Leading Through Change -- When Staff and Members Leave

Notes from Dale O’Shields’ presentation: Leading Through Change -- When Staff and Members Leave

1. Staffing is a Key Decision

• 1 Timothy 5: “Do not lay hands on a man suddenly.” Any staff hire is a very important, sobering decision. Be slow to hire.

• You want to hire someone who is focused on the TOWEL, not the TITLE. You are here to SERVE.

2. Have a Process in Place for Evaluating Staff and Key Volunteers

You are giving people significant responsibilities; have a system for evaluating:

• Character — Not just about morality. Look at their work ethic, faithfulness, integrity.

• Competency — Are they all hat, no cattle?

• Culture — Do they fit well within your existing culture?

• Chemistry — Likeability Factor. Do you enjoy being around this guy?

• Calling — Look for the fingerprint of God on the hire of that person.

• Capacity for Leadership — Can they grow with the role and the growth of the church? Can they reproduce themself and become a multiplier, not a maintainer?

3. Understand + Accept that some Staff + Church Members WILL have to Transition

• Understanding this will save you a lot of heartache.

• Think of your church like a bus with stops along the way. What happens at a bus stop? Some people get on and some people get off.

• There will be significant transition points as your church grows.

• When this happens, remind yourself that this is just all part of the process of church planting.

• Don’t lose perspective. Your “loss” may actually be a huge win!

• Some folks need to get off the bus.

• Why do people leave your church?

  • Sometimes staff will leave you because the responsibilities have grown beyond their capacity to grow with the role.

  • They may outgrow the responsibilities. Your job is to always make sure your staff are being challenged.

  • They may lack the character / competence / chemistry required to stick with it.

  • They may not want to do the spiritual and emotional work in order to grow.

  • Unexpected circumstances arise in life. Think seasons. Life happens in seasons.

4. Remember that all Staff and Members need to be held loosely.

• Anything you hold tightly you suffocate.

5. Promotions to key leadership roles should be carefully considered through prayer.

• Faithful in the little before being faithful with much.

• Make sure they have been tested.

• This doesn’t always work: people fool you. Potential staff will lie to you to get a job.

• Be very careful in giving out titles… You can’t take it back.

• It doesn’t feed your ego, it fits your function.

6. Celebrate the Stays and Positively Release the Gos.

• For some churches the only time the Staff has a party is when someone leaves. When is the last time you had a party with the people who STAY?

• Sometimes God calls you to go but often God calls you to STAY!

• Sometimes someone goes and it’s a good thing. Sometimes someone goes and it’s painful. Sometimes people go when they shouldn’t and you can see the truck that’s about to hit them, but they won’t listen to you.

7. Be prepared for + positively process the emotions that will accompany the exit of people.

• Loss leads to Grief, which can confuse people. Be prepared for the grief. You love the person, you’ve invested in them for years.

• When you feel grief, don’t beat yourself up about it. Allow yourself to experience and feel.

8. Give clear guidelines to departing staff on YOUR expectations regarding communication.

• Information Void can crank up a church gossip grapevine: “What’s happening behind the scenes?”

• This happens when there is too much of time that passes between their decision and the communication.

• It is foolish to allow departing staff to announce their departure.

• Provide information to fill any potential void. SOMEBODY is going to tell ‘the story.’ You need to protect the health of your church as it continues moving forward.

9. Expect emotional responses to any staff member’s departure.

• Help them process, give them assurance.

10. Learn lessons from departures that can make you and your organization better.

• How can we improve for next time?

• What can I learn from this?

• How can this make me better?

11. Avoid Prolonged Departures.

• When someone says they want to leave, let them.

• Don’t drag it out or they will drag people down with them.

• When they say they want to leave, their heart has already left.

• Be generous in their transition.

12. Be appropriately generous toward departing people who leave well.

• Err on the side of grace, not pettiness.

• Oftentimes people who leave will talk badly about you behind your back. Be gracious.

13. Expect a Honeymoon Period on Social Media at the Departing Person’s New Place.

• “This new place is amazing!” Which means your place wasn’t.

• At some point real life will kick in and they’ll stop.

• Weather their honeymoon. You don’t need it in your spirit.

• If it’s getting to you, delete the app.

• Social media can feed a failure mentality.

14. Don’t Get Discouraged.

• Don’t Think You’re the Only Person This Happens To.

• This is the secret: don’t get discouraged. Fight it.

• People WILL leave your church.

• Staff members WILL betray you.

• Don’t give air to fear.

• Pruning leads to better fruit and a better future.

• Get up and keep going by faith.

• Sometimes you have to wait 11 years to see someone who left in a bad way come back in repentance.

WISDOM for DEPARTING STAFF

1. If you’re leaving a church, get planted somewhere. Don’t wander.

2. When you get planted somewhere, be a son or daughter of that House.

3. Be an honorable, loyal, ethical, trusting Christian. Integrity matters. Honor your former pastor. Don’t go bush-league.

4. If you’re leaving a church, do not play the “God told me” game.

5. Don’t run from your issues! Your next church won’t change things. Geography doesn’t fix your problems.

6. Remember whose spiritual platform you have been using and you have been benefiting from. You were LOANED a platform. Never take the power and trust.

7. Never steal sheep.

8. Never steal staff. That is unethical behavior.

9. Fulfill your commitments. Don’t cut and run. That only hurts God’s people.

10. Leave your assigned area of responsibility stronger, not weaker.

11. Encourage commitment and faithfulness to the House that you’re leaving.

12. Watch your words, non-verbals and your actions on the way out…
    …because God is.

I Believe in You

Friend,

Rise up!

You are NOT held back by your past mistakes or present hurts.

Not pressed down by the expectations of others or those you place on yourself.

Make CONFIDENCE your stance -- take COURAGE!

Chase your dreams + give your best to stay authentic, fearless, risky and real.

Fiercely pursue the passions He has placed on your heart.

Choose to live in FAITH, not fear.

Go do it!

Embrace your calling.

You are God-commissioned -- specifically selected for His work.

He CHOSE and created you for such a time as this.

You're empowered to BE who you were created to be!

Cheering you on,

Jonathan

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PS - Let's connect together!

Amazon Just Shared Its Secret to Success (and You Can Use It Too!)

There is an energy and an optimism in the eyes of a startup team that's nearly impossible to replicate. Despite working ridiculously long hours, sacrificing time, family, money, and pretty much all of the things that most of us hold holy in life, a startup team produces a euphoria that only they can fully understand. If you've been there, you know what I'm talking about.

When it comes to starting something from scratch, the feeling that results is unmatchable. The attitude, the hunger, the passion, the ability to move and adapt instantly, the willingness to take risks, and the sheer energy and enthusiasm you have in a startup is as good as it gets. When you lose that, you lose the ability to grow, and that will be the greatest challenge to success and threat to innovation.

I've often struggled to put a name to the unique chemistry of a startup. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has, and it captures beautifully all of the trials, tribulations, and magic of the entrepreneurial spirit. He calls it being a day one company. He is so passionate about the importance of staying a day one company, the building he works in is called day one!

According to Bezos, a day one company's obsessive goal should be to avoid becoming a day two company. In his own words, "Day two is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why [for Amazon] it is always day one."

According to Bezos, "Day One" means that Amazon will always act like a startup. To act like a startup, Bezos requires Amazon employees to do these four things:

• Be obsessed with the customer

• Focus on results over process

• Make high quality decisions quickly

• Embrace external trends quickly

I read this to mean always be innovating, because the alternative is to go out of business. To Bezos you either act like a startup or die.

(via Inc.)

They Were On Fire

I’ve always been fascinated by the lives of the earliest Christians who lived two thousand years ago. 

Under the crush of Roman occupation, a new movement was birthed: men and women who worshiped the risen Messiah. 

This wave of radical acceptance and grace-filled lives swept the world and changed human history.

In 1947, J.B. Phillips wrote this description of the Christian movement: 

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“The great difference between present-day Christianity and that of which we read in these letters is that to us it is primarily a performance, to them it was a real experience. We are apt to reduce the Christian religion to a code, or at best a rule of heart and life. To these men it is quite plainly the invasion of their lives by a new quality of life altogether.

They do not hesitate to describe this as Christ ʻliving inʼ them. These early Christians were on fire with the conviction that they had become, through Christ, literally sons of God; they were pioneers of a new humanity, founders of a new Kingdom. They still speak to us across the centuries. Perhaps if we believed what they believed, we might achieve what they achieved..”

— J.B. Phillips

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The earliest followers experienced the powerful aftermath of Jesus’ empty tomb: thousands of people turning to Jesus as their Master and Forgiver, radical life-change, and rumblings throughout society about this God-man who now lives. 

In addition to keeping the Jewish Sabbath, these first followers of Christ added the observance of the first day of the week - the day that Jesus rose from death to life.  This is why most Christians worship on Sunday mornings. 

According to premiere Christian historian Justo Gonzalez, the earliest communion services did not center on Christ’s passion - they were not quiet, introspective, reflective services.  

Instead, Christians worshiped weekly in loud celebration, understanding that the tomb was empty, death could not hold Jesus, and He was ushering in a new age of victory.  Yes, every Sunday was a party for One! 

It was much later - centuries later - before the focus of Christian worship shifted towards the death of Jesus.  In the earliest Christian community, the breaking of bread took place “with glad and generous hearts” (Acts 2:46).

May we embrace this same infectious enthusiasm first demonstrated by the earliest Christ followers. 

May we worship Jesus Christ with great passion, may we love others with scandalous grace, and may we be outward-focused in our church communities. 

An empty tomb provokes nothing less.

Listen to God + Do What He Says

The New Rules of Leadership

The COVID disruption of the past 16+ months changed everything: rhythms, routines and priorities.

Leading an organization has never been harder.

Here’s some of the New Rules of Leadership I’ve been learning along the way…

NEVER APOLOGIZE for Wanting Your Church to Grow

60 Seconds of Fast Leadership Fuel

Fight Your Fears by Making 'Em Laugh

The late Dr. Martin de Maat had a profound impact on my life (I wrote about that here).  He was not only my professor and mentor, he was a close friend (Martin was even one of my wedding groomsmen!).

Dr. de Maat taught me so much not only about improvisational-comedy, but more importantly about the joy of doing life together:

"What happens... in being with each other in acceptance and Yes And-ing each other, is that you as an individual start to believe in yourself because you begin to see yourself in the others' eyes.

Your ensemble, your group, your team, your committee, is the one that's believing in you and you pull it together to do it for them.

You know, it's simply recognizing you're not alone. It's love and unconditional acceptance.

You put yourself in a place of support, unconditional acceptance and love for who you are, the way you are and your uniqueness, and what you do is grow. You surround yourself with people who are truly interested in you and listen to you, and you will grow.

And it doesn't take much to start advancing you, it doesn't take much of that support, it doesn't take much of that love and that care and you can do it. You can play act with people. You can be in a state of play together."

This is how comedians create new material.
Yes And leads to trust leads to contagious unity leads to childlike creativity.
Its how leaders might lead teams in the 21st Century.

Don't settle for the loneliness of leadership isolation.
Dream of and strive for a team of church leaders who are accepting of one another's uniquenesses.  After all, we each bring different strengths to the table.

I love what Martin would say about the group dynamics of creating comedy through Yes And:

"There's a lot of laughter that goes on. Since we're laughing together, we're true community. It's a very safe place to confront your fears. The minute somebody says, 'Perform!' your fear comes up..."

As we Yes And, may we as leaders embrace contagious unity and laughter. 

By refusing to perform and instead choosing raw, authentic community, we may just lead at a higher, deeper, more spiritually-sensitive level than before...

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