Geoff and Sherry Surratt
Every time I interview someone for a job at a church I always tell them that working for a church can be challenging to their faith. There is a price to be paid for working where you attend church, and it is eye opening to discover that your new co-workers have a lot in common with your old co-workers. Based on over 35 years of working for churches here are my top four tips on how to work for a church AND love God.
One spring a church staff member informed me he was taking Easter weekend off. (It felt like Tom Brady telling Bill Belichik he was skipping the Super Bowl to take Gisele skiing.) He said he didn’t think missing Easter Sunday was a big deal, at his last church Easter was just another Sunday. Why did we make such a big deal about Easter?
Obviously Easter is a big deal because it is the day we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the single biggest event in the history of the world. Easter is also a big deal because it is the one day of the year that a majority of Americans still consider going to church. Getting someone to attend one day a year isn’t the point, of course, but it is a great place for people to take a first or next step toward God.
I’ve seen pastors work hard on a creative message to share the Gospel, worship leaders pull out all the stops for a moving service and children’s directors put everything they have into making Easter a day kids will remember; only to miss incredible opportunities to help people to connect to God through their church on the one day they show up. With that in mind here is my list of things not to miss this Easter.
Five things to do before Easter:
Grab a small team and walk through a weekend experience at your church from the parking lot to the lobby to the children’s spaces to the worship center to the kids pickup back to the parking lot and out to the street. Be sure to think through every entrance to your parking lot and building. Where do you need to post hosts? Where do you need to add signs? How can you help ease the anxiety of the introvert who walks in for the very first time?
After Easter you will want to share the story of what happens with staff, volunteers and attenders, so you need to prepare in advance. Enlist volunteer photographers to capture everything that happens on the weekend. Reach out to your congregation and I guarantee you will find volunteers photographers. Provide a Dropbox or Google folder for them to upload their photos, give them a few common sense directions, and then ask them to fire away.
Also designate one or two staff members or volunteers to be on the lookout for stories to capture. They can interview families before and after church to collect quotes and pictures to share later. Give them common sense instructions and see what they collect. Nothing encourages leaders and volunteers like stories of life change.
How will you invite people to share at least their email address so you con follow up? For many years Rick Warren has had everyone who attends Saddleback at Easter fill out a simple three question survey on their faith. It is a great way to get a look at the faith journey of the congregation and to collect contact information.
If I visit your church on Easter why would I ever come back? I listened to the music and heard your sermon. My kids got their Easter eggs. We’ll see you Christmas Eve, or maybe next Easter.
I attended a church a couple of weeks ago where the pastor did a great job of intriguing me to come back by giving a preview of the next week’s sermon. He didn’t just announce the topic and show a graphic, he actually set up the problem he’d be unpacking next Sunday. If the church wasn’t two hours from my house I’d show up just to hear the next sermon. How can you do more than simply announce your catchy series title to encourage guests to return?
Make sure you have a team of staff and/or volunteers ready to follow up on everyone who identifies themselves as a first time guest, and be sure they are ready to respond within 24 hours. Make sure your follow-up isn’t just a mail-merged impersonal email. Follow up in a way that isn’t creepy, but seems like a real person read my information and really wants to make a connection.
Easter is a really big deal. Easter is a day when people who normally pay no attention to the Gospel come willingly to our churches to consider the invitation of God. Don’t miss it!
(Be sure to check back next week for Five Things Every Pastor Needs to Do After Easter)
Email me at geoff@ministrytogether.com if you are interested in more help with church strategy.
I recently read an article in the Harvard Business Review titled Ban These 5 Words From Your Corporate Values Statement which reminded of a mistake I often see in a church’s list of core values; many of the items aren’t core values. It’s not that the items are evil or bad, the problem is their list of core values tells you almost nothing about who they are as a church. Take a look at your church’s list of core values and answer this question; Could your core values describe almost any evangelical church in America? If yes, then you don’t have core values, you have general principles. Core values drive your church toward your very unique mission in the word while general principles describe the basic beliefs and practices of almost all churches.
To help you in this exercise let’s look at five words churches should ban from their list of core values. WARNING: When you finish this list you may have to start over articulating your core values.
Your core values drive the mission of your church. Are you focused on people who’ve never heard the Gospel? Are you obsessed with justice for widows and orphans? Is your central purpose to see people become better disciples? Do you spend a huge amount of time and money investing in reaching unreached people groups in other countries? Are you passionate about building strong families? All of these are positive, but not every church is focused on the same areas. Every church has unique call and a unique bent; that’s what your core values should reflect. The authors of the HBR article say it like this:
“There isn’t one right set of values for every organization. Your core values should describe the collective attitudes and beliefs that you desire all employees to hold, translate those into specific actions and decisions that they should make, and then in turn show how those behaviors produce customer experiences that define and differentiate your brand. Your core values need to be unique.”
Take some time with other leaders in your church and ask these two questions:
While you’re looking at your core values you might want to pull out your mission statement and take a look at that as well. Here are some ideas to help write a more effective mission statement.
If you are redefining your vision, mission and values we’d love to help. We are certified in the Paterson Center’s StratOp process, which is an incredible system for discovering and executing your church’s God-given plan. You can contact us here for more information.
Why do you do what you do?Recently Sherry and I were in a pre-service meeting at a church where we were speaking that morning. The young lady leading the pre-service meeting of core volunteers asked, “Who knows the mission of our church?” There was some nervous laughter and feet shuffling, but no one had a clue. She turned to another staff member to see if he knew, but he was equally clueless. Finally she read a well-crafted phrase that had been pasted onto the church website and promptly forgotten. There was nothing wrong with the stated mission, it was simply irrelevant to the people charged with executing the mission. In the end none of us who assembled to conduct church that day had the faintest idea of why we were there.
Contrast that with another church I am connected to, Real Life Church based in Orlando. On a recent weekend a stage host sprang a pop quiz on the congregation at the largest campus, “Hey, who knows the mission of Real Life?” Immediately almost the entire congregation responded, “Changed lives!” There was no doubt the bottom line for everything that happens at Real Life, “Will what we are do lead directly to changed lives?” The mission is clear and easily understood.
One of the things I love about Community Christian in Naperville is the clarity and consistency of their mission. “Helping people find their way back to God” isn’t just a tagline on their website, it is the driving force behind everything they do. In the 13 years I’ve known Dave and Jon Ferguson their commitment to that one line has never wavered, and everything CCC does is organized around that simple concept. The mission at Willow Creek has never changed since the church was planted in 1975, “We exist to turn irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Christ.” My guess is that every staff member and most members could tell you some form of that sentence without hesitation. Community Christian and Willow Creek know what they do and why they do it.
Jesus was a strong believer in a simple mission. In Luke 19 church people were outraged that he would seem to endorse the lifestyle of a infamous “sinner” in the community by having lunch at Zaccheus’ house. To help them understand they why behind the what of his actions Jesus gave this simple and memorable mission statement, “The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.” Simple, direct and memorable. I imagine each of Jesus’ disciples knew exactly why Jesus came and what it was he was about. He came to seek and save the lost.
What about your church? Do you have a mission that is compelling, memorable and actionable? If I met five regular attenders and asked them, “What is the mission of your church?”, how many could tell me? I’ve worked with some churches with no mission statement at all. They have no idea why they do what they do. I’ve worked with many churches with a long, detailed mission statement they had spent a lot of time crafting. The challenge was their mission was unknown and meaningless to most of the attenders. Every church (and organization) needs a simple, one sentence mission statement the sums up the reason for everything they do. If you do not have one how does anyone know why you do what you do?
What is your one sentence purpose for doing what you do? Once you have that let’s take a look at your list of Core Values, I think there may be some problems there as well.
I recently had a fascinating conversation with a sharp young leader. They had just returned from an amazing vacation in the Caribbean. The food, the scenery, the weather, the company; everything was perfect. They were incredibly grateful for the opportunity to enjoy this vacation of a lifetime, but one they were overwhelmed by the economic gulf between them and the people who served at the resort. The shacks, the broken down roads, and the abject poverty were heart breaking. They could not shake the disconnect of experiencing opulent luxury surrounded by crippling need. They stopped in the middle of sharing their experience, looked at me with deep sincerity and asked, “What am I supposed to do?”
Their perspective is refreshing. They aren’t mired in the guilt of having more. They aren’t caught in the misguided trap of feeling better than or worse than the people they met. They see a need and know they must act. Rather than ignoring the pain or reacting to the cause they are simply asking, “What am I supposed to do?”
I saw this look on my wife’s face when she returned from her first visit to a school for AIDS orphans in a tiny village in Kenya. Everyone on her team was moved by what they saw, but my wife knew she had to act. She could not simply send money, or make return visits, she had to make a difference. She had to answer the question, “What am I supposed to do?” She formed a board for the school, revamped their sponsorship program, revitalized the fund raising and changed the future trajectory of the school.
Every day we are inundated with need. Children in Africa, refugees in Europe, immigrants in America. It is easy to become deaf to the cry of human desperation all around us; we can’t help everyone. But we can help some. Jesus didn’t heal all blindness, but he gave sight to the blind man on the road to Jericho. He didn’t restore every crippled limb, but he healed the lame man by the pool of Bethesda. He didn’t raise everyone from the dead, but he brought the widow’s son back to life. Rather than being callous or overwhelmed Jesus always cared for the one in front of him.
Imagine the impact, as we see needs both overwhelming and insignificant, if we asked that simple question, “What am I suppose to do?” You may decide to sponsor a child, or start a ministry, or volunteer at food bank. You may decide to raise money, or start a prayer chain, or tutor a middle schooler. The reality is that we can all do something in Jesus’ name, and together our force for good is overwhelming.
What AM I supposed to do?
I had a dream for many years. It doesn’t matter what the dream was, its mine not yours. I always thought this dream would happen, it was just a matter of time. Several times it felt like I was at the edge of the dream being fulfilled only to see it fall away like dust. Soon I was 40, then 45, then 50 and the dream never materialized. The hardest part was this wasn’t something I just passively hoped for, I did everything I knew to do to work toward the dream. And it wasn’t a pipe dream, many trusted friends and mentors confirmed that they believed the dream was in my wheelhouse, something I was wired up to do. I finally realized, however, the time for this particular dream was over. I don’t know why it never happened, but it was time to move on.“Sorry for the tears, never thought it would happen.”
“Give me my mountain.”
What dream have you given up on?
Matthew 28:16, 17 (NIV) Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.
These eleven men spent three years, 24/7, with Jesus. They saw him feed thousands of people with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. They were there when he gave sight to blind men, cleansed lepers and set demon possessed people free. All eleven stood at Lazarus’ tomb as the stone was rolled back and a dead man walked out. A few days before they saw Jesus’ body hanging lifeless on a Roman cross, but before the weekend was over Jesus walked out of a sealed tomb and joined them for lunch. And in spite of all they had experienced some of them doubted. How is that possible?Doubt is baked deep in the heart of all of us
Evidence doesn’t always overcome doubt
There is a leadership element to doubt
“Perhaps God will act on our behalf.”
Recently on a beautiful drive Sherry and I were comparing notes on what makes a
healthy ministry volunteer culture. (Some couples talk about vacations, some about retirement, we brainstorm ministry ideas; that’s just how we roll.) Working with ministries around the world the one question we hear more than any other is, “How do you find good volunteers?” Almost every church is desperate to find more children’s workers, parking lot attendants, ushers, small group leaders and dozens of other volunteer positions. As we drove through the beauty of the Rocky Mountains in early spring we agreed on two basics:
Most churches can’t find enough volunteers because they recruit to the wrong thing
Having an abundance of volunteers is driven by a healthy volunteer culture.
Let’s look first at recruiting. Whether they intend to or not almost every church appeals to need. The church NEEDS volunteers. We need people to watch children, to hand out bulletins, to count the offering, to lead small groups, to play in the band. We can’t do what we do without volunteers. Imagine what church would be if we didn’t have volunteers; we’d have to shut down programs and change how we do church. We appeal to people’s sense of duty, or to their guilt. We parade the needs of others in front of members hoping they will feel the need to step up to the plate. We remind the congregation that only 20% of the people do 80% of the work of the church.
As it turns out recruiting to need is effective with about 20% of the people who attend your church. If you are really effective, you may get to 25%. The challenge is we are inundated with needs every day. We drive past people with cardboard signs describing their needs. We are challenged at the grocery checkout line to donate to needy children. On TV Sarah McLachlan shows us pictures of sad animals, pleads with us to meet their needs as she sings “In the Arms of the Angels” (I’m not sure who’s in the angels’ arms, but it seems very sad). There are only so many needs we can care about, much less meet, so we draw the line somewhere. For most people the needs at church are low on the list of things they care about enough to help fill, so the appeal to need falls on deaf ears.
If your church or ministry is struggling to find enough volunteers are you trying to recruit by appealing to need? In the word of the great theologian Dr. Phil, “How’s that working out for you?” The alternative to recruit to need is to build a healthy volunteer culture. Its is slower and harder, but is really the only path to accomplishing God’s mission through your ministry. Tomorrow we’ll look at the three crucial building blocks of a healthy volunteer culture.
I hate to admit that when I see a headline like the one above I always want to click through to find out who failed. Is it someone I know? Is it someone I dislike? Is it someone I feel in competition with? Every time I click on a headline about a fallen pastor I’m the one that falls. Why do we secretly rejoice when someone else fails?
The other day our oldest granddaughter slipped and fell, busting her lip on our kitchen floor. Thankfully, though there was a little blood and a lot of tears, she wasn’t seriously hurt. By the time I got home she was snuggled up with her mom holding a bag of ice against her swollen lip. Her younger sister, three year old Mollie, was sitting on the kitchen floor blowing soap bubbles with my wife, Sherry. As Sherry told me about Maggie’s accident Mollie’s smile disappeared, she looked up, tears brimming in her eyes, and said, “Me too”. She felt so much empathy for what her sister experienced it was as though she had fallen as well.
I want to have that kind of empathy for other pastors. I hope my heart to break when I hear of a pastor failing morally. I hope I can be excited when a new church succeeds and crushed when a church plant fails. I want to pray every day for other pastor’s kids, and I want to be more interested in the health of their marriage than the size of their budget.
The next time I see a story outlining the details of a pastor who’s fallen I pray my response isn’t self-righteous smugness, I pray my response will simply be, “Me too, I’m another fallen pastor”.