Video Transcript: Growing as a leader part 2

Welcome back, we are talking about how we can grow as a leader or develop ourselves as  leaders so that we're more effective. Now we've got all this stuff that makes us who we are,  we got our personality, we've got the baggage that we carry from our childhood, our families  of origin, we've got our personality type, we've got all of this stuff that goes into making us  who we are. But we also have capacity to grow as leaders. So in the last session, we looked at some of those ways, to looking at how you use your time, looking at the variety of people you  will interact with, in your ministry that God has called you to. Well, today, I want to talk about, again about ways that you can develop or grow as a leader. And the one powerful way is  learning how to make decisions effectively. And quickly. And you'll note here the cartoon I  came across. As soon as we solve one problem, another one appears. So let's keep this  problem going for as long as we can, you may feel that way if you're involved in ministry, so  one thing seems to crop up after another after another after another. So how do you make  decisions that make the problems go away, or at least address them? Sometimes it doesn't  make the problem go away. But what I'm going to give you today is a process. And I'd like to  attribute it, I got it from my mentor. I don't know where he got it. But it's been very helpful to  me when I face a variety of situations where I have to make a decision, or I've got to decide  where resources are going to go or not go. Or I'm going to decide who gets raised up and who gets let go. How do you make good decisions? So here we go. Here's the process. In six easy  steps, though you'll find that none of them are especially easy. One is step one is to define the problem. What caused it? How did how did you get where you are? What is the situation that  needs to be addressed? What are the parameters of it, how many people does it affect etc,  etc, etc. Define the problem. That's very crucial. Bill Hybels talked a lot of his talks once about being on a study leave. And while he was on a study leave, he would walk every morning to a  nearby Burger King, I think it was, and there he would be like to study with people around and so there he would study for part of the morning. So but one of the things just irritated him  about this Burger King was the fact that every time he opened the door, there was this  screech of metal on metal. And or it was the hinge squeaking that he said every day, he said  for two months, five days a week you walked into this place of everyday? Who is the leader in  this place? Who's in charge? Why haven't they addressed this problem? Well, apparently the  person never even saw that it was a problem. So problems tend to come in a couple of  different ways. You know, one is, is the problem is often rise up to you as a leader. So  eventually, you know, there's a problem somebody in the organization has and all of a sudden they hand it to you. Others will be problems that you don't know you have, until you invite  someone to give it to you or point it out to you. In ministry it is vitally important in the  ministry of the church, it's vitally important. In the churches I served, one of the things we  would do is do a quick walk around his staff, and simply ask, what do you see here, that could be a problem. While in one such session, we recognized that the signage was not effective,  we use all inner inside words to define what things were and where to go with children or  where to go with a middle schooler, or where to go. We defined it that way. Other things did  invited people to come in from outside and just be part of our ministry for a while, and tell us  then what their reactions were. Because sometimes we couldn't see it, to see what it looked  like. How do you define the problems? You wouldn't? When you're aware of it to find the  problem? What is it? How did it get there? How many people does it affect? etc? And then  step two is, what are all the possible answers to this problem? Now, usually, there's more than one with a squeaky door, the easiest one would be get somebody to oil it right. Or get  somebody to fix it. Or you can look at it. You could have an employee look at it, and they  come back and tell you, you know what, that door is really faulty, we should replace that door that would be one of the possible answers. Or the employees come back and say, You know  what, that entrance is really one that's in the back and, you know, we're open till 2am And  somebody could come in, who wants to rob the place from that door? We'd never see them  until it was too late. They'd be right in front of us and, and so the solution might be to board  the whole place up or brick it up, and close that entry down. So what are all the possible  answers? Step three, what are the estimated costs? of each possible answer? Now, costs can  be computed in a couple of ways. One simply how many dollars is it going to take? Another  way to examine those costs is how much people time and energy is it going to take? But in 

that situation, you'll look and say, Well, you know, what a new door costs such as account oil,  89 cents, and you can put oil on it. A new door is gonna cost us 500 bucks, breaking it up is  gonna cost us 1500. What are the estimated costs in mind, okay, so if we brick it up, and we  have our people do it, that means we got to have two people that we're gonna pay more than  we normally do, because that's what they're going to be working on, etc, etc. So that's a  strange illustration, but just trying to get the point that you look at the estimated cost of each of your possible answers, and you put them down. Four, what are the likely consequences of  each choice. In other words, if you do this, what are the consequences? Now the  consequences have a variety of possibilities there. In the squeaky door illustration? Somebody might come in and say, you know, what, if I don't fix it, I guess that's always one of your  choices, don't do anything? If I don't fix it, we could lose a customer here, a good customer. If  we just do the oil? Well, there aren't too many consequences to that one it's just going to be  quieter, and maybe people will like that better. If we replace the door. Now, there aren't too  many consequences of that. But if we brick it up, we could shut off people that are normally  coming there and people don't like change and and what are the likely consequences of each  choice? Number five, step five is how do our values apply? Later on, we're going to go  through a process that helps identify the cultural values of the organization you're a part of.  And then we're going to talk about what values have to change to live out your vision, we're  going to look at all that in the coming sessions. But if you've got some values as an  organization, how do they apply to the situation you are facing, and then make the decision?  Now, I want to go through a couple of situations that we've faced in the church I served last in the last couple of years. And they were ones where we had to say, Wow, what what do we do  here? These are problems. Now leaders facing this situation? What do we do? How do we  engage the followers in the solution? So here's one of the problems we had. This was on the  good side, you know, this is the right kind of problem that what to do about our growth. The  church that I was serving had grown. And so we were being pressed a little bit in the worship  area, our children's ministry was being really pressed our middle school ministry we had like  50 Kids crammed into a room that was designed for 12. And it was a weird room, it was an L  shaped room. So the leader was just, you know, we have levels of seats. And the first level sit  on the floor, the second level sat on beanbag chairs, in the third level sat on stools high high  stools bar stools. And that's the only way we could fit people in that room. And, and, and  we're running out of any space for adult ministry, we wanted to do engage more adults and  study and we want to small groups to be meeting in our building because homes the groups  are growing and they were getting too large to meet at home. So a whole bunch of stuff that  went into finding that problem. What other problems so it boiled down to worship space, adult ministry, kids, children's ministry, youth ministry. What are possible answers? Well, do nothing could have been a choice, I suppose. But a leader will rarely ever make that choice. And so we looked at the various options, what can we do? We could expand our present facility, if we just built a bigger facility that will make more room for all of these things? What about creating a  different venue that's very popular in the United States right now, where the preaching and  worship service will be broadcast to another venue, sometimes far away, sometimes  somewhere else in the building or sometimes to a nearby building. And then what about a  daughter church? Maybe it's time for us to hive off a couple of 100 people and to say, Okay,  we're sending you out to begin a new church in the south area of Grand Haven, Michigan and  down in the township down there. Or what about joining another church. I had contact with  some some other churches in the area that were struggling and just had conversation with a  pastor about what about uniting us uniting with you? And you know, we'll take over we'll give  you a couple 100 people, and, you know, we just want to launch this, and not the normal  daughter church, but to join your ministry and, and make it grow. So all of those became  possible answers. And they had various levels of complexity to them at various levels of what  staff would be needed to do it. But we, we looked at those possible answers. And then we  began to compute the costs. If we were to do an expansion, what would that look like that  would meet our needs. And so we called in some building people from the church. We did  some studies and surveys about what it would cost. And it came out to be a pretty substantial number. If we were going to meet all three of those objectives to expand youth ministry, 

children's ministry, children, youth and adult ministry and worship space. A little over $3  million was the bottom line. And, but to do another venue, we looked at that and we said,  Okay, we're going to have to purchase all kinds of technology, which we don't presently  possess. We're going to have to hire somebody who's going to be the pastor for that venue, or we're going to take somebody from our church and put them there as pastor main pastor, and what is that going to cost there? And then staffing for children's ministry, if we're going to do  a venue that fits us we're going to do children's ministry? Well, as we looked at all those looks  at the same kind of things for a daughter church, who was going to go, how will we do this?  And we looked at the conversations I had with other pastors. So we looked at all of those and  said, How much is this going to cost? And each case, it was well over a million dollars. And so  we started talking about what are the consequences of each choice? And we went through  the list. If we expand our facility, what are the consequences? Well, there's some rather large  consequences to that. One would be, we've got to raise that money. And that means we're  going to have to ask people to sacrifice and that's going to be a big consequence. And usually when that happens within the church, some people leave. And that's going to be a  consequence. If we do a venue that can be interesting. But where would we do it? We  contacted a couple of organizations right near us that had space available on Sunday  morning. Well, which one if we go there, we won't be able to provide any children's ministry.  And so that will have an impact on us. And so that would be a cost that who would go we'd  probably all be older people. Consequences, oh, another one, I forgot, we looked at adding  another worship service that we did away with really quickly because there just wasn't time in our schedule. To put it all in anyways, consequences. We looked at the church values, a lot of  our deeply held values was we wanted to have an impact in our community. And we felt that  we offered a unique aspect of church life and that we were going to be a place of grace. We  said, anybody could come. And we had a good relationship with a lot of organizations that  would refer people to us, who'd had difficulty in their life. We had a shelter, men's and  women's shelter. And then family shelter expanded into where people have been hurt by life,  they became homeless, and sometimes through their own choices. And there they were being rehabilitated discipled into more responsible lives. And they would send these people to us,  because they knew we wouldn't judge them. We had people in the local pregnancy center  who would remember getting that call one time, from somebody said, Look, I want to refer  somebody to you. She doesn't have much experience in religion. She's not a Christian. She's  pregnant with her second child, a different father, for each of them. She's not married, she's  got a lot of tattoos, can I send her to your church? And know she won't be rejected, I could  say with honesty, yes, you can, she will be welcomed here got to baptize her some months  later. And we've got to have an impact in her life. So we looked at our values and saying, You  know what is happening now, if we were to take 200 people out and put them down  somewhere else, which would be likely, either way north of us or way south of us may not  have the same character of the church. And if we daughter that same kind of thing true. And  so we looked at our values, and we decided, we decided that right now, for the betterment of  the ministry, we should expand where we are. And that was difficult. The city had issues with  that, and turns out so did the people from our church. We weren't feeling the crunch as much  in the worship service. And so what ended up being approved was an expansion that would  expand our children's ministry, and then we refurbished some of our area in our building for  adult ministry, and we redid Youth Ministry Center, and that's what we ended up doing. But  there's the process. What do you do about growth? Here's the process. That's a good problem. Here's the process. Looking at that process, whether you agree with it or not with a real  problem. Problem was staff to find the problem. We had two part time staff people, both of  whom held very important positions in our church. One was our men's ministry director. And  our Men's Ministry was thriving at that time. And he was married to our middle school  director. And our middle school leader was just a fantastic leader and the group had gone  from zero to 70, in a matter of few years, and incredibly popular with students and popular  with parents, popular with the volunteers who were there. And then they came to us and said, We're having marriage difficulties. And that's okay, we're replacing grace, right. And so we  invested in them, we paid for them to go to an intervention, took a whole weekend, they 

spent the weekend with counselors, they looked at all the issues and brought them to where  they were in their marriage where it was difficult as a blended family. Each had been married  before and children from previous marriages as well as children together and looked at all of  those forces, and we sent them there. And then we continue to pay our share on the cost for  

ongoing counseling for you, and encourage them. And we kept in touch with them, we were a  leader sat with him regularly to pray for them and pray with them. And after all of that stuff,  they decided to get divorced. The man left the church went elsewhere, he didn't, didn't want  to be part of us anymore. And he didn't want him to be part of the definition. We still loved  each other. Didn't his position to color what we might do with her? So the question became,  what can we do with her? There's some possible answers, we can fire her, we can say, you  know, you violated the morality clause of our employment here. You've become somebody  who's become a problem, as we talk about people in the community and, and come here.  You've become we could fire you. We could suspend her for ministry for a period of time and  maybe work toward a reconciliation between the two of them, or could restore her to ministry. We looked at the costs, we looked at what she was getting paid, we looked at what would  happen if we had to dismiss her and get somebody in short term. We looked at the cost not  just that way, but we looked at the consequences, what would this do to the program? What  would this do to the kids both ways? I mean, if we fired her, it was going to have a huge  impact on kids who adored her. If we didn't fire her, there would be big questions on some,  some parts of some people within the church, we felt like we had to uphold morality in the  church there then. In a culture that is becoming less and less Christian in its orientation, we  would be saying that, you know, morality isn't important. And so we looked at the  consequences. And we looked at our values. And one of our huge values as a church, as I  said, was Grace. And so we talked a lot as elders, what is the grace response here to the  situation. And we decided to restore her to ministry, we suspended her from active ministry  for a period of time, she met with elders regularly during that time, we paid for counseling  with a Christian counselor for her, and that we continue to ask her to accomplish some  various tasks during that time looking at what happened meeting with some people who were offended. And and then at the end of a period of time, we said if things are going well. We will restore you to your position, as long as you exhibit repentance, as long as you exhibit  repentance, not just in words, but in a life, that's choosing a different direction. Now, tough  decision. Did we have people leave the church? Yes. Did the ministry get damaged? No. In  fact, we were able to reaffirm again, what it means to be a place of grace. Now, you may  make a different decision. I just wanted to point out too, that this is the process that got us  there. And I want to encourage you to work through the process those six steps in whatever  you're facing, I would do it often with staff people who come I got this problem, okay, let's  define the problem. How, who's involved, how many people what happened? etc? What are  the possible answers? What are the possible solutions to your problem, estimate the cost?  What are the consequences of each choice that you might make and what values apply and  then make the decision and let the chips fall? You're going to find if you follow this, you're  going to be making better decisions. And that will make you a better leader. Now I want to  talk to you about developing some new skills as leaders. If you're a leader in one place for any significant time period of time, it's going to require that you develop some new skills, because as you lead toward the accomp, the accomplishment of a vision of a preferred future, you're  going to find that what you need to do as leader changes. For instance, here is a bell curve,  it's a common bell curve. It's this bell curve is used to describe a variety of things. But this  one describes the life cycle of an organization, and particularly the life cycle of a Christian  organization. And what I want you to see is, as we define these various steps and stages in  the life cycle of an organization, is that different skills are needed at each level, you can't just  take the same skills and be as effective in each of these levels. So for instance, and we'll use  the church as an example. Since that's what I'm most familiar with. At launch. It's an exciting  time for a church, you'll find that there's a leader that's passionate that has given his life or  her life to make this new venture happen, you'll find people who are sacrificing in fact,  resources will probably be very short in very short supply. Volunteers will be doing most of the work. There's not a staff to depend on usually, except in some unusual circumstances. And, 

and yet, people are just excited, and they're passionate. Anytime I've talked with people in  the churches that I served about how they began, I hear these great stories. And they look  back at that time with love and joy, in spite of the fact that it was tough. You know the one  both churches that I've served, the last two churches that I served, started out we've rented  

facilities. And so they had to bring in everything they brought in sound equipment, they  brought in a stage, they brought in chairs and brought in instruments, every single Sunday,  they have to set up and tear down, set up and tear down. And yet when they look back at it, it was so exciting. And the last church I had served bought an old building, it was 100 year old  Piano Factory, and they look back there worked so hard getting part of that church ready so  that they can be a part of that building ready so that they could be use it as a church. And yet those people were there till 2am Sometimes, you know, scrubbing, cleaning, sandblasting old  lead based paint off columns wood columns, etc, etc, etc. But nobody was complaining about  that time, it was exciting. It was a launch. The momentum growth is the next stage. And  that's when, okay, things are finally going and they start to roll. And because there's an  excitement a palpable excitement in an organization, that's a time when, when growth just  seems to happen, not just in churches, but in almost any Christian organization or any  organization, Malcolm Gladwell or business writer writes about leadership from a business  point of view, and he talks about the tipping point, and all that all of a sudden things will take  off if you can get this percentage of people into your, into your, into your program, and that  they want that even to the sale of hush puppies and hush puppies became such a big thing  back when it was a big thing as shoes. So, momentum growth happens, then there's strategic  growth, there comes a point where the momentum begins to slow and organization has to  take place or the the momentum will fade entirely. Strategic Growth is when you start putting  down you know here are the departments here are the responsibilities, here are the job  descriptions. Here are the salaries, organization starts to come into play. And that enters a  period of sustained health. As leadership, works with management now to provide leadership  and things get organized. There can be a period of sustained health, then comes a day,  usually in a church, many times for whatever reason, sometimes the neighborhood has  changed. Sometimes the community has changed. Sometimes the church has changed, the  pastor has changed. People will go into a maintenance mode. And that's where everything's  happening in the church. But there's not many new people coming in. It's not growing  anymore. In fact, the emphasis becomes more keeping people from leaving, than emphasis  about getting new customers in or new people in the church. And then there is the  preservation stage where people look wistfully back at the past. And remember when the  church was full, and remember when you know they had these children's programs, that was  such big things, and they're trying to preserve the past are looking to the past, more than  they're looking toward the future. And then there's life support, where unless something is  done soon, they're doomed to die. It's a life cycle, and in the typical church in the United  States takes about 100 years to do this cycle. In some places in Southern California, the cycle  moves much more quickly. It's about 50 years to run. through that cycle. And so what I want  to say to you is that whatever stage you're in, in that lifecycle of a church, you're going to  need certain skills. For instance, at the launch, you need an entrepreneurial leader. During  that period of momentum, you need an entrepreneurial leader, up until about the level of 200. If you've got 200, in church, in fact, it's been demonstrated over and over again, that a  common pattern in churches is that they go through that launch phase with excitement and  energy. And the resources sacrificially being supplied by the people and they start growing,  and they get in some momentum growth, and they hit about 200 in attendance at a worship  service. And then something's got to change. Either that leader has to become somebody  who's also a good manager, in order to move on to strategic growth, or they've got to get  somebody who's a good manager to move on into strategic growth, or the church will decline, attendance will go down. And, and then they'll go through the cycle and go back back up to  about 200, and then it'll go down back up to about 200. And go down, it's a cycle that's been  repeated over and over again, and not just in the church, know, most businesses that start in  the United States, last only about a year. And they'll go through the cycle of a launch. And  there'll be advertising and there'll be excitement, and then there'll be a momentum growth, 

and everybody goes there to that restaurant, or that coffee shop or that whatever. And then  they get to that point where something's got to change, and it doesn't. And so they decline.  And most businesses, as I said, that start are closed within a year. So you need an  entrepreneur, but then you need leadership, management leadership, in particular, when you  get to strategic growth. And then you for sustained health, you really need management, you  need somebody in leadership who's going to take care of the details, is going to make sure  that the management of the staff, the management of the resources, all of those things are  taken care of, the to do lists are done. And then you had to get into that maintenance section. That's where you really need a management skill. But when you get into preservation, indeed, leadership again, because unless something changes dramatically, that church is going to die. And so they need somebody who can help them envision a new future. And when you are in  the life support, you need the skills of a pastor, that you're able to care for people, as you  declare the death of the church. So that's some changes, you're going to have to learn skills  that you're going to have to develop at each stage. Or you're going to have to surround  yourself with people who are able to do that. Now, it took me a long time to learn this in the  first church I served, I didn't know this stuff, and we went through not a launch for life, I came  up the momentum phase, and we experienced a tremendous experience have growing. But I  didn't take get managers around me. And as a result of, I left that church in a period of  exhaustion. And it went right back down to the size it had been when I came. So the point is,  you got to learn to develop skills, you're showing that you're somebody who can do that just  by being part of this class, as we talk about various skills and defining culture and defining  vision and writing it down and rolling it out. And all these subjects that are coming up in the  future that we're going to be sharing in this course, you're somebody who has shown that you can do it, you've got to do it. Now another skill, I want to talk about briefly that you're going  to have to develop and will help you is developing different skills and working with people,  particularly with those who are on your staff or are your significant volunteers. I know sports  illustrations or sport anecdotes are helpful to me. Some describe a company or a church when it's new. And the first staff person is another pastor as two people walking down the golf  course, right? You know, you're going golfing. And between the holes. You're either in the cart, or you're walking together and you're simply talking about life. Well that describes, you know, early on when a church or an organization is just beginning to grow, and you hire that first  significant key position. And you're just these partners who are walking down the life together journeying through that company together. And that's easy, but as the company grows, then  you have to be thinking more on the lines of a basketball team I lived in. I lived in Southern  California for a lot of years. So the Lakers are always one of my favorite team. But when you  get to a basketball team, things get far more complex. First of all, you got a point guard who  is giving direction. You've got a shooting guard who is expected to shoot and take shots,  you've got a center he's big he is expected to get rebounds he is expected to pass on, you've  got forwards who are expected to score as well as get rebounds, we've got all of these  different roles. And in fact, now they talk about, you know, a strong forward and a small  forward. And they further defined these five roles. Now, when you get up to that point where  you add more employees and more partners into your ministry, that communication becomes  exponentially more challenging. And so you've got to learn to define who's the leader, you  know, Bill Hybels, all that's happened with him has been an incredibly effective leader. In his  book, Church. He talks about the time when they got to this point where, you know, they were just a bunch of friends kind of walking along, doing this ministry, high school ministry, and  then creating a church out of it. And then came to time where he called the train wreck time,  where they had to defined roles. And, you know, obviously, he was going to be the leader,  while some didn't like that, and so they left. But he was going to be the leader and they  defined roles, you're going to get to a point, if your ministry grows, to be an effective leader,  that you're going to have to develop new skills, and being that point person, or finding  somebody else who can do that more effectively than you and you taking a substitutionary  role or a second seat in leadership. As an organization gets more complex, some of them  compared to a football team. Now that's really complex, because then you've got offense and  defense, and they never talk to each other. Right? They don't consult with each other, they 

have meetings and the offensive people meet with the offensive coach and the defense  meets with a defensive coach. And within that, you've got all these different roles to play. You  know, you've got the lineman, you got the quarterback, you've got the tailback, you have the  runningback, you've got the wide receiver, you've got the tight end, you've got all of those  different roles on offense and other ones similar on defense and so all this maelstrom that  happens, you got to be a leader who learns to trust other leaders who are going to develop  other leaders who develop other leaders. And that takes on a whole different set of skills than  being on the golf course. or on the basketball court. Now, this is important. Yeah, I've learned  about myself, much to my chagrin that I was, that was a jump that I was not able to make into the megachurch category, because I didn't have the skills. And I was able to lead a church up  to about 1000 people, and that's where it would level off. And I'm just saying to you, if you're  going to grow as a leader, you're going to have to learn some different skills. And you're going to have to find out there plenty of opportunities, leadership courses, or leadership  experiences all over the place, learn to develop leadership, and you'll become a more  effective leader. Now, the last one I put on there was the moving from shepherd to rancher.  You know, in the church, I was trained as a shepherd. In other words, I was trained to know  the sheep by name, I was trained to go to every sheep when they were injured, I was trained  to carry every sheep that was tired or had a broken leg. If the sheep was lost, I was the one  who was supposed to go after them, etc, etc, etc. And I realized that a shepherd can only  pastor a group of about 50 to 100 people. So I had to become a rancher and a rancher, make  sure that people are fed and the lost sheep are found and, and make sure that that hurt  people are cared for. But the rancher doesn't do it. He's got people who are responsible to do  it. And that is a huge step, It is one of the steps that's been identified for churches, why they  don't get over the hump of 200. 200 is a major barrier to go further growth. And when it gets  to 200, things become more complex. And some of it's because the pastor can't take that  step. I say my job is not to be running around keeping all the sheep satisfied, my job is to  raise up people who are going to take on the responsibilities of caring for these people while I  become the rancher. So what do you do about that we're going to talk about that further in  this course study, there's a lot of study to do get a mentor, and a mentor is very helpful, and  get a Leadership Network going. So I've always found it helpful to speak with people who are  further along in leadership than I. As I said, when I create a network and those people have  been a resource, tremendously important to me. But as you develop as a leader, where you  are, what are you going to do when you all of a sudden become aware that your skills are no  longer sufficient? That's the point of this class. How are you going to develop as a leader then, be thinking about it now, and you'll be more effective in the future.