You’re Getting a New Pastor

May 22, 2013 Leave a Comment

Tis the season. For what, you ask?

Many churches begin to prepare for the transition of their pastor. July 1 is the typical day when a new pastor starts in a new church.

Many leaders in the church tend to get anxious during this time. Many questions run through their mind as they try to “guess” what the next pastor will be like.

  • Will he be supportive of my ministry?
  • Is he a micromanager?
  • What’s his vision for the church?
  • Is he going to fire us and bring in all new people?
  • Is he a good pastor?

It’s normal to ask those questions, and they are good questions to ask. I have colleagues on the Diocesan level that have the same apprehensions when they are expecting a new bishop. The challenge for them is that they are often told to not start anything new until the new bishop comes.

Basically, they are being asked to maintain the status quo until new leadership arrives.

Relax. There is no need to fear. Most pastors don’t come in assuming that your church is in need a major overhaul. Often times, they spend the first year just getting to know the new church community before instituting anything major.

If you are expecting a new pastor or bishop, I’d recommend doing these things while you wait.

  • Keep planning ahead for your ministry. Don’t wait for the new leader to come in and tell what to do. They often won’t tell you what to do. Plus, you are the keeper of the vision for your ministry. You are the expert. Keep moving forward.
  • Tie up all loose ends before the old pastor leaves. There is a sense of urgency during this time that you can take advantage of. The outgoing pastor wants to tie up loose ends too, and often decisions can be made much more quickly than before. This is a great time to make some significant changes that you’ve been wanting to make, but couldn’t until now.
  • Don’t assume a worst-case scenario about the new pastor. This doesn’t help your attitude or the people around you. Assume the best and have a good attitude.
  • Don’t talk badly about the outgoing or the incoming pastor. That’s just not cool and sets you up for disaster.
  • Prepare now for your first meeting with the new pastor. Set up an agenda outlining what you want to share with him about your ministry and how. This is your opportunity to set a good first impression about you as a ministry leader and your ministry.

Remember that pastors are human, too. They have apprehensions and fears about coming into a new church community and are probably asking some of the same questions that you are asking. Be prepared and have a good attitude about the transition in leadership.

Question: Are you expecting a new pastor? What are you doing in preparation?

Filed Under: Attitude, Leadership, Relationships

Finish Strong

May 20, 2013 Leave a Comment

I enjoy watching the Olympics. Two summer Olympic sports I love to watch are swimming and any sort of running race.

The best part of any race like this is watching the last lap. Immediately, the intensity of the athletes increase. You can see it both in their faces and in their strides. They know the finish line is near. It is in their sights. It’s now or never.

Each athlete begins to quicken their pace. They feel the thrill and adrenaline of the finish. It is time to finish strong.

And this is always where the race gets interesting, as each athlete pushes themselves seemingly beyond their athletic ability for the gold. The winner often wins by a margin of less than .1 seconds.

This is how I recently felt, as my 4-year term serving as a member on a board of directors came to an end. I knew I was close to the end. I also knew that there was still a lot to accomplish. I was anxious to finish the race. Yet, I still had a lap to go.

I always want to perform with excellence. I find it most difficult to perform with excellence at the end because of the anticipation of what it will be like after I finish. This was just as true as I completed my term on the board.

As I neared the finish line, I explored in myself 4 areas that I knew I needed to pay attention time if I desired to finish strong.

  • Stay focused on the present. It is so easy for me to get distracted by what it will be like after I cross the finish line. However, since the race is not finished, this type of thinking actually detracts me from finishing strong. To finish strong, I need to stay focused in the moment.
  • Lead with excellence. When I come to the end of something, I am so often in a hurry to finish that I begin to slack on my work. I begin to accomplish tasks with a “good enough” attitude, which does not meet my own high expectations. Finishing strong means to perform with the same intensity and excellence as I would when I am just beginning.
  • Be patient. As the end nears, I tend to want to move faster to the finish line. I begin to sprint. However, the other members of the team are not always in the same place as I am. Since ministry is about people, this requires me to slow down when necessary and be patient. I found myself at my last board meeting trying to rush agenda items, even though I knew the team needed more time to process.
  • Remain positive. I know people who, when they are finishing a project or leave a position, begin to rub it in the face of those that are sticking around. First of all, this makes you look like your bragging (and no one likes a bragger). Second of all, this doesn’t make the people who are staying feel good about what they are staying around for. If you care about the mission of the ministry or project you’ve been focused for some time, then you care for its success. If you care for its success, then you want to make sure that the people who are staying feel good about the mission as well.

As you begin to near the finish line, remember these 4 things: stay focused, lead with excellence, be patient, and remain positive.

Question: Share about an experience where you finished strong.

Filed Under: Attitude

5 Things That A Good Attitude Cannot Do For You

May 15, 2013 Leave a Comment

Attitude makes a difference.

Yeah, yeah, you know that. You’ve heard it for years. It’s so cliché.

And yet, you know it’s true.

For years, I’ve heard about all the things that attitude can do for you. In fact, I think the topic is so important that I dedicated a whole letter of REAL Ministry to it.

A = Attitude.

But, there are things that attitude can’t do for you. In fact, there are 5 things that attitude can’t do for you. Before I take the credit for any of these great ideas, you must know that John C. Maxwell first suggested this list in his book, The Difference Maker, which, by the way, is a great book to read.

Here are the 5 things that attitude can’t do for you, with some of my thoughts and comments.

  1. Your attitude cannot substitute for competence.

It’s true. You can think you are good at something, but, if you are not good at it, no amount of positive thinking will help you be good at it. Some people seem to confuse confidence, which is a function of attitude, with competence, which is a function of ability.

  1. Your attitude cannot substitute for experience.

There are just some things that you only learn from experience. The problem with experience is that you rarely have it until you need it. This is a great story that depicts what experience can do for you.

A fox, a wolf, and a bear went hunting, and each got a deer. A discussion followed about how they should divide the spoils. The bear asked the wolf how he thought it should be done. The wolf answered, “That’s simple. Each of us should get one deer.” As soon as the wolf was done speaking, the bear ate him. Then the bear asked how the fox proposed to divvy up the spoils. The fox offered his deer to the bear and suggested that the bear take the wolf’s as well. “Where did you get such wisdom?” asked the bear. “From the wolf,” replied the fox.

  1. Your attitude cannot change the facts.

Facts are facts. Sometimes, I try to deny the facts. However, it is very difficult to deny data. If it is a fact, accept it. Your good attitude cannot convince your pastor that your ministry is going well when, in actuality, the numbers show that you are not reaching your intended audience.

  1. Your attitude cannot substitute for personal growth.

A good attitude does not mean you are growing. Just like attitude not being a good substitute for experience, nothing substitutes for personal growth. If you are to continue to succeed in ministry, taking your personal growth is essential.

  1. You attitude will not stay good automatically

I have a natural disposition towards a good attitude, but I still need to work on it. Just like anyone, I can get caught in the negativity of the world. It takes work to have a good attitude. Everyone is attracted to a good attitude. If you purposely work towards having a good attitude, then I guarantee that you will attract more volunteers, more families, and more resources to your ministry.

Question: Which attitude misconception do you fall for?

Filed Under: Attitude Tagged With:

The Secret to Success

May 10, 2013 2 Comments

How would you define success?

I have heard many definitions over the years. Some I agree with. Some, I don’t.

In the world today, success is often defined as fame, wealth, and power. Let’s be honest. Who hasn’t had dreams of these things? When I was a kid, I either wanted to be an actor or an athlete. If I was successful at either, I just knew it would bring my fame and wealth.

In our video today, John C. Maxwell defines success a little differently.

Question: How do you define success?

Filed Under: Attitude, Leadership Tagged With: ,

Discover Your Values with Value Cards

May 8, 2013 Leave a Comment

“It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” –Roy Disney

In a recent blog post, I wrote about the importance of values and how you and I should name the values that are our ministry. In that post, I recognized that I had named that values for REAL Ministry, but I had not done so for my other ministry organization. I challenged myself to find a way to name my values for my ministry.

So, that’s what I did. I devoted some extra time to one of our team meetings and spent that time focused on values. And here’s what I did.

I purchased a set of Value Cards. I then followed these instructions with my team:

  1. Review the pack of Values Cards imprinted with words such as profitability, teamwork, fairness, honesty, integrity and family. Identify and prioritize personal values by sorting the cards into three stacks from most to least important. Discard the least-important stack and narrow the remaining cards to the top seven most important personal values.
  2. Compare your personal values with the value statement of the company or other group, such as a school board or volunteer firefighting company, in which you have a leadership role. Decide whether the values are congruent and think about ways to close the gap in any differences.
  3. Use the values cards with work teams to generate discussion and create a stronger group spirit. Help the team identify shared values such as quality, timeliness and courtesy and divergent values such as teamwork vs. independence. Use conversation to build relationships, foster team empowerment and elicit ideas for improvement from front-line staff.

It was really intriguing to watch my team decide which 7 value cards they chose to prioritize. There were 3 values that every member of my team chose. They were:

  • Faith/Religion
  • Family
  • Growth

In retrospect, this was not really a surprise. Each of us work for the church and it makes sense that our faith and religion is a strongly held value. It is amazing how often we talk about our family with each other. Lastly, each of us are really focused on our personal and professional growth.

Here are the other 4 values in my top 7, with an explanation for each:

  • Change: I really value change. Not change for change sake, but when something needs to change. Too often, we stick with systems and programs that may not work well because we’ve always done it that way. I really value change as a way to revitalize and rejuvenate all facets of my life.
  • Fitness: When I work out and eat healthy foods, my days are noticeably better. I enjoy working out and am willing to get up early in the morning to make it happen.
  • Money/Wealth: This may be surprising for us in ministry, but this is one of my values. For me, it’s not so much about material items and having things. I like what money and wealth bring to my family and I. It brings options, security, and the ability to give.
  • Service/Volunteerism: I love giving my time to ministry and other non-profits. I could never see myself working for a for-profit business. For-profit businesses are not bad. It’s just that it’s not a right fit for me and what I love to do.

I encourage you to give this a try. You can do it by yourself, with your spouse, or with your team. I guarantee you that it will be enlightening.

Question: What do you think your personal top 7 values are?

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With:

2 Questions for the Multi-Cultural Church to Ask

May 6, 2013 Leave a Comment

How diverse is your church?

If you’re like the typical church in the United States of America, you are probably dealing with some mix of Anglos, Latino’s, Asian/Pacific Islander, or Black. With a population that diverse, a church has to think about the specific needs of the community it serves.

In a recent episode of The Best Youth Ministry Podcast Ever…Maybe, the podcast team talked about what a multi-cultural youth ministry looks like.

The reality can be that the cultural communities often have their own specific ministry for their cultural community. It is not uncommon, for instance, to have two religious education programs for children; one for the Latino community and one for the Anglo community. The same can be true for youth ministry, where a church could have 3 different youth ministries; one for the Latino, Anglo, and Vietnamese community. This is often the case in the area I serve, the Diocese of San Jose.

As a ministry leader, I have to take into account the cultural diversity of my church. There are 2 questions that are worth considering when analyzing my church ministry in light of the diversity within the church:

1. Is it okay to have separate programs for different cultural communities?

Ken Johnson-Mondragon, from the Instituto de Fe y Vida, wrote an excellent blog post on the subject. The answer is yes. It is important that the church recognizes the cultural differences of a community and respond accordingly. This has less to do with language and more to do with cultural. As a ministry leader, I cannot treat everyone like they are in the same place and have the same needs.

The pastoral needs of each cultural community is very different.

Ministry leaders need to respond to those specific pastoral needs. However, the ministries to different communities need to be in line with the mission of the church. Yes, you have separate programs, but they also needs to be working in concert with each other moving the church forward.

There are times where it is necessary to bring all the communities together. This is to build unity among community and remind everyone that we are one church, not multiple churches.

2. Which groups am I not serving?

The answer may not be as simple as you might think. A recent revelation for me is that a church often does a good job ministering to recent immigrants as well as those whose families have been well established in the United States for years.

The group that is often overlooked is the 2nd generation.

They are often bi-lingual and bi-cultural. They don’t quite fit in with the ministry for recent immigrants and they don’t quite fit in to the ministry for those families that have been well established in the area for years.

The consequence is that they feel like they don’t quite belong in the church. What are their specific pastoral needs and how can you respond to them?

Question: How does your ministry respond to the multi-cultural reality of your church?

Filed Under: Leadership, Relationships

The Biggest Mistake a Leader Can Make

May 2, 2013 Leave a Comment

Have you made a mistake lately?

If your answer to this question is anything but “yes,” then you’re either lying or not leading.

Part of being a leader means dealing with your own mistakes and failures. It happens. There are some mistakes that are bigger than others.

In this video, different leaders share what they think some of the biggest mistakes are that a leader can make. As I watched, I found myself nodding my head often, as I reminisced about the times I have made those very mistakes.

Question: Which mistake shared in the video do you agree with the most? What mistake would you add?

Filed Under: Attitude, Equipping, Leadership, Relationships Tagged With:

Helping Parents Pass on a Legacy of Faith to Their Children

May 1, 2013 2 Comments

I was recently asked to give a talk to parents about how they can pass on faith to their kids. As I prepared for this talk, this one line kept coming to mind:

Home is church, too. We experience God in the context of our intimate relationships.

I first heard that quote at a Vibrant Faith @ Home seminar from Leif Kehrwald. It really struck a chord with me.

As a ministry leader, I have often focused on how I can get more people to my programs and events at the church. My goal is always to connect them to the church community and to Christ, but I sometimes fell into the trap that the best place for this to happen was at church.

Yet, research continues to show that parents have the biggest influence on the faith life of everyone in the home, including the children. Therefore, my role also needs to be about empowering parents to take that influence seriously.

The best way I can do this is by helping parents come to the realization that the home is church, too.

In Kehrwald’s seminar, he shared with us the 6 ways that families grow in faith together.

Families grow in faith together when…

  1. They talk with each other about their faith (not preach or teach faith)
  2. They pray together in ways that are comfortable and comforting
  3. They ritualize their important moments
  4. They reach out in service and support of others
  5. They share Bible stories to connect with family stories
  6. They learn about faith together in comfortable and fun ways

For the talk I was asked to do with parents, I merely took Kehrwald’s ideas and made them more concrete and tried to provide practical ways where parents could do all 6 of these things in some way, shape, or form.

Here are some examples I share for each of the 6 ways to grow in faith together:

  1. Share with your kids some things about the faith that you totally agree with and some things that you are currently struggling with. Make the topic age appropriate.
  2. When something major happens in the life of your family, take time to pray. That could be when a family member is sick, a dog dies, a sacrament is celebrated, or a child passed a major test or milestone.
  3. Create a ritual at home around birthdays, graduations, getting a driver’s license, and for the first and last day of school.
  4. When the kids are young, help out an ailing senior citizen clean up their house or cook a meal for them. When they are teens, go as a family on a parish mission trip either out of city, state, or country. Or, when you are on vacation as a family, take a few hours to do some service where ever you are.
  5. Read the story of Jesus’ birth and talk about the day that your children were born.
  6. Take one of the interactive sessions from Vibrant Faith @ Home and use it as a family. It’s free and there are a ton of resources to use.

The key is to keep it simple. Families are busy. The goal is to not add one more thing to their plate. The goal is to make faith a normal routine at home.

And it doesn’t have to be complicated.

Question: What strategies have you used to empower parents to take their role seriously as the primary teacher of the faith?

Filed Under: Equipping, Relationships Tagged With:

Are You Busy or Disciplined?

April 30, 2013 Leave a Comment

“Most of us lead busy but undisciplined lives. We have ever-expanding ‘to do’ lists, trying to build momentum by doing, doing, doing – and doing more. And it rarely works. Those who build the good-to-great companies, however, made as much use of ‘stop doing’ lists as ‘to do’ lists. They displayed a remarkable discipline to unplug all sorts of extraneous junk.” –Jim Collins

I take personal offense to this quote. Why? Because it describes me perfectly!

I like to be on the move. I’m a doer. I take action. In fact, my wife accused me of stressing her out when at home one weekend. While we should have been relaxing and enjoying our time together, I wanted to try and take care of this, that and, oh yeah, that too!

She busted me in only a way a spouse could. And she was right.

I bring that same attitude to my ministry. I sometimes think to myself, “As long as I’m doing something, anything, then my ministry will be a success.”

Well, after years of being busy, do I have the success I was looking for?

Yes and no.

Yes in the sense that I have moved the ministry forward in innovative and exciting ways. No in the sense that I know I could have been much further along if I was more disciplined.

Daily, I keep doing things that aren’t helpful in moving my ministry forward. Yet, I’m strangely addicted to these tasks, even though I have labeled them as not helpful.

Why? Because I’d rather be busy than disciplined.

Yet, in the end, it is discipline that matters more than being busy.

Here are some tasks that I find “I’m too busy to do,” but I need to discipline myself to do.

  • Reflect/think everyday on how to create a more effective and dynamic ministry. I‘m not talking about 1 to 2 hours. I’m talking about 15 to 30 minutes.
  • Coach and mentor my team.

  • Connect more regularly with key constituents, like priests and donors.
  • Develop and implement a better communication and marketing strategy.

These are just a few that I have not been disciplined enough to do more intentionally. These are the items that Stephen Covey would say are important, but not urgent.

It’s been said that good is the enemy of great. I’d like to add a related phrase:

Busy is the enemy of discipline.

Question: What tasks do you have to be more disciplined to do?

Filed Under: Attitude, Equipping, Leadership, Relationships Tagged With: ,

How Do You Respond When Times Get Tough?

April 26, 2013 Leave a Comment

The truth is that life is tough sometimes. You get knocked down. It seems like everything around you is against you.

How do you respond?

When your knocked down, you get up.

When life is not what you want it to be, it’s time to change. It’s time to change to get to that new vision you have, to make a new reality.

This video is inspiring. Directed by my friend, Alex Vo, this video tells it like it is:

“No matter what the situation is, no matter how tough, no matter how hard, you just gotta find something inside you that drives you. That drives you to pick yourself up off the ground. Drives you to just keep fighting. Drives you to want more all the time, to want to push yourself, to succeed.”

Question: What’s inside you that causes you to get up off the ground when times get tough?

You and I are truly Meant 4 More, meant for all that God has in store.

Filed Under: Attitude, Leadership Tagged With: