Church Politics

Posted on May 23, 2011 Written by

This is a personal soapbox – this issue troubles me more than anything else in church life because I feel it completely and utterly distracts the church from accomplishing it’s God-given mission of sharing the Good News. This post will not be easy to write nor to read.

Jesus attacked only one group of people during his ministry on earth: Pharisees and Sadducees. Those men were the paid staff and lay leaders of the temple in Jerusalem. It was to them that all Jews looked to for guidance and wisdom. I have long wondered if I, as a paid church staff professional, will feel the same verbal assault on me that Jesus laid on those church staff of 2000 years ago.

Jesus’ withering criticism of them is that they were caught up in the minutae of life. The Pharisees and Sadducees debated for endless hours about trivial matters while they completely ignored the important religious and physical needs of the people. They made up 613 laws which became an unbearable burden to commons Jews so that they hated to go to Temple but they did so out of obligation. Jesus went to Temple only to worship – he didn’t debat the Pharisees and Sadducees in the Temple. They found him out among the people and they took their pettiness to him. How many times do the Gospels refer to Jesus as speaking with authority or speaking in a way at which the people marveled? Jesus focused not on the Temple politics of his day but on the big issues. Jesus instructed his disciples to keep their eyes on the God-things: disciple, baptize and teach (Matthew 28:19-20).

I’ve heard that many (if not most) young pastors prefer to start their own churches instead of stepping into an established church. Why? One answer may be the quantity of church politics. Established churches are hotbeds of politics, procedures, entrenched committee members, “but we’ve never done it that way before” mentality, and tradition. (So much of that is fear-based – fear of losing control, fear of not having enough, plain old fear. This is ironic since as Christians we are supposed to believe that God is in control and that God is generous beyond measure.)

I believe that church politics make people avoid church. They see the petty squabbles and decide that this is not for them – they want a God that is interested in big things such as people. Arguments and struggles over money, position, power, and decisions are so petty as to make God cry, especially when Christians do it.

I’ve been in too many meetings when an absurdly petty topic was raised: should we allow line dancing in the gym, what type of lettering should be on a sign, etc. I ask myself if this topic rises to the level of honoring Jesus and his sacrifice. Almost every time the answer is no, it doesn’t. It is a small matter which should be dealt with by one or two people so that the big group can focus on the big issue: sharing the Good News.

Lead On!
Steve

Filed Under: church administration, leadership Tagged: ,

Church Personnel Committees

Posted on April 26, 2011 Written by

My experience with Personnel Committees is that they don’t know their own job description. Too many times the committee acts more like a “Human Resources Department” than a personnel committee. Let me explain the difference.

A human resources department provides all the forms for new staff and departing staff, ensures those forms are complete, interprets the personnel manual for staff, works with vendors to get the approved benefits at the best possible price, and handles other routine personnel needs. Frankly, those are all functions that in a church should be handled by the staff and not by a committee.

A personnel committee of a church is vastly different. A personnel committee should do the following

  • Develop a personnel manual and review it at least once a year for updates
  • Develop a salary structure and salary range so that all employees are treated according to their “pay grade.” Most churches have no concept of this much less how to go about creating salary ranges. However, it is essential that a church do this to help their staff.
  • Hire the senior pastor and give him an actual, honest job performance evaluation. This may include an annual 360 eval for the pastor; that is a good thing so that he can have a true sense of his leadership and his management.
  • Help the senior pastor with his direct reports. The senior pastor may need counsel on who should report directly to him and who should not. The pastor may need help with the job descriptions of those who report directly to him. Finally, the senior pastor may ask for help in recruiting the people who work most closely with him.
    • For the most part, I disagree with the notion that there should be a search committee for positions in the church below the senior pastor – the leaders should be able to hire those whom he feels will work best with him and not have a committee decide for him (after all, shouldn’t those lay members be doing Kingdom work and not be the HR department?).
    • The senior pastor should have the freedom to select his lieutenants and craft their job descriptions with the advice and counsel of the personnel committee, but not their veto. Those leaders, in turn, should have the freedom to select the second level of leadership without having to jump through hoops of lay people. Some, but not many, lay people are qualified to help in recruitment; it’s just that they could be doing something else for God instead of having meetings.

So, if you’re in a personnel committee, ask the committee chair for a job description of what the committee is responsible for. If that JD needs to be updated because the church has grown and/or changed, then do it! If there is no JD, then help the pastor and committee chair develop an appropriate description of responsibilities for the personnel committee. A good one will save the committee members a lot of time and grief, it will help the pastor and staff know what everyone is charged with doing, and it will ensure that everyone is doing what is expected of them.

Lead On!
Steve

Filed Under: church administration, church staff Tagged: ,

Aptitude and Attitude

Posted on April 25, 2011 Written by

Whenever I hire someone, I look for two things: aptitude and attitude. I tell that to the interviewee pretty soon during the interview, too. That gives them an understanding of what I’m looking for. However, before you get to have a face-to-face with me, I’ve already had at least one phone interview with you – the in-person interview is just to confirm or change what I think I know about you.

Aptitude is the knowledge-base or skill-set that an employee brings with him or her. That is a compilation of that person’s life experiences, education, work knowledge, training, books read, and everything else that this person has learned to this point in life. It is far too much to unpack in an interview but I try to get a glimpse into what the person knows.

Attitude is the mindset the person has about work, life, other people, etc. Attitude is BY FAR the most important of the two items I look for. I can train aptitude if you have the right attitude. Aptitude is easy and knowledge can be taught. Attitude can never be taught – it is who you are and tells me (the prospective employer) more about what kind of employee you’ll be than any résumé ever will. Attitude comes through loud and clear usually within the first 60 seconds of a meeting, even an interview where you’re doing all you can to impress someone.

This approach also works with both volunteers. Get vols who have the right attitude, and whatever program they’re in will have a much better change of success. Having the right attitude to anything in life will infect and affect others around you. So, my suggestion is that when you interview for a staff position or a volunteer (or even when you interview somewhere) have the right attitude regardless of your aptitude. Eventually your attitude (and those whom you interview) will rise to surface – you might as well know it from the outset.

Lead On!
Steve

Filed Under: church staff, leadership, wisdom Tagged: , ,

Robbing the Rich

Posted on April 15, 2011 Written by

Every church steals from the rich and I wish they’d just get over it. Take money from the rich because, believe it or not, they are looking for ways to give their money away and when you don’t give them a chance to give their money to the causes the church supports, then you are robbing the rich.

I’ve dealt with a lot of rich people over the years. One guy that took me under his wing (thanks, HG!) quoted about $15 million in various bank accounts; another guy wrote a check for $2.2 million to the Community Foundation I worked at because that’s what his accountants told him he had to give away that year. A few years ago the magazine Town & Country (whose target audience has a gazillion dollars to their name) ran an entire issue on the subject of philanthropy. The rich are being asked for their money every day by their alma maters, hospitals and other charities. But churches don’t want to approach them.

Here’s a secret about the wealthy – many of them are very lonely because of their wealth. They’ve learned that people want to be around them so that they can get something out of their rich “friends.” That has made the rich extremely cautious in who they’ll talk to. However, the rich are people just like you and me and they need honest, true friends – not people who plan to use them.

Churches have two hang ups about the wealthy and we need to get over those hangs ups!

  • Some people misinterpret verses in the book of James and take them that we should pretty much ignore the rich. Actually, James talks about how to help the rich be better Christians – something we all can use. You don’t need to overtly favor the rich – they don’t want it anyway – but you don’t need to ignore them either.
  • Most pastors have never been rich and so have no idea how to talk about money. I’ve learned that the rich have no problem talking about money, they do it every day. It is the church and its leaders that need face that they have a problem talking about money. Here’s a solution: go to a rich person and get him or her to coach you in how to talk to the rich about money. I’m pretty sure they’d love to help you.

Some wealthy people have the gift of generosity. They know they have money and they want to use that money for God. When church leaders do not give the rich the opportunity to be generous, those leaders have robbed the rich and failed to be the leaders God wants them to be.

Suggestions

  • Every pastor should know the top 25 donors to his/her church
  • Every pastor should meet with those 25 donors at least once a year and better, twice a year. That means that once a week, the pastor will set aside two hours for a meeting. That way, every year the pastor will meet with the top 25 donors twice a year.
  • The meetings should NOT be about money. The meetings MUST be about the donor, his needs, his family, the vision the pastor has for the church, and what is currently going on in the church.
  • At a minimum, the pastor may gain business insights in how to run the church’s business more efficiently and effectively
  • The pastor may gain some strong acquaintenances and perhaps even friends
  • The pastor will definitely gain the right to talk about money when the time comes for a capital campaign or other need
  • The donor will gain insight into what the pastor goes through in a week and have a better understanding of how churches work
  • The donor will learn of opportunities to fund specific needs where his money can make a real difference
  • The donor will feel like a person and not a pariah just because he has money

Please, please, please get to know your top donors and know them well. Treat them as people (not as ATMs) and meet their human and spiritual needs. Then, when you are in need financially, you’ll be surprised by how generous they are even before you ask! And again, if you feel uncomfortable, ask them to teach you – I can promise you that most of them would jump at the chance to help their pastor and other church leaders!

Lead On!
Steve

Filed Under: generosity Tagged:

Uncertainty, part 2

Posted on April 4, 2011 Written by

Recently I came across a great example of cutting through uncertainty or how a leader can infuse his or her organization with clarity and commitment. Apple is the darling of corporate America – it is the company that analysts point to, that nice corporate gifts come from, and which is becoming a household name thanks to the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. But Apple used to be a niche company. It’s computers were the mainstays of a few industries such as printing, publishing and other areas that used a lot of graphics.

Apple was created by Steve Jobs and a few friends in the late 1970s when personal computers began coming over the horizon in great numbers. (I remember going to work right out of college in 1983 and my very first personal computer was made by Xerox! It even had two external 5.25 floppy drives – it was amazing.) Apple developed its market but it was not as successful as Bill Gates who teamed up with Intel, IBM and other major manufacturers. Apple very quickly became a niche computer company and the board of Apple fired Jobs in 1985.

A dozen years later, Apple’s board of directors (by now with completely new members) re-hired Jobs. He didn’t like what he found. It was a company in disarray with no focus. Almost immediately Steve began cutting product lines and making changes that lead to great fear of him by the staff. In reality he didn’t cut that much but what was cut was so visible that almost all areas of the company suffered from low morale. That didn’t last long – Jobs began introducing ideas and innovations very quickly (BTW, he co-founded Pixar, the animated movie maker of great fame, during his “exile” from Apple). Soon, Apple became profitable and within ten years, by 2007 had introduced iTunes, iPods, and the iPhone and in 2010 the world was rocked by the iPad which sold 15 million units in less than one year.

Under Jobs, Apple has great clarity of purpose. All extraneous items are tossed overboard. Laser-beam focus is the order of the day. I heard that Apple’s tag line is, “We use technology to make life easier and we just happen to make computers.” Apple is no longer a niche company.

Question for you: does your church have laser-beam focus on its goals. Have you chunked overboard everything that is not helping your church achieve its vision. Or are you saddled with unnecessary programs and activities that really don’t push you forward but you do them “because everyone else is doing them.”

One of my favorite analogies is of a river with stones in it. First, are you crossing the right river? There are lots of rivers with stones but your vision must point to the river which you will cross and over which your members will follow. Select your vision (river) wisely and with God’s help because once you start over, it is really, really tough to get everyone to back up. You will have some people that absolutely refuse to cross that river – that is fine; let them join another church and cross another river. You’re responsible for your God-given vision and your river. As you cross the river, look for the next rock on which to step – don’t look too far ahead, you won’t be able to see through the mist. Just look one, two or maybe three rocks ahead to know which direction to go – have a sense of direction (of the path) but not necessarily of the ultimate course.

When Jobs re-joined Apple in 1987, much less when he created it in the 1970s, he had no idea of an iPhone or iPad – he just knew his company needed to focus on making computers. Same with you – focus on leading your church in the direction your vision is leading. Don’t get too far in front of your people (don’t let the river’s mist fog their vision of you and the rocks they need to step on to follow you) but don’t slow down waiting for everyone to join you. You may even have to let some staff go and/or terminate some beloved programs – but help your followers understand that while these things are good, they do not add value to your vision. Yes, there will be bottlenecks and rapids and slippery stones – handle them one at a time, but always move forward.

Lead On!
Steve

Filed Under: leadership, strategy, wisdom Tagged: , ,

Q-Tips

Posted on March 23, 2011 Written by

I’ve got two packs of Q-Tips (registered trademark, I’m sure) in my office. I got them a dozen years ago and I use them as illustrations to my staff and colleagues several times a year. I pull them out when someone comes into my office with lots of frustration over what is going on (or not happening). I listen and then, as it is warranted, I have the following conversation:

Me: do you know what Q-Tip means? What is stands for?
Friend: no idea (with a completely bewildered look as in, Where the heck is this headed?)
Me: Quit Taking It Personally – QTIP
Friend: oh, cute.
Me: no, really. You, me, we need to separate the personal from the professional. When junk hits the fan, just step back (out of the way) and not let any of it get to you personally. Keep the professional and the personal separate.

About 25 or 30 years ago I read an article in Fortune from which I remember one line: “Attack the problem, not the person.” Too often in work (especially in church work), we merge our professional and personal lives and it often has bad consequences. Too often in work (especially in church work), we try to fix problems by fixing people – also often with bad consequenses.

Church professionals need to separate our personal lives from our professional lives – our spouses will appreciate it! But also realize that when we attack a problem, ensure the person on the other end fully understands this is not about him/her personally.

Buy a pack of Q-Tips. When things get tense in the office, hand out the Q-Tips and remind people that all this professional angst will go away and they don’t need to let it affect their personal lives. It is not an attack on who they are as individuals; it is just a professional issue and should be dealt with professionally.

Oh, one more thing – I’m sure the inventor of Q-Tips never thought of the slogan but I like it nonetheless!

Lead On!
Steve

Filed Under: church administration, church staff, leadership, wisdom Tagged: , , ,

Truth to Power

Posted on March 22, 2011 Written by

Many years ago I saw a documentary in which Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter spoke about how and who they surrounded themselves with. They readily acknowledged that everyone that works with the president of the United States is eager to say “yes” to every idea the president has. No one wants to question the president much less confront him (even in a nice way) – on anything.

That is the nature of leadership – the people around the leader want to please him or her. That is why they are there, especially in churches. Most staff members have no desire to become the senior pastor; we’re pretty content being the second chair (see “Leading from the Second Chair,” an excellent book by Bonem and Patterson). Pastors need not be threatened by their staff and most of them are not. However, pastors rarely get the unvarnished truth from their staff. Staff often go out of their way to avoid telling their bosses what is really going on with the staff and/or with the members whom they see. Staff don’t want to tell bad news to their superior. Staff will do almost anything to shield their leader from reality. Why?

Several reasons:

  • they don’t want to get punished as the messenger of the bad news.
  • they might be asked to dig deeper into this and that might cause them to find even more unpleasant things
  • they don’t know how to tell their boss bad news

Presidents Ford and Carter gave a solution that is both simple but exceedingly hard. The answer, according to them, is to surround yourself with people of integrity AND to empower them to tell you the honest, sometimes brutal truth, even when it comes out harsh. The balancing act is to permit them to say it to you, the leader; to say it judiciously (not being a dark cloud all the time but using those rights in a wise way); and especially for the leader to receive it in a positive manner (constructive criticism). How the boss receives the information will completely determine how that person and others on staff respond the next time there is bad news to be shared or when a leader needs some excruciating honesty.

I can tell you it begins with the leader – as these two presidents stated. The leader must get the right people, give explicit rights to certain members of his/her inner circle to speak very frankly as needed, and then receive that info as info (not as criticism) in a way that will invite further honesty. After all, a leader must have people of integrity around him/her all the time – anything less hurts the organization and its purpose.

Lead On!
Steve

Filed Under: leadership, wisdom Tagged: ,

Uncertainty

Posted on March 19, 2011 Written by

I follow the stock market. Doing fairly well but only about 15% of the way to what I need till I retire. There are two big things I know about the stock market:

  • Don’t follow the herd
  • The market hates uncertainty

I might spend another blog post on the first one but let me speak to uncertainty here because church members hate uncertainty too and it will show up in their support of their church – in their generosity of their time and the money.

Church’s must have goals – targets at which they’re aiming. Unless a church has one thing that unites them, then everything will divide them. Church members want to be part of something larger – that’s why they joined and participate in a church. They want their church to be on mission to do something, go somewhere, be leading in some way. If their church is not, then it quickly becomes a social club. Country clubs (I’ve never joined a country club and won’t, either) have no function except to serve their members – at least from my perspective. Church’s are not country clubs – they are churches.

Get rid of the uncertainty in your church. Find a mission/purpose and charge that vision with everything you’ve got. Plan for it strategically and tactically (notice, I said “plan”!) and then fulfill that plan of attack.

Your church is like a ship. There are places it cannot go easily like a ship cannot easily go on dry land. But two-thirds of the earth is water so your church/ship can go to more than half the world. The church are crew members, not passengers. If your church were passengers then you’d have a cruise ship which goes out to sea each Sunday morning and returns to the safe harbor before sundown. But your church members want to sail the high seas – they want a purpose in their church. They want to aim for the horizon and THEY WILL PAY GLADLY if their leader will take them to the far side of the world. Don’t underestimate your church – give them the adventure of their lives – the adventure that God promised each of us when he asked us to be fishers of men and women.

If you rob people of the chance to sail into deep and scary waters, then you’ve created uncertainty. No one knows where the cruise ship will head this week, what are our goals (to have a better meal than last time, a better Sunday morning show?), where are we going together and why are people leaving our church/ship for other places or even leaving the faith altogether. Don’t create uncertainty – create a vision. Clothe, feed, and nurture that vision every two or three weeks (Bill Hybels says that vision must be cast every 28 days or less). Be specific, be challenging, be big in your dreams, be willing to work with other organizations, be more God-sized in scope. Give your church a purpose and you’ll be amazed at the number of people clamoring to get on board.

Lead On!
Steve

Filed Under: leadership, wisdom Tagged: ,
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