Get Everyone To Pay Attention with Frank Bealer @fbealer
We are going to turn up the dial on “It’s Personal” and this might feel overwhelming at times. It might feel like another thing to do but it’s more than that.
Who’s going to come alongside you to be the filter to make sure you are doing the right principles.
How many of you hand out resources to parents?
Social media channels for your church?
How do I convince leaders and parents to pay attention to what matters? We must turn up the dials on Pay Attention and What Matters
“Every time we get a leader or parents attention, we either build or erode trust.”
It’s that one time at the right time that matter most.
Attention + Trust = Impact (x repeat)
When we build trust we get influence and we get the opportunity to impact their future. But were are not done there, we must repeat the cycle. It’s a constant cycle for us to not take for granted that we have people’s trust.
Advertisements retarget and follow you. Now when you go to their webpage you are retargeted and followed. The advertisements start popping up everywhere. You can’t keep getting louder and demanding to get people’s attention.
How do we convince people to pay attention? Error in the question. They are not willing to PAY but they will TRADE attention. Everyone is aware of this cost.
If your volunteer training doesn’t help them win at home then you’re missing the point. They are looking for something that trades their attention. Something that’s helpful today AND in their future. Word things in a way that helps them see the benefit tomorrow not in the future.
What if instead of focusing on saving $20 today it was “Hey parents, we have a limited number of spots today and we are going to be focusing on entitlement. We want to let you know this will be a big focus for us this year and we just wanted to come alongside you to help with this issue. We heard you and we want to help you win. (Also helps parents know they are not in this alone or the only one going through it.)
Families are very attentive to making bad trades. How do we know it’s worth our exchange. Add value to parent’s lives.
Attention is so extremely valuable, but we didn’t steward it well.
Most are deciding Sunday morning if they are going to attend church or not. They aren’t thinking about hitting snooze but deciding between two good options. We must communicate that we want something for them and not something from them. It’s not about celebrating the numbers there. We want you there because this is what it will create for your family tomorrow. Help them navigate issues for tomorrow.
We communicate hype in youth ministry. First of all, we can’t fulfill our own hype. “It’s going to be one of the best weeks of…this month.” Instead communicate, “I’m glad you’re here, who’s your small group leader? They are going to be so glad to see you and we are so glad that you are here!” Students are looking for relationships. They are looking for someone who will notice when they are not there. We need to communicate this from the very beginning. It’s not the name of the ministry that is looking for you or the “we” but it’s the person who has a name. Use real-life names and real-life relationships.
The biggest challenge with a handout is not the handout but the teenagers passing them out. We need someone communicating the value of what we hand them. “We trade efficiency sometimes for effectiveness.”
We give away some of the best moments we have. Parent pickup. Be intentional and engage parents at this moment.
“Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem.” Be empathetic. Come alongside them. Help them. We are just here to serve you.
Text service where families can ask for prayer for the school year. 26 families signed up. “I didn’t use it but I just love to know my church is in my corner.”
We say it’s mandatory and so important BUT most of us don’t send an email to those who didn’t show up. This communicates that they should have been there and it shows them it was really worth their time.
Many of us in this room when we start in ministry we get really excited about the relational side of things, and then you figure out how messy and hard it is to get personal. Our response is to start making changes to our content and programming. We edit more and print more because it makes us feel busy. The reality is it’s personal and it’s going to be messy. We need to actually have relationships with people and followup and care for them.
Building Your Team For The Future – Jon Birkmire @jon.birkmire
Treat volunteers like staff. Build a leadership team.
Doing this helps you do what you do better and gives you more time to do the things that only you can do.
What can we do when our ministry needs more than WE can give?
3 Traditional Options:
Don’t do it
Do it and accept the consequence
Hire more people
We have limited bandwidth. Time is the great equalizer.
Smart-water Illustration:
“I’m about to save the world…I need 12 people.”
Introduce some more water into your life. I’m going to hand you this and this and this. The two of us are going to make this thing work. You can do this and the truth is you need to do this. The average youth pastor burns out in 3 years. Add voices to your team.
We need to re-think your organizational structure to add new voices. Not just more voices…But the right kind of voices. Add voices that replace yourself.
Recruit the right voices
On-board
Build and organizational leadership chart
Start with you
Think transferable models and common language
Create job descriptions.
Develop an on-boarding
What am I doing now that I can train and delete to someone else? Where is my water going into what cups that someone else can be filling?
What language do you use to describe the roles? What are the win statements?
Coaches, Producers, Directors
Volunteer Coach
Training, evaluating, leadership and care of SGL’s
5-8 hours a week (includes Sunday)
Owns volunteer coordination and on-boarding, caring for leaders mid-week and Sundays.
Leads small group leaders on Sunday
Extend your pastoral influence to someone else who cares for the team on a regular basis.
Volunteer Producer
Training, evaluation, care, Sunday production efforts.
5-8 hours a week
Owns volunteer coordination and onboarding, caring for leaders mid-week and Sundays.
Lead production leaders on Sunday.
Volunteer Director
Lead entire team, vision casting, and organizational efforts
8-15 hours a week
Owns the entire ministry responsibility, leads vision casting, evaluation and implementation of ministry model.
Directly leads coaches and producers.
Invite these people into the budget process, the planning of all ministry, the conferences, everything for ministry.
This is about appreciation over compensation.
Exercise: On the Org Chart – Anything you don’t have someone’s name in, your name is in that box. You might not have this role yet, but you’re doing it. You’re pouring into that cup.
Exercise: What roles are you currently fulfilling other than your own. Some of you need 40 different name tags because you are currently fulfilling 40 different roles.
“When you hand over ministry to someone else, people fall in love with ministry.”
Recruiting the right voices
You have to make friends before you need friends.
Stop the cattle call at your church. There’s a difference between strategic service push and “we need volunteers”
Methods for recruiting: Observation, Hot List
Look for the people who fit what you are looking for in the positions you need.
The hot list can be accessed by the team so everyone knows the needs. Constantly updated and reduced.
Later you create a Warm List and Cold List. Is that a hard no or a warm no?
Exercise: Recruit!
Write down the names of high capacity people you know in your church.
On-Boarding New Leaders
You need a clean plan that sets up your leaders to win.
If you constantly have leaders quitting, that’s not a them thing, that’s a you thing.
ADAPT
Ask- clarify the role
Download – resource the role
Apprentice – Coach the role
Prepare – Setup the teams
Turn them loose – release the role
SOP – Standard Operating Procedure.
Apprenticeship:
I do, you watch. We talk
I do, you help. We talk
You do, I help we talk
You do, I watch we talk
You do someone else watches.
People will never innovate if they don’t think they can. Get out of the way. Don’t fix everything for them.
Exercise: On-boarding
What is missing from your onboarding process?
Job descriptions
Standard operating procedure
Role-specific resources and development
A culture of evaluation
Ministry core documents
Shadowing/apprenticeship system
Release Your Leaders to Lead
Get out of the way
Value who they are over what they do.
Direct report and evaluation regularly
Resource regularly
Ask: How are you REALLY doing?
Bi-weekly meet with your staff. Staff meeting with direct reports at least once a month.
When expectations are missed we talk about it. When you don’t talk about it you’ve set a new lower expectation. If volunteers don’t show up, you have to talk about it.
Repeat the Process
Train your leaders to replace themselves
Practice open handedness
Evaluate yourself regularly (and ask for evaluation)
Renew your personal vision
Celebrate life change
The way you pay people best is by celebrating wins and life change. Money in their relational bank. Their investment is paying out.
You can do this. Your family needs you to do this. Your first ministry on this planet is to them. You need this. Some of you are tired. The solution is adding people to your team.
Create A One Year Ministry Plan – Vince Parker @vincelparker
Where do you begin? What outcomes do you want to see?
Without a vision the people perish.
How will you measure it?
Where performance is measured, performance improves.
All great chilis but 5 different ingredients. How you make the worlds best chili you need to measure the ingredients and evaluate.
Measuring outcomes matters…
Data should have a seat at the table.
Evaluate.
Evaluate your current situation.
Where is your starting point?
What do you need to start doing?
What do you need to stop doing?
Write it down so you don’t forget.
People
Who needs to be involved in the plan?
Who do we need to tell about the plan?
Who are you ministering to?
Place
Environment
What should the space look like?
Does the place support or hinder the plan?
There is a difference between a Starbucks, a home, and an arena. What does this look like?
Programming
How will you get your message out?
What you want to see happen, you need to program in. If we are wanting people in small groups, we need to program it in for people to do and see.
What do you want them to feel and do? Feelings move to action. Give them every step so they can execute the plan. At the moment, they can text in or sign up to make it happen.
Process
How does it all work together?
Do your systems help you better love people?
Is it sustainable?
What happens when a student gives their life to Jesus?
Execute
Time to execute.
Lead with the why
Let them know why we can’t stay where we are at.
When you lead with the why, people can’t help but join the vision.
Keep it simple
Stay committed.
Evaluate
Evaluate again!
Data has a seat t the table.
What adjustments/tweaks need to be made?
Did you achieve the SMART goals? What milestones did you achieve?
Celebrate the wins. Not take the next day off to recover but to stop and thank God for what He did.
Pray
What does God say?
Talk with God the whole way. Stay connected to the vine.
Talk with God during each and every one of these steps. Seek wisdom and hear from Him every step of the way.
Data may have a seat but God has the biggest seat at the table.
What do you measure? Rock software.
Who are the leaders who attend?
How many students give life to Christ?
Student attendance and how many times in the moth? 2.3x in a month.
Develop An Effective Coaching System – Frank and Jessica Bealer @fbealer @jessicabealer
Training vs. Coaching
Training is systems, standard boundaries. It’s operational.
Coaching is mission, vision and understanding. It’s purposeful.
Information without intention feels insignificant.
Familiarity vs safety. It communicates safety when you check the tags. You know them and it matters that you communicate this but it communicates the message that safety comes first and foremost. The new family or the divorce family needs to see safety each and every Sunday.
Empowerment starts with clarity of vision.
Define the win.
Most of our team huddles are logistics. Our mission is not to get through the crafts. The win for the day is for you to build relationships. In these VIP meetings, define the win.
Implementing a coaching model
1. Identify coaches by assessing top leaders in each ministry area.
They need to be really good at what they are doing. Are they good at communicating with adults? Are they at ease with conflict? Can they have hard conversations? Could you see them firing a volunteer if that was needed?
2. Remove coaches from your church organizational charts.
Take coaches out of the rotation one step at a time. Don’t start by pulling all of your top leader volunteers. Start with small group coaches and the check-in coaches because these volunteers directly work with students. Don’t set yourself up for failure.
3. Outline a coach’s responsibilities, timeline, and steps with each new or existing volunteer they are advising.
Coaches need to fully understand their role. It’s not their responsibility to tell someone they are doing things wrong. It’s support, not critique. Create a role that a coach can not say more than one critique in a week. You should never have a clipboard as a coach. It’s observing and offering feedback at what works. Coaches aren’t going to fix a small group or small group leader in one week. The goal is tiny steps in the right direction. Love and support around one small critique.
4. Encourage coaches to document the process.
They need to make notes for you and for themselves. They need to see how far someone grows. If someone is still struggling 3 months later, then you might need to step in. Systemize with something like a google doc. Name, date, comments. Inspect what you expect. Make sure your coaches are doing what you are asking them to do.
Systematize Care: On Sunday write a card before they leave. Write down what the expectations are for them each week.
Every coach needs a full roster of who they are coaching. Contact information, Favorites Form, a system for making purchases, budget plan for empowerment. $15/week pre-approved. Give spending permission to volunteers.
Retention should go up with a coaching model. A greater span of care. Implement a support structure.
5. Schedule quarterly gatherings with coaches and other insiders.
When your coaches are in the know they feel more equipped and prepared for what’s coming. Ask what are you seeing? What do we need to do a little different? Help them feel like the insider group that helps the ministry win.
Go further, faster, and steward well the ministry. Make room for more people to do the ministry. It’s impossible for you to develop everyone on your team. If you worked on developing your coaches, they can develop the team. Lean into and on your coaches.
Presentation and Family Ministry Coaching Documents: generis.com/orange-jess-bealer-coaching