Video Transcript: Decisions

Being an effective manager. Task 10, decision making. Proverbs 3:5-6. Trust in  the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding in all your  ways. Submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight. The importance of  

decision making. Number one, people in the organization need to know what to  work on. As the manager, you're in charge of the people, the resources that you  have in the organization and getting them to work on things. What is your  organization about, what are you trying to accomplish as a church? What are we trying to do if you're doing a church plant? Okay, so what? What do we need to  concentrate on? Number two, people in the organization need to know what to  work on first. So not only do they need the list of things to work on, but they  need to know the priorities. How, what do we do first? That that's probably the  hardest thing for people to work on, and it relates to our last session with the  ROI. Return on Investment. Sometimes people work on something, and it's a  good thing, but it's the thing that doesn't help us. One of the things I keep  stressing in on the staff at my church is, how is what we're going to do grow our  church if we spend all of our time working on things that don't grow our church  like you know, someone wanted to spend $80,000 on fixing up our parking lot,  and I said to them, I think we could spend $80,000 and we won't get one single  family from all that work. Now I'm not saying that parking lots don't need to be  fixed, but there's probably a lot of other things we need to do that will, in fact,  grow our church. So what are the priorities? So when you're just trying to  decide, what do we do? How do you figure that out? Well, few questions, does  this decision fit our vision? You know, someone wants to start a I remember  someone wanted to have a food truck in our parking lot. Let's, let's have a food  truck people that can't afford food, they can come to our parking lot and we  could have this whole feeding people program, and that's a good thing. I'm not  saying that's a bad thing. There's a lot of churches that do that. That's good, you know, something that you could do. But I said to them, okay, our vision, the  particular vision that we have at our church, is all about getting people to own  their own walk in their own home, to take responsibility. You know, instead of  having the church take care of your kids and educate, you know, and teach  everything to your kids, you know, we're going to have the program do that, our  goal is to get parents owning, you know, some of that, that parents have to have to have to own their own families, that that that the faith is best when it comes  down through the family tree. So we're going to equip you parents to so  ownership and trying to help people own their own walk, of their own solutions.  So we could do this program. We just invite all kinds of needy people and they  can come. But, but does that fit our real vision? Wouldn't our vision be more like  teaching job training for some of these folks, like, you know, less we're going to  help less people, but instead of, you know, giving a fish to everyone, we're going to teach a few people how to fish, and maybe then they could teach some other  people how to fish. So, so it's a good thing to do, but does it fit our vision, what 

we're trying to do? What's our goal with what we're trying to do or be? Does,  does this decision give us great ROI I remember when I was planting a church  in Vancouver, and we only had 10 people in our church, and we were doing this  phone campaign. We were calling 20,000 people in our community, inviting them to a grand opening service. Okay? So we don't have very many people, we don't have programs, we don't have resources. We're trying to grow our church to the  point where you have resources and you have people that are gifted at things.  So I remember when someone was on the phone with someone, and they said  to the person that was doing the calling, they said, if you're willing to come and  pick me up, then then maybe I'll come to your grand opening service. And so the person on the phone said, hold it. And they asked me, Are we going to have like  a bus ministry, or are we willing to pick people up? And I said, priorities. We only have 10 people. We can barely do anything. We need to build the church to the  point where we have gifted people, and maybe we'll have someone that loves to drive a bus or as a bus, but until that happens, we have to focus on the four or  five things that we can actually do. It's a good thing to do, and if you want to pick up this person, I'm not, you know, I'm not, I'm not going to tell you what God is  calling you to do. You should do what you're going to do, but we're not going to  start a bus ministry, because we need a lot more people. There's a lot more  programs that we need to start way before the bus ministry. So it's hard, you  know, the person did say no, you know, we just don't have the resources to do  that, and people don't like to say no to needs. But the return on investment if we  had started that bus thing, if we had started we're going to pick people up, we  would have gotten 10 dependents, and they would have taken all of our time,  and we would have grown no we would have gotten nowhere with the church,  because we would have been consumed by the needs of 10 people. Now, when  you're five, a church of 500 and 10 needy people come walking in the door, you  at least have some resources that won't bankrupt. You see, does this decision  maximize everyone's time? Is it going to waste people's time? Is it going to be a  good use of everyone's time? How to make good decisions? Number one, ask  God for insight. I mean, that's where you start. You know, we got to figure things  out. What do we do? I don't know. Let's ask God. Search the Bible for insight.  One of the reasons I like topical preaching, sometimes not just exegetical, but  topical preaching, is people need to learn how to come to the Bible with a topic. I have this problem. I have this decision. I don't know whether to take this job and  move my family to some other place. I don't know what I should do for a living. I  don't know if I should marry this person. All these big questions that people have decisions that they need to make, and how do you go to the Bible with those  things? How do you take your topic, your thing, your question, your decision that you need to make, and go to the Bible and say, What does the Bible have to say about this number three, brainstorm with appropriate people so you don't know  what to do. Call in people that are related to this decision, or people that you 

trust, and you sit down and you go, Okay, so here's what I'm thinking. Here's the positives on doing this, here's all the negatives on doing this. What do you  people see? What other positives? What have I missed? What do you ultimately think number four, if possible, come to a consensus. I showed an organizational  chart of our church, we have what's called a Consistory, or it's a board of elders  we meet once a month, and we make, you know, not a lot of decisions, because we have a deacon board, which is any leader, any leader of anything is on that  board. Try to make most of our decisions there. But in our elder board, we have  to make decisions about vision or what we're doing as a church overall. And we  try to do things by consensus that that we all, we only have six of us, and we try  to be keep we're going to keep talking until we all can agree on it. Now, it  doesn't always happen, and so we have to take a vote sometimes, but the but  the majority of things is we want a consensus. We're going to keep talking till  everyone agrees on this number five, sometimes you have to make the hard  decision yourself. I was living in Chicago, and then I had an opportunity to go to  my hometown in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and my kids had been growing up  and living in Chicagoland for a while, and I didn't make a decision about whether we're going to move, and none of them wanted to move. They were in school.  They were in junior high, high school, and not one of them wanted to move. I got threatening letters from my own kids, but I felt God calling us to do this. So in  the end, I just had to make the hard decision, and it was difficult for a few  months, but I've talked to my kids, you know, over the years, and they now  agree that that was the right thing to do. But So sometimes, as a leader, you just have to make the hard decision. Sometimes you really don't yourself know what  to do. There's those times where you're like, I don't know what to decide, and it's up to you to make this decision that happened to my wife and I back when I was in seminary. I spent a year in the Philippines. My wife and I, we spent a year and we taught in the Philippines for a year, and then at the end of that year, I had to  decide whether I was going to take a church as a pastor here in the United  States or go back to the Philippines and become missionary to live. My career in the foreign land, and we didn't know what to do. We prayed about it, we  consulted, we talked, and ultimately, it came to a day. The next day, we had to  either sign up for this mission thing that would prepare us to go back or not. It  was only offered once a year, so we had one day, then finally, to make the  decision. And we wrestled with and we prayed about it that day, and I remember  walking in the woods and Lord, give us a sign. Give us something. Let us know  what we should do. Finally, both of us felt that we were being led to go back to  the Philippines. So we decided finally, just before we went to bed, we decided  we're going to the Philippines. That night, neither one of us could sleep. We  wrestled and tossed and turned, and the next morning, we both talked to each  other about that, and we decided to not decide. And ultimately, we took a call to  our church here in the United States. So sometimes what you need to do, 

especially when it's you really don't know what to do. You've talked, you've read  the Bible, you've prayed, and it's still you just don't know what to do. Finally, you  just have to make a decision. You just make the decision, and you keep going  down that trail, unless God closes the door, unless you know, if God really  doesn't want you to go down a certain direction, he will let you know, and he will  make it clear, so sometimes you don't have to worry about it. I once had another big decision to make, and I went to my supervisor, a very wise man, and I said, I just, I just I'm 50/50, and I really don't know what God's will is. Lot of times we  want to we want to find God's will. We want to do what God wants. And, and I  always thought there's this one thing that God wants and and I'm afraid of  making a mistake and picking the wrong thing. I want to do what God wants. I  want to be in the middle of his will. So you're like searching and trying to make  sure you do that one thing right? And he said something new to me. He said,  Well, maybe you're 50/50, on it, because God doesn't care which one you do. I  always thought that that, no, that God has one thing in mind, and you have to  figure that out. And if you get it wrong, you got it wrong. He said, You know, God  maybe doesn't care which job you take, because he's going to bless you and  use you either way. And that freed me to finally just make a decision. So you do  all you can, but you finally have to make decisions. A leader that doesn't make  decisions leaves everyone confused, leaves everyone not knowing what they're  doing. And to be honest, you just can't get anything done, even with simple  things like sermons. I'm a quick decider. I have a sermon coming up Sunday. I  look at the passage, and when I see an angle, I decide on it, and boom, that's  what I'm going to do. And now the stress of that is removed for me. There's little  more work to do with it. There's stories to find and little exegesis figure out what  this is all about. But I have my angle, and I'm done. My associate pastor, he has  a hard time with decisions, and so he'll decide, and then the next day he'll  undecide, and then he'll decide, then he'll undecide. And so the whole week, he  gets consumed by this one thing, and it comes back to this decision making. You know, don't be afraid to make a few wrong decisions. Ultimately, God will correct you, or life will correct you, or people will correct you, or the result will correct  you. So be teachable. You make a decision, you get burned. Doesn't work out.  Mental note. Don't do that again. So don't be afraid to make decisions, because  even your wrong decisions will end up teaching you. And over a 20 year career,  you make enough wrong decisions that eventually you figure figure things out.