YouTube Friday: Happy

I saw this and knew my son would like it. Slapstick. Pirates. Farting. How could you not like it.

Importance of Family, samluce.com, reflection, and amazing grace.

I have taken a bit of time off from the blogging by accident, busyness and stuff.

What have I been doing since November 20th?

1. Importance of family. – I think during the holidays we think about family even more than usual. I know I miss my parents and sisters more than usual. I am going to start a series of blogs on family how families are more important to a church than we realize.

2. www.samluce.com – I have been working on hosting my own blog at samluce.com. Why am i going to do this?

• I want to begin to use my blog even more as a ministry tool for my church and as we are increasingly going more multi-campus this seems to be one of many ways to speak vision and values as well as practical stuff to my teams.
• We are looking at a March completion date for our kids wing remodel – so there will definitely be a focus for me on re-branding all things kids.
• I want more flexibility and tools to implement and files to upload.

3. Reflection – I was thinking the other day and wondering why my best ideas come in my commute and in the shower. In talking to a good friend who is our Youth Pastor and blogger today it confirmed what God has been speaking to me for a couple of months about leaving white space in life. White space is powerful it lets you rest. I think I need more white space for God to speak.

Psalm 46: 10 “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”

4. Watched Amazing Grace. What an appropriate movie to watch during thanksgiving. I sat there during it just amazed that people could be so dehumanized by another group of people. This movie was a powerful story of Perseverance and the power of conviction. How one person with enough focus and spirit led conviction can change the world. It was a great movie. loved it.

Great Quotes: Family

“A parent who has never apologized to his children is a monster. If he’s always apologizing, his children are monsters.”
Mignon McLaughlin

Lifechurch.tv gets it.

When it comes to church marketing Lifechurch.tv gets it.

I received about two weeks ago a FREE book from Lifechurch.tv they are promoting Craig’s new book Going all the way. All I have to do is blog about the book. They didn’t tell me what to say. They didn’t say it had to be positive. I love what they are doing here.

There is something about free that gets people talking.

Lifechurch.tv understands marketing.

1. Give away what you can.
2. Keep in mind who you are trying to reach and How to reach them.
3. Perception is reality.
4. You reap what you sow.

Thank you Lifechurch for your contribution to the church as a whole. Thank you for modeling how church  and marketing can coexist.

One Last Thought On Serventeerism (Volunteers).

Thankfulness

I  thought I was done with my posts about volunteers. Then I read a post from Gina McClain’s blog. She had a link to another blog about thank you notes.
I started thinking that one very important ingredient I had neglected in my posts on the recruitment of volunteers is thankfulness. We need to be thankful to those who are serving as well as to God for seeing our need and filling it before we even realize we need it.

Just a few thoughts about writing notes:

1. Hand write them.
2. Be specific in your thanks.
3. Be sincere in what you say.
4. Write a thank you note to people when they don’t expect it. Not just when they do something for you. Like right after a big event.

Last but not least thank God often. When we remember what God has done for us and cultivate an attitude of gratitude, we raise the level of faith and decrease the level of cynicism.

Youtube Friday: Externalize internal Order

I talked a little about this yesterday. One that has really helped was making a volunteer board. I got this fantastic idea from a kidology report.

1. I draw on the white board all my volunteer positions
2. I fill in each square with the name of the volunteer that functions in the position represented by that square.
3. I use different color markers for each department I oversee
4. I use brown for people I have thought of recruiting but haven’t yet.
5. I use orange for people in the process of being placed.
6. I use black to place them in their desired ministry position

I love it because I can visually see my needs. Until I did this I “felt” like my volunteer positions were low. I did know who was serving but they were all on different schedules by department.

Another thing that is helpful by do this and visualizing my volunteers it minimizes scheduling conflicts within my departments.

Thank you Karl. For all your wonderful ideas. You and your staff are a blessing an support to all of us. Here is a link to Karl’s video about the volunteer whiteboard.

The bottom line of volunteer recruitment is this. What we do is significant what God does is indispensable.

Psalm 127

1 If the Lord doesn’t build the house,
the builders are working for nothing.
If the Lord doesn’t guard the city,
the guards are watching for nothing.
2 It is no use for you to get up early
and stay up late,
working for a living.
The Lord gives sleep to those he loves.
3 Children are a gift from the Lord.
Babies are a reward

ServanTeerism (part 4)

Know your holes and know your roles.

One of the things that has always held me back was not knowing were I needed help when someone asks. One of the greatest opportunity for recruitment is Sunday morning. People see what is going on they want to get involved.

You need to know your holes and know your roles.

Know your holes -

I found an excellent video on The kidology.org website. It was a organization chart on a whiteboard. (Let me just say I am creative by nature Administrative by necessity). This chart peeked my interest but didn’t get me super excited.

It has rocked my world. I now know where we need people, who I am thinking of asking to help who has asked me to help. It is an external representation of my internal thought process when it comes to volunteers. I LOVE IT. That’s Right all caps.

I now know my holes. If someone asks me to help I bring them right over to the board and see where they would like to help and where we need help. I have added about 15-20 new volunteers just by knowing where my needs are. When you know your needs you can ask people to volunteer personally and specifically. It also enables you to pray specifically.

Know your roles -

Know what each job description is.
Know what is required as far as time and commitment.
Know what a win looks like in that role.
Know how that role functions within the team.

ServanTeerism (part 3)

Ask vs. Beg

When we need volunteers I think we tend to come across desperate.
I used to do this all the time with that frazzled look in my eyes and say “can you help with the kids”.

I have learned and am still learning when it comes to recruiting:

1. If you are begging it’s a temporary fix. Every person I have begged lasted only a few months.

2. Leaders have to be asked.

3. Leaders agree to when asked because of vision.

4. When you beg people we talk not about long term vision but short term need.

5. Volunteers serve over the long hall GET something back.

6. If you ask be ready to back it up. Don’t ask unless you know your holes and your roles.

ServanTeerism (part 2)

Praying Vs. Pulpit Pleading.

When I first became the children’s pastor at my church everyone quit. I was faced with my first servanteerism dilemma. What is your main recruitment tool? Everybody has a fail-safe method for when you get hit with mass volunteer exodus.

I had always grown up in church and had seen mostly a combo of well placed bulletin announcements mixed with a few pulpit pleas. I had only been a children’s pastor for only a few months and sat down to write said “well place bulletin announcement”, when I felt God speak to me not to.

I felt God speak to me that He cared for the kids even more than I and not to settle for workers, who help out of obligation, but shepherds who have a passion for kids.

Without prayer, volunteer recruitment is pointless and fruitless.

We live in an area where lots of our kids leave to go to school elsewhere and then leave for good to find well paying jobs in their field. I recently lost around 7 key teachers. Back in the day this would have been cause for concern.

I have prayed, will pray and need to pray. God sees what my needs are before I even ask. What amazes me most is God always replaces that irreplaceable team member with someone even better. God is so good.

The basis of servanteerism has been and always will be prayer. Prayer changes things. If you need volunteers, pray to the Lord of the harvest.

John 10:11-1311“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. 12The worker who is paid to keep the sheep is different from the shepherd who owns them. So when the worker sees a wolf coming, he runs away and leaves the sheep alone. Then the wolf attacks the sheep and scatters them. 13The man runs away because he is only a paid worker. He does not really care for the sheep.

ServanTeerism (part 1)

We are redoing our kids wing this winter. We were planning on doing it for the fall but had to push back due to budget and contract issues.

In redoing the kids wing of our church we going to be adding around 60 new volunteers. So as you can imagine I have been thinking a lot about volunteerism lately.
So this week I will be talking about volunteerism. I welcome your feedback and suggestions.

Servanteerism – (is what I call volunteers that are serving because of a passion and heart of servant-hood vs. helping out of obligation.)

Mark 10:45 In the same way, the Son of Man did not come to be served. He came to serve. The Son of Man came to give his life to save many people.”