonest gain. So find capable people and appoint them as  officials over 1000s, 100s, 50s, 10s. Have them serve as judges for the people  at all times, but have them bring every difficult case to you, the simple cases  they can decide themselves that will make your load lighter, because they will  share it with you if you do this, and God, so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied. I had a chart, and I  couldn't find it, but I saw a chart that looked something like this. It was an  organizational chart. At the top of the chart, it said Moses, and then there was  various boxes. This might have been, you know, in charge of the tribes. This  might have been in charge of the food. This box is, you know, the water. This  one is, you know, how are you setting up the camp? This one is, so it had all  these different boxes and on and on. There were, like, box after box after box, 

all these different categories of whatever it would take to manage 1000s and  1000s and 1000s of families and people living in the desert and on every single  box, it said, Moses, Moses, Moses, Moses, Moses, Moses. And there were like  50 different boxes. Moses was in charge of everything. And what, what Jethro,  the father in law was suggesting, is no Moses, what you want is, you know this,  one person is just in charge of five people. One person can manage five people, and then you get a bunch of people that manage five people, and put one  person in charge of five of those that are managing five people. So this person  is now managing five leaders. This person is managing five people, but this one  is managing five leaders, and then there's a leader that manages those leaders,  and so on and so forth. So that's the organization that Jethro was suggesting to  his father in law, and it really looks like a typical organizational structure that we  have today. So in a church, you know, you're the pastor, you're trying to lead the  church, but often pastors are like the hub and all the spokes, all the problems.  Every person in your church has your phone number. If they have a problem,  they call you the music. Person has a problem, they call you a person has a  problem with their marriage, they call you someone has a problem. With what's  happening at the service. They call you. There's a problem with the offering, with the budget, with the with the counseling, with the pastoral care, with the camp  out that's coming up, and everyone calls you. You're the hub, and every single  spoke comes to you. And if that's the case, your church will be, you know, 50 60, people, because you can't handle all the issues of that many people. So how do  you how do you spread that out? If you could just find one leader to take some  of it, or two or three, you could cut your work down into a fourth. So the keys to  delegating. How do you do that? Number one, don't do anything someone else  in the organization could do. I think of myself. Okay, I'm the pastor. There's the  service, there's the prayer time. Am I the only one that can do the prayer? Or  can I teach several people how to do the prayer and let them do the prayer? Am  I the only one that can lead the music? No, we have a music director. The music director takes the lead and does the music. Am I the one that can do the  offering? Am I the only one that can do the testimonies? Am I the only one that  can do the sermon? You know, a lot of churches, that's the way it is. The pastor  does the sermon. He's the only one that does the sermon. But am I the only one that can do that? So I had a class in my church about three months ago. It was  how to do a sermon. So I had eight, I think I had eight people in this class. Now  a few of them, no way are they ready to give a sermon? Maybe they never will  be. A few others might not be able to give a sermon, but they might be able to  do a part of the sermon. So I'm thinking about, well, how can I use it? And  there's a couple of them that actually could do at least one good sermon. So  there's really nothing that you do that you shouldn't try to delegate. I think of  parents, parents, at least in our Western culture, parents have kids and they you know, when they're little, you have to do everything for them. You have to dress 

them, you have to feed them, you have to manage every minute of their life. But  then when they turn 11 10, 11, 12, years old, they're certainly capable of being  able to do almost anything they can. They could cook, they could clean. There's  nothing around the house that they wouldn't be able to do, and yet, parents are  still doing it now in some developing countries, I you know, when I visit  developing countries, I see the kids doing stuff there. They're doing some of the  work around the house. But as parents, we keep holding on to the jobs, and we  don't delegate. We don't let people that are capable. I see kids on the computer,  and they can figure out almost anything. There's probably nothing at your  household that needs to be done that they couldn't figure out. And that's true in  a church. It's true in nonprofit organizations. People are capable and they can  do things. So how do we get them doing it? I remember when I started a church  in Vancouver, we made phone calls into the community. We made 20,000 phone calls into our community inviting people to a grand opening service. And then we sent mailings to the people that said they were interested. And then finally, we're going to have our Grand Opening service. We had like, 200 phone calls to make to people who had never been to the church, and we called all 200 the 200 that  said they were interested, we called all 200 and asked, Are you coming? And if  you are, could you please bake some cookies and bring them? And I'm telling  you, it was the people that baked cookies and brought them that stayed, you  know, weeks later with the church, it's like, you know, we're having a grand  opening for new people to come to our service, but let's get those new people  involved. Let's not do everything for them, or that's the kind of church we will be. We'll be a church that has to do everything for everybody. How do we get people off the dime? How do we get people contributing keys to delegating number two, train, equip, test the people that you manage, people are willing to do things if  you train them, if you equip them, that's what you're that's what a manager's real task is? The task of a manager is not to do the task of a manager is to train, to  equip and then see if they can do it. Have a testing system that says, you know,  are you able to do this? Number three, offer encouragement and correction  along the way. But don't micromanage. So you give them a task. I want you to  do this. I want you to do the prayer for the service, show them how, give them  examples of what it is that you want, and then let them do it. Now, if at every  step you have them come in, and I want you to practice, and then they start  reading their prayer, and then you correct that sentence, and then you suggest  this, and you get a pop out a pen, and you start rewriting their whole prayer.  They're never going to want to do it again. They need a little encouragement.  Hey, that sounds pretty good. And if you correct something, correct one thing,  they don't have to become the greatest prayer, prayer person in the world on on  the first try. You have to think of the long term. This is going to be a while if  you're the pastor. It took a long time for you to become a good preacher as well.  The first few were not that good. I'll never forget a professor that I had in when I 

was going to college. I was majoring in psychology, and it was the first class I  had taken, and I had to write these papers based on these little books that we  had read. And I wrote these papers, and I thought they were really good, and  

the professor gave me an A every time. He'd always say, great job. Cool  insights. A few years back, I found all those papers and I read them, and they  were really not very good. But the professor, you know, his goal was that I read  it, that I get the concepts in it. The goal was not to become a professional writer.  So he encouraged me at every step. And because he encouraged me, and he  saw little things in there, I thought I was a good writer, and eventually I became  that I became it, because he saw the potential, not necessarily the finished  project number four, create teams for projects. So you want to get something  done, you have a special Christmas program you want to do or or you have this  outreach thing that you have in mind. Create a team just for that project. What's  nice about creating teams for specific projects is you can try people out, and you don't get stuck with them forever. See if you if you have a committee that lasts  forever, then you ask some people to be on this committee, and they're on it  forever, whether they're good at it or not. As a manager, what you want to do is  give a lot of people an opportunity to try to do something, to use their gifts, and  then you can evaluate whether they have it or they don't, and if they have it,  then you move them towards more permanent roles. If they don't, you thank  them for their work, but this project is now done. It's a great way to try people  out for sermons. I would, I would often, often on Good Friday, we do the seven  words on the cross, and I would assign one word to seven different people, and  then I'd find out who could really do something. And maybe three of them could  and four of them had a good experience. Number five, give away ownership.  Renters don't take care of what they rent. If you're renting a car or you're renting a house, you know, you don't care what the paint on the wall looks like if things  are falling apart, it's not yours, but when you own it, all of a sudden you care. So how do you delegate things? If you delegate things and say, Okay, I want you to  do this, but you're doing it for me, then they're just renting and you know, how  enthusiastic are they going to be? Who knows, if there's a problem, how  dedicated will they be? Will they just give up? But if you somehow give them  ownership, hey, I would like you to do this and let them get some of the credit.  That's how you give ownership. Ownership is when they own it, they get to  make some decisions, and they get some of the credit when it goes well, and  they get some of the problems when it doesn't celebrate success along the way.  You know, maybe Facebook, if you're, if you're a whole organization, people are  on Facebook. You you recognize them. You recognize them in a public way. This was a good thing. They did a good job. Obstacles to delegating number one, a  manager that thinks he or she is the only one who can get it right, and that that's true of a lot of managers. I know I fall into that many times, because I am good  at a lot of things. Well, that's why I became a leader. Often, people that are good

at a lot of things are just logical. They're just talented. They're gifted. They seem  to know what the right thing to do is, and they're just good at a lot of things. And  so people say, Hey, you're good at it. Why don't you lead it? And eventually. You  become the leader, eventually you become the manager. So you're a manager  

because you are good at things, and you're good at a lot of things, but if you're  going to delegate, you can't think that you're the only one that is good at these  things. There's a saying, if you want it done right, do it yourself. And that's often  

true. If you want it done right, do it yourself. If you want it done the way you want it done, then you have to do it yourself. But then you can only do so many  things. Again, you're just one person, so somehow you have to get other people  involved. So don't think that you're the only one that can do it. And here's the  problem, it becomes a vicious circle. If you think you're the only one that can do  it right, then people that are with you, people that you're trying to delegate stuff  to, they will know that, and they won't work that hard at something because they  know that you think you can do it better, and because they know that you think  you can do it better, they will not try as hard. And because they don't try as hard, you know that you could do it better, and because you know that you could do it  better, they stop trying. You start doing more of it. They stop trying even more.  And it becomes this vicious circle where they're just going to let you do it. And  finally, the work of trying to have someone do it is way more work than just doing it yourself. So then you're back to doing everything yourself. Second obstacle to  delegating a manager that lacks the authority to assign jobs. If the leadership  says, Here, I want you to do this, make this happen, but you cannot tell anyone  on the staff what to do, because the leader is in charge of that. Then how are  you going to get this done? You have to have the authority to tell people and ask people to get involved. Third obstacle, a manager that is unclear about what is  being assigned. I often fall into this. I haven't thought of all the steps. I haven't  thought of what's involved. I just know that I want something done. Let's, let's  change the sanctuary from this way to this way, and I haven't thought about all  the things that are involved. And I tell someone, and now someone has a vision,  and they start going forward, but I find out it's a total different vision than I had. I  assumed that, you know, this is what we're going to do, this is how we're going  to do it. I'm assuming, you know, we're going to use our lights to light up things.  We're not going to use white balls to light up things. And they're thinking the  exact opposite. But I wasn't clear. I didn't specifically go at, you know, here's  what we're doing. This is what we're trying to accomplish. This is what our  service is about. So we have a lady, we have something we call God Walker  Sunday, it's once a month, and someone comes up to the front and they say,  this is God Walker Sunday. And we celebrate people that have a walk with God.  We have a book. If you want to come up and write the name of someone that  you know that needs a walk with God, you can come up and write their name in  this book. And we have people that will pray for them all week. Or if you know 

somebody that that gave their life to Christ or started a new walk with God, and  you know, they started this week come up and light a candle in their honor. So  it's a simple thing. I thought, okay, let's have the prayer person do that. They can come up and just, you know, introduce this and, and in my mind, it's like, why do we need someone to introduce this? Because new people are here and they  don't know what it is. So you're talking to new people. You're not talking to the  church people, because they know what this is. Every month we do it. We've  been doing it for 10 years, so people know what this is. The only people that  need an explanation are the new people. So that's what I'm assuming. Well, this  prayer person comes up, and they start giving a sermon about how people need to be found and and it's like you're giving a sermon to the church people. The  church people don't need anything. They know exactly what this is. You're  talking to the new people. And the new people might be the ones that need to be reached. And here you're talking about how people out there need to be  reached, and maybe it's the person right here. And it's like I had a vision of what  it is, and I didn't clearly say this is who you're talking to. You're talking to the new person, and the only thing the new person needs to know is what to do. Have  someone in mind come up and write in the book, have someone who began a  walk with God, or maybe it was you come up and light a candle. That's it. We  don't need a big sermon. We don't need a big message. But I wasn't clear. So  now, what am I going to do? Now it's hard for me to go back and say, yeah, what you're doing is not at all what I'm looking for. Makes it really hard. If I had been  clear up front, it'd be a whole lot easier obstacles to delegating a manager that  does. Not really enjoy the success of others. A manager really is like a coach.  There's a player, you know, the player loves to play soccer. He loves to play  baseball. The manager, maybe he used to love playing, but now he's in the role  of of helping others play, and when he helps someone succeed, he feels good  about himself. He would rather help someone score a goal than be the one that  scores a goal. Well, if you're a kind of person that still wants to play, if you're still  consumed with yourself and the joy of you doing things, you accomplishing  things, then you might not be real good manager material. You have to get to the place where you really, really, really enjoy when other people that's what  parenting is about. Parents need to, need to not compete with their kids, like I'm  going to compete with you, with with your smartness at school or the games that you play. You know I'm going to, I'm always going to compete and try to beat  you. No, my goal is to have you win. I had my day now I want to, I want to live  through you and any success that you have as my child just comes and reflects  back at me. So a manager that does not really enjoy the success of others is  never really going to help people succeed, and then people don't want to work  for that manager number five, a manager that does not trust people, or think the  best of them, manager that doesn't trust people, or think the best of them. Lot of  managers, you know, they give assignments, but they know in their heart this 

person is not going to follow through, and so they're always checking up on  them. They're always second guessing them, always, you know, expecting that  they're going to do it wrong, always peeking around the corner to see if they're  really doing What? What? What they asked. Every time they meet them, it's like, Well, did you get that done? And it's and the person can tell you don't trust me.  You don't believe that I can actually do this. The greatest delegator in history.  This is, you know, this is the most incredible thing, you know, God is trying to do. He's got this grand plan for the whole universe, the Earth and the universe and  everything in it, and and God has this plan through Jesus, died on the cross,  rose again the church, trying to reach people, ultimately, heaven. So this big,  huge plan, the building of the church. I mean, Jesus spent three years in his  ministry. He didn't build a single church. But what did he do? He gave that task  to His disciples, Matthew 25:16, then the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the  mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him. But some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in  heaven on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all  nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,  and teaching them to obey everything. I've commanded you. I've spent this time  with you. I have commanded and taught you all these things, but you're the ones that are going to go out and teach the world. You're the ones that are going to go out and plant the churches to the point where the church becomes the most  successful organization, the largest organization of the world has ever seen. But Jesus didn't plant any of them. He gave that task to this ragtag group of  disciples that were constantly disbelieving, constantly had little faith. Jesus had  to often say, you of little faith, and he encouraged them, he showed them, he  challenged them, and then he said, You know what, I've been with you three  years, three years in the Jesus seminary, and that's it, and now you're off to start the most, the biggest endeavor the world has ever seen. So if Jesus could do it,  and we can too. We can trust that God's Spirit has been released, not just on  you, the manager, but on those that you're trying to lead and those to whom you  want to delegate things.