December 17, 2010
Moving from TransformingChurch.com to GodsFaintPath.com
Gregg Burch
The last few months have been a grand transition in my life. I’ve moved from working on transformation in the Lutheran tribe to church planting beyond the traditional denominational church. We launched TransformingChurch.com in September 2004, and for the last six years we have sent out a monthly e-newsletter. For several years, we have topped Google rankings when you search for transforming church. We’ve had 335,000 page views this year. I thank you, our community, for making all this possible. Thanks to you our readers. It’s been a great ride, but all good things have a life cycle. As I move out of my role as a prophetic voice calling the denominational church to transformation and reformation, I am also moving on from the platform of TransformingChurch.com.
For the past year, I have been working with my daughter, Florrie Byrd, to write a book we are calling God’s Faint Path: wilderness lessons in leadership and life. In November, I began work on a new blog, GodsFaintPath.com, where we will publish a chapter a month starting in January. The Introduction is already posted. Our TransformingChurch.com editor, Roger Ganzel, will continue to work with me as a guest blogger. I have been adding new content, and bringing over essays from the trove of material we have developed over the last six years to launch the blog.
My energy is focused here now, so we will be winding down our newsletter over the next couple of months. There is still a rich inventory of content here that continues to draw 25,000+ page views a month, so we will keep TransformingChurch.com up and available, but won’t be creating much new content from here on. I invite you to continue the journey with us on God’s Faint Path.
We are no longer monitoring comments or email contacts coming through TransformingChurch.com, so if you wish to reach us, find me on the blog or as GreggBurch on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Flickr, and Vimeo.
Peace,
Gregg Burch, Publisher
October 19, 2010
I Am Feeling Overwhelmed Or How To Build Teams that Work
Paul Maritz, the CEO of VMware, in a New York Times article a couple of weeks ago, entitled, Does Your Team have the Four Essential Types extols the virtues of a balanced team as you grow an organization. I’ve found these truths hold true in leading a larger church as well. I used this model for building leadership teams in the last congregation I served, and share it with the pastors I currently coach.
As churches grow, sooner or later, the congregation reaches the upper limits of the pastor's ability to manage the many demands placed on her time. The decision is made, often too late, to begin to add staff to support the increasingly complex systems that allow that growth. Pastors too often feel that the next logical step in their transitional role in a growing congregation is to become the hub at the center of the wheel, with all of the spokes radiating out from him.
Few pastors are able to grow churches in size and scale, because they continue to function as the funnel through which all information and decision-making must flow. It is no surprise that more and more a feeling of isolation settles in and they become overwhelmed at the enormity of the tasks necessary to stay on top of the demands of their office. The reality is that pastors are seldom trained to oversee systems, but rather just to minister one-on-one to their members. Some learn how to make the transition from chaplain to CEO, but the majority do not.
Continue Reading... | Comments: (1)
October 19, 2010
A Well in the Distance
Carol Howard Merritt
Hagar stood in the desert with her son Ishmael in her arms, the dust of the dry landscape swirling about her. She'd been the slave of Sarah, wife of Abraham, and her son was conceived when Hagar was forced to have a child with Abraham. But when Sarah finally and amazingly gave birth to her own son, Isaac, she urged Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away. The hostility drove Hagar and Ishmael out of their home and into the desert to die.
Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael, the mother and his child, into the barren landscape with only a little bit of water. With no protection from the elements, Hagar walked in the hot sun until she and her child had consumed all of the water; they were parched, without a drop left.
As usual, the biblical story is scant, summing up a dramatic episode in a few short paragraphs. The ancient holy writers leave a lot to the imagination, and so I envision Hagar holding her child close, trying to soothe his dry, thirsty cries.
Finally, Hagar cannot bear to see his parched lips any longer, cannot stand that her words and desperate caresses no longer comfort him. So she places her son under a bush to die. As she walks away helplessly, trying to escape her child's cries, Hagar calls out to God, begging God to prevent her from seeing the death of her son.
At that moment of heart-wrenching distress, Hagar begins to understand she will be a mother of a great nation. It is as if she has somehow been given a taste of Abraham's covenant, when God promised Abraham his offspring would be as numerous as the grains of sand and the stars in the sky. It is after this realization that Hagar looks up and sees a well in the distance.
October 19, 2010
Cross-examining Credibility
John Maxwell
In a criminal trial, the outcome hinges on the credibility of the witnesses called upon by the prosecution and the defense. Throughout the trial, jurors scrutinize each person who takes the stand, attempting to discern whether or not their words can be trusted. As they decide the case, jurors weigh heavily the statements given by believable witnesses, but they discard the testimony of anyone they deem to be incredible.
As a leader, you're on the witness stand. Those you lead are like jurors, inspecting your behavior and dissecting your words. They expect you to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If you lose your credibility with them, they will tune out when you speak. However, if you prove yourself to be credible then they will hang on every word you say.
Your credibility as a leader rests upon three pillars:
October 19, 2010
Equipping in the Larger Church
I was at the hospital and a MRI tech was trying to stick a needle in my arm to inject contrast dye. Apparently that's how you get a better picture. Well, it's also how you get a monster bruise if the tech doesn't know what he's doing. After several pokes and jabs, he said: "This doesn't seem to be working." I thought – what do you mean "seem"?! Either its working or it isn't. And if you don't know, who does? So he moved from my arm to my hand, and that didn't work. Then he tried my other arm. I felt like a pin cushion! And no, it wasn't my veins, they were popping up fine! In fact he went through one of them, that's why it bruised so much. It was clear to me that this person was not equipped to do this part of his job.
Equipping is essentially training. It's easy to tell when someone has not been equipped. You will not be sticking needles in the arms of people who attend your church, but without proper training you might as well be. (Not really.) Because their experience is a painful one if staff and volunteers don't know what they are doing. The lesser equipped the greater the pain.
If your parking lot team directs people into gridlock, your ushers point without smile, and children's leaders send kids off to the restroom by themselves – these are all signs of a lack of equipping. They are not "bad volunteers", they are people who have not been trained to do the job.
The last Pastor's Coach article was titled: Equipping in the Smaller Church. When it comes to equipping, there are things that are similar and things that overlap in smaller and larger churches. But there are also some significant differences in the nature of smaller and larger churches that have a big impact on your approach to equipping.