What does it take to create a dynamic team?
In 1992, an energetic team from our church launched night life, an up-tempo, casual Saturday evening service for secular people. Everything about this service differed from what happened Sunday morning.
Of course, not everyone in our land of the Psalter hymnal appreciated using secular music to make a spiritual point. Often criticisms were blatant: “The atmosphere in night life is closer to a bar than a church.” Other pressures to conform were subtle: “Why not design the service to have a wider appeal, making it more comfortable for all ages?”
I championed the vision of the team making the launch, but looking back, I can see I missed a crucial need of this innovative bunch: protection. I should have shielded the launch team rather than highlighted concerns about the service.
This was driven home for me recently as I read Organizing Genius (Addison-Wesley, $24, to order: 800-822-6339). Its authors, Warren Bennis, author of Leaders and On Becoming a Leader, and Patricia Biederman, write, “One thing Great Groups do need is protection. … Because Great Groups break new ground, they are more susceptible than others to being misunderstood, resented, even feared. Successful leaders find ways to insulate their people from bureaucratic meddling.”
Team-and-leader marriage
Great Groups organize around a mission. Bennis and Biederman cite six case studies of Great Groups: the recent turnaround at Disney, Apple’s development of personal computers, Clinton’s remarkable victory in the 1992 presidential race, Lockheed’s Skunk Works, the educational experiment at Black Mountain College, and the Manhattan Project. Unlike so many authors on group dynamics, Bennis and Biederman value both the need for leadership and the importance of teamwork. Great Groups achieve “a mutually respectful marriage between an able leader and an assemblage of extraordinary people.”
As I read Organizing Genius, I noticed how secular discussions about leadership seem more spiritual than many of the same discussions in ministry circles. Bennis and Biederman write, “Great Groups always believe they are doing something vital, even holy. They are filled with believers, not doubters, and the metaphors that they use to describe their work are commonly those of war and religion. People in Great Groups often have the zeal of converts, people who have come only recently to see some great truth and follow it wherever it leads.”
It seems ironic to me that while people in business, politics, and education are seeking to describe their missions in spiritual metaphors, many churches are increasingly using secular language to make their highest aspirations relevant.
Yet parts of Organizing Genius troubled me; some can’t be applied in a church setting. The authors write that among team members “[s]haring information and advancing the work are the only real social obligations.” That doesn’t square with the one-another obligations of Scripture.
What Bennis and Biederman celebrate in close working relationships—”Great Groups are not only fun, but sexy. There is often an erotic element to working together so closely and intensely”—is obviously destructive to biblical community.
And the work ethic and conscience of Great Groups—”Such people don’t stay up nights wondering if they are spending enough time with the children”—may not be a value pastors want to champion.
From ordinary to great
Once I stopped comparing the examples of Great Groups from Organizing Genius with my church’s rather ordinary boards and committees and teams, I found the book enriching. Here are just two directions the book pointed me to take:
Develop young leaders
The authors write, “Participants are almost always young . . . probably the most important thing that young members bring to a Great Group is their delusional confidence. … [L]ack of experience is an asset, not a liability.”
Founding our church was the closest I’ve come to participating in a Great Group. I was 22; those in our core group approaching 40 were considered old-timers. Now that I’ve passed 40, I need to ask, “How much am I willing to risk with those twentysomething tradition-breakers?”
Match dreamers with doers
Bennis and Biederman write that Great Groups consist of “people who get things done, but they are people with immortal longings.” The best leaders, they say, are “pragmatic dreamers.”
Recently we transitioned to a new facility; the impact on our church culture was dramatic. Our staff formed teams to manage congregational adjustments, and on each team we blended idea people with implementers. In the past, we tended to overvalue idea people; that led to brainstorming groups with little follow through. Our new collaboration, however, stimulated creative ideas that were implemented. In future task teams, to make them Great Groups, we’ll monitor our mix of dreamers and doers closely.
—Wayne Schmidt Kentwood Community Church Kentwood, Michigan
Ministry’s Rightful Owners
Three new books cover the basics of developing lay people.
In 1987, the book Can the Pastor Do It Alone? came out just as I was frantically seeking resources for developing a lay-pastoring ministry. The author, Melvin J. Steinbron, an associate pastor in Cincinnati, had developed a program that mobilized and trained the laity to visit hospitals, to contact absentees, to heal hurts.
“The pastor,” Steinbron wrote, “cannot do it alone.”
I liked his plan because it was simple. I ordered copies of the book and tried to implement its suggestions.
The plan flopped. It wasn’t Steinbron’s fault. It’s just not that easy to get frenetic lay people to give and receive organized care in a structured ministry.
Now Steinbron, president of Lay Pastors Ministry, Inc., has another book that insists lay-pastor ministry works: The Lay-Driven Church (Regal, $12.99, 612-866-4055).
I was sold on lay-pastor ministry before picking up Steinbron’s book; I didn’t need his convincing (which comes throughout The Lay-Driven Church, even at the end). Rather than buzz words—vision, ownership, equipping—I needed nuts and bolts. Thus, the most valuable sentence came at the end of the introduction: “We, Lay Pastors Ministry, Inc., are committed to servicing churches with the best material available through our quarterly Network News, monographs, videotapes, seminars and conferences.”
Another recent book on lay ministry is Stan Toler’s The People Principle (Beacon Hill Press, $9.99, 800-877-0700). It contains few original ideas but many useful ones; it’s mostly a grab bag of techniques from Rick Warren, Elmer Towns, John Maxwell, George Barna, and Robert Schuller. For example, Toler, vice president of Injoy Ministries, tells how to: develop mission and vision statements, conduct a membership-gift survey, register guests on Sunday mornings, organize congregational care, and nurture biblical stewardship.
An excellent primer, The People Principle approaches ministry from a traditional perspective, telling leaders how to change, shift, improve, and innovate. While I could do with fewer quotes (I can read Barna for myself), reading about Toler’s pastoral experiences was helpful.
A third release on lay ministry, Building Strong People (Baker, $13.99, 800-877-2665), confronts pastors with the question: Is it our job to build strong ministries or to build strong people who minister?
By Bobbie Reed, a speaker and consultant, and John Westfall, a pastor, Building Strong People begins with a self-assessment test that helps readers determine if they are leaders, managers, workers, or reactors. The rest of the book focuses on the peculiar traits of leadership. Building Strong People asserts that management gets tasks done through people but leadership “releases people” to pursue their dreams.
Suppose, for example, a lay leader comes to you with a clever but impractical plan. Rather than veto the idea, you might gently warn of problems or make suggestions, then step back and let him or her try it. Reed and Westfall write, “[O]ur goal is not so much developing the program as it is developing people. Perhaps our people need a little failure to teach them how to make better plans. Rescuing robs them of the lesson.”
After reading these books, I had to admit equipping and organizing don’t come as easily to me as teaching and preaching. Perhaps that’s why I failed in 1987. I’m better at ministering than administering, and I sometimes look with envy on leaders with mission statements, purposes, objectives, goals, methods, budgets, and recruits as perfectly aligned as targets on a firing range.
But I’m not beyond learning.
—Robert J. Morgan Donelson Fellowship Nashville, Tennessee
Computerized Ritual
New software for tracking ministry details.
Under obligation as a minister of the gospel, I perform a monthly ritual: I lay my receipts on my desk, add them to the miles I’ve driven, and come up with a figure I hope the irs and church treasurer can understand.
Ministry Notebook for Windows ($29, 800-644-6344) by Parsons Technology makes my ritual a little less painful. It does everything but save the receipts. I enter figures only once, permanently recording my expenses. I then can report them without duplicating effort. Ministry Notebook can create more than a hundred expense categories (Oh, for money enough in my expense account to fill the categories!). Once I record my mileage, the software computes the reimbursable expense and applies it to my expense record.
Ministry Notebook also performs five other functions: It can track my library, prayer requests, sermons, phone calls, and various references. For example, I’ve lost books through the years by not recording to whom I lent them. With this program, I can catalog my entire library. Unlike other library programs, Ministry Notebook allows a comment section to give my evaluation of each book. Then, I can record to whom I loan books by simply typing the name.
The other functions I found less helpful. I want to do less detail work, not more. For example, I may use the prayer request log, but only for my small group. I don’t want to type all day.
Ministry Notebook is intuitive, easily modifiable, well-organized. For people who like detail, it may be the answer to their monthly expense ritual. For those who don’t, monthly expenses will be the same loathsome burden—only computerized.
—Scott Reavely West Linn Baptist Church West Linn, Oregon
1997 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.
