Enriching the Ministry (part 2)

This is part two of Enriching the Ministry.

Here are some more simple cost effective ways to supplement the ministry and help develop your team.

Online webinars, simulcasts or conference calls 

For some this means getting a little tech savy.  Get’s some youth to help you out in this.  Learn from them, don’t just rely on them to do everything, every time. Gather the  core team or women your mentoring around a computer and hook up with a leader in a different area. Meet with a core team from a different church and share ideas. Arrange for a joint call with another leader and let the team ask questions and then process the interview together.

Cross the denominational and church divide 

 Join forces with another church to accomplish any of these ideas.  I have what we call the meeting of the five families. Five women’s ministries in our area get together and plan ways to meet the injustices in our community.  Learn from each other. We really need to loose the competing ministries mentality anyway. Do a combined mini-conference of your own. Rotate the location of events to the different churches. 

Learn from each other 

Take turns with sharing best practices from different walks of life and careers.  For instance, best practices for nurses, teachers, business, marketing, mothering, home-schooling.  

Plan a scavenger hunt  

It could take a day, week, even a month.  Give the ladies certain items to look for,  such as a community need, brilliant marketing, leadership techniques, experts to bring in, places to fellowship, the list could go on!  Create teams, or pairs to search their community, online, book, or through networking wherever they want.  Let each team present their findings. Let them seek out new ideas and improvements they can share and learn from.  The process of sharing the idea discovered will prove to be development.

You have any suggestions?  What has your ministry done to bring more substance to the ministry?

Enriching the Ministry (part 1)

Ministry can be enriched with ingredients that promote growth.  Immediately upon hearing the term "growth" images of  bringing as many people as possible and ways to retain them comes screaming into our already crowded mental to do list. That's not the growth I'm discussing today.

Growth

The people that God has placed around you are there to be nurtured and developed.  If we are faithful to not only be God’s hand extended to them, but also to fostering them into their God given purpose, talents, gifts and possibilities God will send more. This is growth. Remember not everyone is called to full time ministry, so developing them in their area of influence is aligning them with God’s plan.  

Growth comes with a price.  Here are some ways to keep the cost down and still enrich the ministry to nurture growth individually and corporately.

Invite outside experts to come –  Find an expert in whatever direction the ministry is taking and bring them in. If it’s outreach, get an evangelist. If you have mom’s get a Mommy expert in to encourage them (if you have a youth group and the mom’s are not attending church, this is a great resource for them)  If  you have unemployment issues bring in a Job Coach.  ( I know a really good  one)  It may be cheaper to bring the expert to you than it is to attend a conference. I personally know a lot of women speakers/leaders and experts that would come just for the travel expenses and they don’t mind if its 5 people or 250. I personally like the smaller groups, more room for connection. 

Get them to a conference – In Florida, I have only a couple of conferences I promote to the whole.  I try to get as many people I can to attend them.  The first is a free day event (Hope Tour) and the other is 3 day/2 night retreat (Fall Breakaway).  I don’t believe in conference junkies and that’s another post altogether. I do believe in road trips. They will see the bigger picture, they will realize they are not alone.  There are other conferences, that are specific in nature, send just one member to it. You may have to flip a coin to see who goes, but be willing to pay for them to attend. The only catch is they have to bring back what they learned and teach it to the rest. 

this is a two part post so come back tomorrow to finish the list.

Relational Leaders

Relational Leaders

Vision and strategy are great.  But what gets a ministry planted and thriving is relationships. Leading a ministry means cultivating relationships.  

Here are 3 tips to becoming relational leaders

1- Be accessible.  The days of the rock star preacher is dying, thankfully.  This doesn’t mean the people of the church own you 24/7. It does mean you are reasonably available.

2- Be open.  This means you are open to be mentored, you are open to having friends, you are open to mentor.  You have a Paul, a Barnabas, and a Timothy in your life.  Just because you are the leader doesn’t mean you can’t have friends.  You can love with your life.  You can be honest with people, they will respect your sincerity. Be open to suggestions, be open to people speaking into your life, be open to friendships.  I know there is a lot of leadership quotes about the extra mile being lonely, and eagles don’t fly in flocks, don’t buy in to them to much.  You can have friends.  They will be the ones that get you through the extra mile and you can’t soar too high without them.  

3- Be a role model.   There is no such thing as assembly line christianity. It’s easy to make disciples of people or even ministries.  It is a whole other ball game when it comes to making disciples of Christ. Disciples of Christ are made with time and energy.  It requires humility, because you will have to take a back seat more often than not.  It means you will have the good, the bad and the ugly to deal with and people watching while you do it.  Showing them godly character in all of it, will stand the test of time. They will respect you all the more.  

Momentum, not Motion in Ministry

Ways to Focus on Momentum, not Motion

Too many leaders confuse motion with momentum. We can all be super busy, but is anything getting done?  Leaders with constant motion, without any momentum will stunt, sometimes even kill, a ministry. 

So how do we fight this and get some real momentum going?

Measure results, not work.  
Have a plan developed around results that are measurable and quantifiable. Ask why your doing the event, the particular outreach, fellowship? and then ask what results do you want from that event?  If your doing an event for just the sake of doing the event, that might be a clue of a busy ministry without momentum.  Where is the event going to take you?  If you want to see the community impacted find a way to measure the impact. 

Your greatest asset is people. 
Relationships are key! A momentum killer is when you perceive people as a liability. 

Count the Cost. 
Growth and momentum gets stunted when we think the cost is too high.  I’m not talking about money here.  Get some quality commitments from many people. 

Ask God! 
You would think this was a no brainer in ministry, but you would be surprised.  Once you get a Word from Heaven, faith is in play! Move on it, trust it. God’s not your assistant here, you are His.  Sometimes we have an event for Him. Meaning, we plan all this stuff to do and then we hope God shows up when the doors open. We even pray those “red carpet invitations to God” at the beginning to of the service. Maybe God want’s something done event wise for the community? Maybe God wants to hold a service and invite people to it.   These are the only kind of events I like to do.  The one God orders. 

Communicate action.
 Inspiring people isn’t enough to change the world.  Inspiring them and clear action steps will!  People understand whats being communicated and the speakers point of view. They hear the vision and they love the vision. That’s not enough if they don’t know how to effectively apply steps to attaining the vision. If you want to hit the anointed home run in your ministry go back and see how easy it is for your team to apply what you’ve taught.