Collaborative leadership April 21, 2009
Posted by Gilbert Kingsley in Leadership.add a comment
I have known Lorna Johnson, Regional Team Leader, The Impact Movement, for many years. She sent me an email this week telling about their Impact Leadership Institutes. These institutes prepare students for their leadership responsibilities for the fall and give them an opportunity to plan their semester start up. Lorna has a passion to instill in others the confidence that they can make a difference for Christ. That really comes out in her email.
These last two weeks, we have had our leadership training and I wanted to let you see some of what we did with our students. We did five trainings this year and they went over extremely well again this year. This was a small taste and as we broke up into the various roles and responsibilities students gleaned from one another. At one point we had a representative from each role to stand up front. When each team gave a report of their plans, if they rolled over into another’s responsibility, they had to go and stand in front of the person with that outside role. It was great for the students to pick up on the crossing into an others’ role and not trusting their team mates.
Oh, this was also very enlightening for the Liaisons to begin to really understand their role in asking the right questions, giving direction in light of criteria set by the team for the first six weeks. It was good for the six week planning for the Fall.
By the way, the Liaison communicates with their Impact coach weekly, leads prayer, and facilitates and shepherds the servant team. Other roles on their servant team deal with Evangelism/Outreach, Follow-up, Discipleship and Conference & Events.
As Lorna painted a picture of what collaborative leadership looked like, she asked these questions:
- Does everyone on the team know the mission and vision of the Impact Movement?…And how your chapter will actively work in seeing this come to pass on your campus?
- Does everyone on the Servant Team have a clearly identified role? Are they all operating in their roles?
- Are all team members aware of and familiar with all of the Impact Movement’s resources: the Passage, the Grill, Notyourmamasreligion.com, The Journey?
As we think about setting up our own student leaders for next fall, we want to consider, both, how each leader can make a significant difference and how they need to work together in teams. That way we minimize overlapping in some responsibilities and ignoring others.
Five Components of Healthy Teams April 13, 2009
Posted by Gilbert Kingsley in Leadership, Personal Growth.add a comment
Are you setting up your leadership team for one of your campuses next year?
Are you putting in place a team that would lead a summer ministry on a campus?
Are you commissioning a new missional team to launch in another community on campus or on a new campus?
In every situation there are critical components necessary for the proper functioning of that team in order to realize the vision.
I happen to ride recently with Barry Rush, Global Leadership Development Team, and we were talking about training and the skills needed to lead and develop teams. Certainly there are things to be said about
- team function (purpose, roles, etc.),
- team processes (strategic planning, effective meetings, problem solving, decision making processes), and
- team communication (communication skills, conflict resolution).
But very often the success or failure of a team depends upon the relational aspects of leading. That is the focus of today’s tip. Barry and his team unpack Ephesians 4:1-32, identifying five components of healthy teams. I asked if I could pass this on to you.
Five Components of Healthy Teams
1. Individuals growing in character.
- Ephesians 4:1-2
- How would it be if each person on our teams were characterized by humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance and love?
2. Commitment to unity.
- Ephesians 4:3-6, 16
- Consider ways that each person can contribute to the unity of the team.
3. Valuing gifts and appreciating differences.
- Ephesians 4:7,11-13
- Every team member needs to be known as a person, to be needed, to be involved and give input, and to know their role in the mission.
4. Speaking the truth in love.
- Ephesians 4:15
- If members of a team consistently practiced ‘speaking the truth in love”, how would that change the team?
5. Using the language of kindness.
- Ephesians 4:32
- Do we use sarcasm? Do we withdraw? Do we use passive-aggressive humor to attack others? Does our body language communicate something other than kindness?
It turns out there is one more component, forgiveness!
- Forgiveness is foundational to healthy teams and helps members move beyond mistakes or problems in relationships.
In a world where jockeying for position, blame shifting and cottage industries of hostility are the norm of the day, such healthy teams will take work. But there is something very attractive about such teams. Jesus said that we would be a powerful witness to others. “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:32 NIV
Passing the Baton March 8, 2009
Posted by Gilbert Kingsley in Leadership, Student Ownership.add a comment
If you have not begun by now, you want to be thinking about which leaders you can count on returning next year. Who can you ask to move into leadership? The earlier you choose your leaders for next year the more they can prepare for their roles. Here are some things to help in the transitioning process.
Transitioning to new leadership
1. What is God calling our leaders to?
- Why not take them through the “Transformational Community” article.
- Use the discussion questions, to guide your study.
- Ben Rivera’s Life Focus studies are a great way to look at the purpose passages of the Bible and think through how to develop a personal mission. There is nothing like the personal interaction with God’s Word that these studies help foster. You can either do the studies during your leadership meetings or have them do them on their own and then come prepared to discuss them.
2. Developing personal vision.
- Next, for personal perspective, read and study “Developing Vision for your Movement“. Establishing vision and motivation is so important for your students.
- Another helpful diagnostic is “Evaluating the Direction of my Movement“.
3. Planning.
- Finally, in preparation for the fall, look at the “First 6 Weeks“. This will help to specifically plan for the most critical time of the year.
- Read “Two Essentials for the First Week of School“.
Yesterday, our youngest son, Tom, had his first high school track meet of the the season. The relays are always exciting races. I watched a team blow a lead and lose their race because they messed up the baton pass. That handoff is the most important part of any relay. If the baton is dropped, the team is disqualified, or, at the least, looses precious seconds and momentum. The next runner to receive the baton gets themselves into position to receive it and then take off running. They must keep in mind both what is happening with the runner handing off and the race in front of them. This is such an apt metaphor of what we want to see happen in transitioning leadership. They watch the current leadership to consider what and how to lead and they begin to plan for when it is their turn. Let’s help that baton pass go well.
The Cornelius Principle February 21, 2009
Posted by Gilbert Kingsley in Launching, Leadership, Volunteers.1 comment so far
In last week’s tip, I talked about how Christ looked to go to other places even while things were happening at home. You remember the “whole town was gathered at the door.” He knew, and we know, that others also need to hear the gospel. God honors faith in going to other places. Here is where the “Cornelius Principle” comes into play.
In Acts 10, we see the story of Cornelius. Peter was praying. God gave him a vision of a sheet coming down from heaven with various animals on it, some clean and some unclean. God told him that they were all clean. At that very moment, Peter received a knock at the door with a request to come to Cornelius’s home, a Gentile home. Earlier in the chapter we read about this God-fearing Cornelius, but Peter had know way of knowing what would transpire. When he explained the Gospel, the whole household believed. Peter came to see that God wanted those outside his community of faith to be saved also. But the point here is that God had already worked in Cornelius’ heart before Peter ever showed up. When he heard the message, he received it gladly.
Likewise, we believe that God has already prepared some on other campuses and in other cultural communities to receive the message we bring. Some are prepared to receive Christ. And some will have a desire to start a work of God in their community.
For example, Dave Pritchett, Forerunner, Southeast Region, developed a webpage, where students can learn about starting a ministry. He also developed ads to put on Facebook to point to that page. John Achilles, Forerunner, Red River Region, placed ads on Facebook for a dozen campuses. There have been over 425 hits from those campuses the first week. God cares more about seeing ministries launched on campuses so that others can hear the Good News of Jesus Christ than we ever will. We know that God wants all to come to faith. We are simply going where God has already worked ahead of time.
Dave Meritt, Student Venture’s Coaching Center, received an email from Kevin saying that he wanted to make a difference for Christ in a school in Missouri. Dave emailed him about GoCampus and how he could apply to volunteer with Student Venture. Within three days, he had an application and all the references in. He emailed again saying the more he dug into GoCampus, the more excited he got about what God might do. In Dave’s first phone conversation with him, he mentioned he was connected with five youth pastors who had kids coming from as many schools. Each one is interested in seeing a movement launched in those schools. Dave says that the Coaching Center believes God has prepared one or two people to make a difference for Christ in every school in the country.
So as we go, trusting God to raise up those who want to make a difference for Christ, let’s anticipate what God will do. We can assume that He has been working in advance and we can trust Him to lead us to those Great Commission resources, people and otherwise, to reach that campus or community for Christ.
Two new important websites December 15, 2008
Posted by Gilbert Kingsley in Coaching, Launching, Leadership, Sending.add a comment
You have plenty to do this time of year. There is the end of the semester wrap-up, finalizing details for Christmas/Winter conferences, Christmas cards, end of the year fund appeals, etc. But if you have a place where you are putting ideas for next semester, tuck this tip away and pull it out in early January. Here are two new websites that you will want to become familiar with. You are going to find these extremely helpful.
First, http://sites.google.com/site/missionalteamleaders/
With our emphasis on launching Missional Teams, this site developed under the guidance of Stacie Fletcher and her team of reviewers and contributors, has resources that will help us as we form and send missional teams. If you have seen the Missional Team Leaders position focus, then you already know the general layout of the site.
- Love The Lord
- Lead Your Team
- Line Up Resources
- Launch and Build New Movements
On the home page, you will find this opening description:
“You’re passionate about reaching students with the good news of Jesus Christ. And so you have committed to leading a team of like-minded people, a missional team, to do just that. So what now?!? As a missional team leader, your role is to lead a team of Christ-like laborers who are committed to reaching a defined campus or people group with the gospel by launching win, build, send movements.”
Second, http://allcallings.com/
You will hear more about this at the Christmas/Winter conferences. But as you raise up missional teams, some of those will be led by students, volunteers and alumni, not just staff. Some of our graduating seniors will be kingdom called, staff ready, but not staff called. They will have interests as varied as aid and relief, entertainment and the arts, high school ministry, social justice and the workplace. Here is a place to find others of like mind, moving to the same city or working in the same ventures. With 10,000 graduates every year from our ministries, imagine sending your trained leaders to a city and connecting with leaders that other ministries are also sending to that same city, getting connected and having access to all the resources on the first site above.
How exciting! Again, when you get together for your planning time at the beginning of next semester, pull this out and poke around on each site. This will be the last tip until January. Until then…
…Merry Christmas,
January Transition to new Leadership November 10, 2008
Posted by Gilbert Kingsley in Leadership, Student Ownership.add a comment
Our middle son, Will, is in his final semester at Florida State University. Last year, when he was home for the Thanksgiving weekend, we talked about what would happen to the ministry when he and the fairly active group of leaders that he was a part of would graduate. Obviously, they needed to pass the baton on to the next group of leaders, but to whom, when and how?
Selection
Why think about selection now? We still have more than a semester left. I don’t think there is anyone better to cheer on and encourage new leadership, as well as to offer help if they stumble, than those who just handed off leadership? They have a vested interest in their success. Leadership development and selection must be intentional.
Take time to think through those who demonstrate spiritual leadership. Such leadership does not happen just by showing up or having a great personality. Leaders are developed. That happens as you delegate responsibility and watch how they bring their own vision and faith to the task. One way to make this more concrete is by considering the visibility/risk grid. Here is a very simple exercise for using the grid. Leadership naturally involves both high risk and high visibility.
Delegation
One concern Will had about turning responsibility over to new leadership was their readiness. In general, I believe that we wait too long before giving responsibility to others. Yes, there are qualifications necessary for leadership. But often we neglect how much the new leader must trust God. The faith factor is necessary for growth. Nearly everyone feels inadequate when they first step into a leadership position. What better place to be than to really have to trust God for wisdom and direction.
Eric Swanson’s excellent article on Effective Delegation, offers some simple steps in delegating responsibility:
- Decide what needs to be done.
- Select the best person for the job. Let him/her know you believe he/she can do it. Trust is one of the highest forms of motivation.
- Clarify and agree upon the desired result and deadline. Major on what, not how–results, not methods.
- Define guidelines and potential pitfalls. Let him/her learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of others.
- Establish level of authority, accountability, and method of evaluation.
- Identify resources–financial, human, technical, and organizational resources that he/she can draw from.
- Establish consequences.
Passing the baton
I suggested to Will that their leadership team sit down now before the end of this semester and determine a game plan for passing the baton of leadership early next semester. We typically wait until the end of the year to hand off leadership. Those new leaders wait until next August to begin leading. That can be a rather difficult handicap to overcome given the spiritually challenging summers for many. Why not install them as leaders early in the spring when the example of the present team is still fresh in their minds. The old leadership can be there to encourage and answer questions.
Also, August is typically a high risk, high visibility time for the ministry. It is when you want your ministries to be firing on all cylinders. You must hit the ground running in order to take advantage of that once a year opportunity of connecting with as many incoming freshman as possible. Why not use the Spring semester to help the new team function together and develop the plans that they will implement in August.
Visibility/Risk Grid with Examples November 10, 2008
Posted by Gilbert Kingsley in Leadership, Student Ownership.add a comment
Making Vision Stick October 20, 2008
Posted by Gilbert Kingsley in Leadership.add a comment
I was handed a little book recently by Andy Stanley of North Point Community Church in Atlanta. Making Vision Stick is one of his Leadership Library books. I read Creating Community a couple of years ago and enjoyed it. But I thought I would give you a summary of Vision because there were some things that were particularly salient for us.
Making Vision Stick
We talk a lot about casting vision in our ministry. But Stanley says the leader is responsible for more than just casting vision. He mentions five different aspects.
- State the vision simply. Stanley says, “It is better to have a vision statement that is incomplete and memorable than to have one that is complete and forgettable.”
- Cast the vision convincingly. He suggests that we 1. Define the problem. 2. Offer a solution. 3. Present a reason. If we can’t do this, the vision won’t stick.
- Repeat the vision regularly. I forget how much we need to be reminded of what we are doing and why. Stanley says we needed to be reminded more often than we think.
- Celebrate the vision systematically. Celebration is important and it reminds others of those things that are important. For example, I send out a weekly email to our ministry partners. This is one of the smartest things I have done in MPD. I am surprised how often our partners refer to something I mention in those emails. It is a systematic way of keeping our partners informed of what we are doing.
- Embrace the vision personally. It is so easy to get distracted by secondary matters. We need to personally embody what we are talking about.
Stanley also mentions, what he calls, “vision slippage indicators”. First new projects, products and programs must be vision-centric. Lots of cool things come our way, but do they help us accomplish our vision? Then there are requests, stories and complaints. What we are getting back from our people lets us know whether the vision has caught on.
You can read Making Vision Stick in a sitting. But we want to live out those lessons all year long. I like to use the Transformational Community article at the start of the year. But throughout the year, I keep pulling out the prayer, win, build and send critical path. What works for you?
Consciousness and Competence September 29, 2008
Posted by Gilbert Kingsley in Discipleship, Leadership, Student Ownership.add a comment
I recently sent a tip entitled “Give it Away”, about some thoughts from Scott Livermore on handing ownership off to students and volunteers. Any kind of skill development takes time and goes through this simple progression of stages:
- Unconscious Incompetence
- Conscious Incompetence
- Conscious Competence
- Unconscious Competence
We begin not knowing what we don’t know. Then we progress to thinking we can’t do that. Then as we learn how to do something, we really have to focus on what we are doing the first few times doing it. Finally, the skill becomes so ingrained that we can do it without thinking about it.
This progression is true for any skill development: playing piano, painting a room, driving a car or sharing our faith. I often think about how distributing ministry to students and volunteers is like teaching my sons to drive. There was only so much modeling I could do with them. But at some point I needed to get out of the driver’s seat and let them take the wheel. In fact, I noticed that they thought they could do K turns, back out of the driveway and stop smoothly at a stop signs until they tried it themselves. It turned out to be more difficult than they thought. But it was giving them experience that was the key to developing those skills.
Back in August Steve Douglass wrote about “Finding the Leader”. Very insightful. He wrote:
We are all about spiritual multiplication—which involves passing ownership of ministry on to others. But that won’t happen if we view most of our disciples as “disqualified” for one reason or another.
If we find it hard to have faith that God is able to use them, we won’t even try to challenge them toward their potential as a leader. Or, we may embark on a process of discipleship that is so drawn out that people drop out needlessly.
Am I advocating that we should ignore that people have certain barriers to becoming multipliers? No, not at all. I am just advocating that we:
1. Have faith that God can make people useful to Him.
2. Look for people whose hearts are right before God (“good soil”).
3. Work with them aggressively to use their strengths and grow in their weak areas.
4. Give them a chance to try to minister, perhaps a little sooner than we might think.
5. Encourage them throughout the process.
Anytime you find yourself reluctant to do these things, think first of one of your own experiences or those of someone you know well. How “perfect” were you when you got started? How skilled were you at evangelism and discipleship? How different are you now than when someone believed in you and let you try?
As you think about potential leaders, where do they fall on the conscious/competence scale? What are the next appropriate steps to move them to the next stage? And what stands in the way, on our part or theirs, toward making taking those next steps?
unChristian August 19, 2008
Posted by Gilbert Kingsley in Evangelism, Leadership.add a comment
Welcome to another year of Coaching Tips. I love doing these. It gives me a chance to pass on some of the best thinking, resources and strategies that others are using in their ministries.
Last Spring I sent a tip on Social Graces. GP Foote, replied with some further insight and a suggestion. He recommended the book, “unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity…And Why it Matters”, a research project by David Kinnaman with the Barna Group. I was intrigued, so I got a copy and read it this summer. It is much more than intriguing. It is sobering.
A couple of weeks ago, Jason Weimer, in Pittsburgh, wrote to recommend the same book. He writes,
“Reading their findings and some of the ways they suggest responding to the data has really begun to shift the way our team will be approaching ministry this year. It underscores the fact that the culture is changing faster than we realize, and some of our ministry strategies and “traditions” need to shift with it, in order to gain relevancy and effectiveness. I’m still working through what that will look like, but I’m convinced that we need to re-think many of the ways we seek to reach students and address these very real perspectives. As these perspectives, which are brought on largely by the church itself, continue to gain traction, the Gospel will more and more fall on deaf ears. So we need to face them head on, own our mistakes and unChristian ways we’ve lived and ministered, and live in a more Christ-like way, presenting a new, truer perspective of Christ-followers. I’m convinced that this is a must-read for those of us in campus ministry.”
I agree. In fact, I am planning to have our Student LINC and Coaching Center teams read the book this fall and discuss it. According to the Barna research, there are six common perceptions that “Busters and Mosaics” (those in the 16-29 age group) have of Christians. They believe that we are hypocritical, judgmental, only have a “get people saved” mentality, anti-homosexual, sheltered, and too political. As Gabe Lyons, the one who commissioned the research writes,
“…I had little to go on except my gut-level sense that something was desperately wrong with the way Christianity was perceived in our nation…My sense was that if Christians could read the mind of outsiders, filtered through the objective lens of research, it would provide the motivation we needed to change how we see ourselves and our role in culture. And over time it could significantly alter how we live and interact with our friends, colleagues, and neighbors…I’ll never forget sitting in Starbucks, poring through the research results on my laptop. As I soaked it in, I glanced at the people around me and was overwhelmed with the thought that this is what they think of me…My next reaction, however, shocked me. I was overwhelmed with a sense of hope…Having access to what those around me really thought challenged me. I had finally been offered a unique glimpse into the perspective of those I’m called to love and embrace, and I was humbled, embarrassed, and provoked to make a difference.”
As I read the book, I was stirred in the same ways. My wife and I lead the Marriage Prep Class in our church. 22 of the 38 couples in our class are in this age group. Some of these thoughts have a direct bearing, not on changing our message, but on how we want to communicate that message in our class. Jason said that his Pittsburgh team is talking about how their “evangelism focus will be more relational than ever. We’re focusing on building godly community and inviting non-Christian friends into that community…I’m also more open to doing things we’ve not done in the past under the reasoning that our call is to reach students (like specific ministry opportunities to the homeless, being intentionally active in social justice issues, etc.), specifically with the understanding that activity in these areas, especially alongside non-believers, can be an incredibly powerful means of indirect evangelism, a barrier-breaker perhaps.” Think Good News/Good Deeds and Katrina Relief.
Most of you have been receiving these tips for at least a year. My hope during these moments each week is to help us all be more effective in reaching lost students, launching new ministries, distributing ownership to more students and coaching students and volunteers with a variety of methods. In essence, helping us all work smarter and more effectively. If you have a resource, a strategy or perspective that you think would benefit us all, let me know. And if you have thoughts on today’s tip, I would welcome a dialogue on what it will take for us as a ministry to become known as people who really do love others and seek the best for them.
