Dealing with a Lack of Commitment

One of the most frustrating things to experience as a leader is a lack of commitment from your team members.

A lack of commitment looks like the following things:

- Showing up late
- Worse: not showing up at all
- Worse yet: not calling when not going to show up
- Being lazy and half-hearted
- Not doing the job assigned
- Lacking a sense of ownership

Are you experiencing these symptoms from your team members?  The worst thing to do is to "let it slide."

Here are a few suggestions to deal with a lack of commitment in your team:

1. Cast vision

No matter what you're doing in ministry, people need their overall vision for what they're doing refreshed.  Casting vision helps people keep in mind the bigger picture. They may not understand (or even agree with) the immediate mundane tasks, but having a clear vision will motivate them to keep chipping in because they'll understand it needs to get done in order to reach the ultimate goal.

When is the last time you called a team meeting to cast vision?

2. Give people a break

If your people used to do a great job, but are consistently slacking these days, it might be due to tiredness.  We all have busy lives and crazy schedules.  Consider giving your team a break and encourage them to refresh themselves in the Word of God and prayer.

3. Train and retrain

People are interesting creatures: on the one hand they gladly volunteer; on the other hand they are negligent in the jobs they said they will help you do.  What's up with that?  Believe it or not, it could come down to the fact that they are simply unsure how to do what they've been assigned.

"But I've already told them what to do!"  That's great.  Did you tell them how to do it?  Did you ask if they understand what you want them to do?  Did you tell them to come to you if they have a question with what they're doing?  Did you encourage them to get your advice when facing a problem with what they're doing?

If people aren't confident in what they're doing, they will always under perform in what you want them to do. Perhaps some retraining is in order.

4. Clearly outline your expectations

This really should be point #1.  Tell your team what you expect of them upfront.  If they slack, remind them of their commitment to the initial expectations.  If they keep slacking . . . well, we'll get to that in a bit . . .

5. Pull them aside for spiritual counsel

If a person is demonstrating laziness, complacency, apathy, or is unconcerned about doing a job well, then don't rule out the idea that a spiritual conflict is taking place.

Something might be very wrong in their personal life, and they're manifesting that problem through their poorly done job.  Take your team member aside and ask them if there's something going on that they need to talk about.  Remember: leadership is service.  You're there to serve the Lord and serve your team members.  Show them your concern, pray with them right there on the spot, and give them an encouraging word from the Lord.

If necessary, setup a followup meeting or direct them to your pastoral leadership team for prayer and counsel.  Don't overlook the spiritual!

6. Let some people go

So what about those people who you talk to, encourage, correct, rebuke, and nag (yikes!) that refuse to step it up and do what needs to be done.  Bottom line: they need to be let go.  There are other people who would like to serve and will do their best for Jesus.

Please don't resort to letting a team member go as the first step in dealing with a lack of commitment; but if after implementing steps like the suggestions above they are still dragging their feet, it's time to ask them to phase out of the team because it's hurting the ministry.
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I hope these suggestions help you in building the best team possible for the Lord and His work.  Remember, Jesus Himself had a group of uncommitted people on His team. But our Lord demonstrated patience, discipline, instruction, and--most of all--love towards them because He believed in who they would be and what they would do.  Go and do likewise.

4 Things Every Leader Must Do

The last thing a leader wants is to frustrate people and slow down objectives--worse than that is to spiritually or emotionally wound their precious volunteers.   

To avoid these pitfalls, every leader must do 4 things:

1.  Communicate

Your volunteers aren't mind readers.  If you're not actively communicating to your team what the goals are and where you want this project to go, you're asking for problems and failed missions.

Essential ways to communicate are email, text, phone calls, and Facebooking.  Be consistent with these!  However, don't forget one key, strategic vehicle of communication: the group meeting.  You don't have to do group meetings in person: you can Skype or use Google+ Hangouts if you have a web camera.

Bottom line: get with your team and communicate.

2.  Delegate

Maybe you're the one facing burnout; not your volunteers.  Chances are the reason why you're experiencing this is because you still haven't utilized the power of delegation.

Here's a pro tip for ministry: Only do the things that only you can do; all other things need to be delegated to volunteers.

Need help delegating?  I've given 7 Tips on How to Delegate that you can easily follow!

3.  Negotiate

What do you do when you know where God wants you to lead your team, yet you're experiencing resistance from your volunteers?  Pray and negotiate.

Ask yourself: "What are my open-handed and closed-handed issues with this project or initiative?  What must we keep, but what can I release?"

Sitting down with your team members and having a give-and-take conversation shouldn't freak you out.  Often times I've experienced a situation where the Lord gave some deep-seated wisdom or a kind word of caution to my team members that helped us come up with an even better strategy to accomplish the same goal.

4.  Ideate

Taken from the StrengthsFinder 2.0 category of Ideation, to ideate in my book simply means to come up with new ideas!

Be fresh.  Be creative.  Think about your role of leadership in ministry as a precious opportunity of stewardship given by the Lord.  How can things improve?  What needs to change?  What is the Lord leading us to do?

Having a problem doing this?  Read a book; watch an interview; read a blog.  New ideas flow out when you're putting new ideas in!

When your volunteers know that you're actually leading them somewhere with great ideas, it keeps them motivated and excited to serve under your direction.
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Tell me: which of these 4 leadership must-dos is your strength?  Which of these is your weakness?  How do you plan on changing?

7 Ways to Handle Hard-hitting Sermons

Every now and then you'll hear a message that takes off the kid gloves and tells you the truth in love.  The truth hurts.  Why?  Because it's true!

Unfortunately, some people haven't learned how to handle hard-hitting sermons. Instead of getting better they get bitter. That's not the goal. The goal is to be exhorted to a deep love for Christ and a more Biblical worldview that will help shape our behavior by the empowering of the Holy Spirit.

So here are 7 ways to handle hard-hitting sermons:

1. Listen

Don't block out a message before you've given it a hearing.  It may be old truth; it may be familiar truth; it may even be repetitive truth--but it's still truth!  Keep an open mind and attentive ear to God's Word.  Let the Scriptures invade your thinking and do the spiritual work that God intends for it to do.

2. Search the Scriptures

As a hard-hitting message is being preached, follow along in your Bible and read the verses before and after the one being referenced.  Get the context.  If you're savvy enough, start doing some cross-referencing of other Scriptures and even Google any "questionable" statements on your smartphone or tablet to fact check.

3. Be Sensitive to the Spirit

The Holy Spirit is going to change your life by illuminating your understanding to God's incorruptible Word.  As He begins to speak to you about what you're hearing in a hard-hitting message, be sensitive to His voice.  Desire to be made different.

4. Exercise Humility

Owning up to where you've gone wrong is difficult; but it's necessary if you want to change! No one is perfect and it doesn't do anyone any good to pretend like you have everything in your Christian life all figured out.  Humble yourself before God and to His truth as you're listening to a hard-hitting sermon, then expect grace to flood in like a river!

5. Repent

Here's the key: to change your mind in agreement with what God's Word says. Turning from your current way to the way that God wants you to go ushers in God's forgiveness, grace, wisdom, and strength for the correct path of your life. Your transformation begins when your heart says, "Yes!" to God's truth.

6. Respond

Once you've heard a hard-hitting message, follow any necessary action steps that come to mind or are suggested. If something needs to be changed, change it; if something needs to be said, say it; if someone needs to be forgiven, forgive them; etc.

7. Seek Accountability

You might need to make an appointment with someone on the pastoral staff to talk about whatever issue you're dealing with.  Shepherds are in your church to help you, not hurt you.  That extra bit of prayer, encouragement, and accountability that you get can go a long way in helping your journey of conformity to the image of Christ.

Now that you have 7 good ways to respond to a hard-hitting message, anticipate using them and watch your spiritual life prosper!

What to Do before You Quit

You just lead an event, managed a group of volunteers, taught, or preached in a church gathering . . . and now you're ready to quit.

Why?  Probably because the event didn't go as planned, volunteers were confused, no one responded to your plea, or people fell asleep during your message.  In times like these sometimes you just want to quit.

But before you quit, I want you to do 4 things:

First: Remember, it's not all about you

Do you really want people to think of you as a spiritual rock star: a person who always has the best advice, most powerful messages, or greatest administrative skills?  I mean, is this why you're in the ministry in the first place: to have people in awe of you?

No.  You're here because you love Jesus; and you love Jesus because He first loved you.  You're here to serve other people with that same love.  You're here to point others to Him.  When you feel let down because of a lack of accolades, remind yourself of this truth: it's never been all about you.

Second: Keep in mind there's always another shot

Grace truly is amazing.  Grace is getting what we don't deserve.  And while you're out there on the leadership front lines you will have more than a few experiences with failure.  Regardless, God will give you grace to give it another shot.

Take your moment of "failure" to reflect instead of retire; imagine making things better instead of getting bitter.  You can use the lessons of today to improve the opportunity of tomorrow if you keep in mind there's always another shot with God.

Third: God measures you by faithfulness

Andy Stanley says that people tend to confuse success with the rewards of success. The rewards of success are things like getting a promotion, seeing a lot of decisions made for Christ, or increasing your offering.  However, success is simply being faithful to God's calling for your life.

Do you realize that you are a success in God's eyes even without a promotion, great results, or expanding resources if you simply remain faithful to the Lord?  God never called you to build a single thing; in fact, He said that He would do all the building Himself.  Your job is to just show up.  Are you doing that?  Remember your faithfulness is how God is measuring your success.

Fourth: The results are always up to the Lord

When teaching John 15, I like to tell people that "you can't force fruit."  Fruit just grows.  Plant a seed in good soil, expose it to light, water it, and keep it maintained. Fruit will grow.

The same is true for your ministry.  You need to learn to trust the process.  The key is abiding in Christ.  You're being faithful by sowing God's Word and serving Jesus; let the Lord make things grow in His time and His way.  He called you to bear fruit and that's what will happen when you leave the results up to God.

So before you quit, think about these 4 truths.  And then ask yourself, "Do I really want to throw in the towel right now?"  You can, or you can keep the focus on Jesus instead of yourself and trust that God indeed has a plan for you life and is using you. The fruit will emerge . . . just remain faithful and don't quit.

5 Lies That Ministry Leaders Believe

You want results in your ministry that are fruitful and glorifying to God.  Yet, somewhere along the way you might have up certain ideas and behaviors that seem OK, but in reality they're not.  They're lies we believe that are detrimental to the ministry.

Here are 5 common lies that we believe:

1. You can do it without others.

Jesus needed disciples; Paul needed an entourage; and Billy Graham needed an entire evangelistic association.  You need others, too.  The temptation to be a "lone ranger" in the ministry is very real and present within many of us; but it leaves us missing out on fellowship, partnership, sharpening, and kingdom-mindedness.

2. You can do it without God.

For visionaries, great ideas are a dime a dozen.  However, just because you have a great idea doesn't mean it's God-given.  And just because you have a God-given idea doesn't mean it's a do-it-right-now idea.  We can't build this house without God's help.  It's His church and His ministry--stepping ahead of God is stepping outside of His power.

3. You can do it without prayer.

Try going a week with food and water--good luck.  The same thing applies to your prayer life and ministry leadership.  It's easy to run on the fumes of last week's (or last month's) prayer time in the ministry, but you really won't be producing much fruit.  You need the presence of God and the leading of the Holy Spirit--fostered by prayer--in your daily ministry decisions.

4. You can do it without evangelism.

Bottom line: you want people to be saved and your ministry to grow.  The Lord adding saved people to the church is how your ministry will grow.  Yet, how are people to be saved without a preacher?  Evangelism is the front line of ministry, and if you're not telling people about Jesus on a regular basis you're just going through the motions.

5. You can do it without money.

Even Jesus and the disciples had a treasury.  It's naive to think that you're going to do great, fruitful work for the Lord without financial resources.  Though it may somehow feel noble to lead a ministry that "doesn't ask for money," consider all the necessities of your ministry that demand it.  Without asking for money (from people and from God) you're asking your ministry to be drastically undercut--and perhaps, cease.

Be wise and strategic in your ministry and a leader.  Don't let these lies that ministry leaders tend to believe characterize your service for the Lord.

7 Tips on How to Delegate

"Let go to get others going."

As leaders we know we should delegate, but do we actually do it?  I read a great article today about what happens when I fail to delegate.  To me, the biggest issue of failing to delegate is the missed opportunities of allowing others to grow and develop in a various roles.

It's rookie, selfish, and prideful to fail at delegation.  You need to delegate; but you need to do so wisely.

Here are 7 quick tips on how to delegate wisely:

1. Acknowledge what you can giveaway.  Somethings you must do because you're the only one who can do them; most things others can do and you need to let them help.  Let go to get others going.  That's building volunteers and leaders!

2. Pray for a volunteer/leader.  If there's a genuine need, God has already made the provision.  Ask Him to connect you with the person right for the job.

3. Have a standard.  Someone who is warm and walks isn't good enough.  A good way to discern whether or not a person is right for the task is to have a simple standard in play.  A standard for potential workers along these lines will help you: (1) saved, (2) growing, and (3) willing to help.  Don't look for perfection; that comes through discipleship.

4. Sell the role.  It's easy to recruit if you package the offer correctly.  Serving the Lord is an opportunity not a burden.  You can tell someone that you need them to do 2 hours of data entry, or you can explain how you really want to see more people get saved and getting a list of these names in a contact database will help the outreach process.  Which approach points out the opportunity of the task?  Use that approach.

5. Spell the role.  Clearly define what you need done.  If the job is somewhat complex, did you put it in writing so they have the objectives for reference?  Present a deadline so they have a target.  Make sure they have resources like your email and cell number to contact you at anytime should a problem arise.

6. Go hands-free.  Recruit then release.  Most people don't appreciate micromanagement in ministry, especially if they're competent, responsible people at home and at work.  You want to empower people by allowing them to do the job that you have clearly defined for them (See Tip #5).

7. Follow up.  Once the task is completed, debrief.  Find out what the joys and struggles were.  Ask if they would like to help in a similar capacity again.  It's in the context of follow-up that you just might discover your next star leader.

Don't rob someone of their chance to grow and develop as volunteers and leaders. Determine to start delegating wisely this week.

Recruiting is Like Dreaming

Recruitment is important because a movement is nothing without activists. It will be impossible to reach 1000s with the Gospel of Jesus in the Northwest through planting churches without recruits for the task!

Many people want to be involved in something bigger than themselves (esp., spiritual endeavors that are inline with the Great Commission of Jesus); they just need to be asked to join.

I'm finding that recruitment works best when you "paint a picture" for the individual about what you are trying to accomplish. Help people see this opportunity like a dream.

1. Tell them what the dream is all about.  Use vivid, creative language.  Show them a picture or a video that communicates the heart of your message.  Help them to "see" what you "see" before it can be seen!

2. Tell them how they fit into that dream.  They have a leading role in this dream and need to be told what that is.  Stress the importance and the opportunity of the moment to get involved!

3. Tell them the predicted outcome of their involvement with that dream.  Will people be saved?  Will lives be transformed?  Will a community or city be reached with the Gospel?  Explain just what you expect to find on the other side of reality once the dream comes true.

Here are some questions to ponder regarding recruitment:

- Who should I try to recruit? (First determine your need, then ask what kind of person can fill it.)

- Who is "off limits" in recruitment? (Will you recruit unsaved people? Will you recruit believers connected to other ministries? etc.)

- Are there lines in recruitment that should not be crossed? (What are the values that compose your recruitment criteria?)

What has worked in your recruitment efforts? What hasn't worked? I'd like to hear!