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The following is an outline of my session on leading teams @ the orange conference.  It’s long, I am sorry…

Introduction:
• Background in student ministry (not thinking i needed to play along with anyone)
• 2 profound experiences have brought me to the reality of family ministry
- My son and the impact he has had in my life
- My experience with the difficult 6th grade transition every year form Children’s to Youth
- Convinced the Elders to go orange
 
And then the first staff meeting…

Process of change
• Ending – you have to think through what will be ending and who it will impact. Just because you are sold on this brave new world does not mean anyone else has settled in or even begun adjusting.
We are moving from silo-ed ministries. people will have to warm up to that.
Our focus is shifting from programs to families
We will all be opening up our ministries for input and working to be cohesive
• Transition – We require practices which will eventually becoming cultural
• Beginning – Our teams become more organic in nature. The work of selling integration is finished.

First Steps
The initial 90 days of combining ministry teams is critical.

Vision Casting
Presenting them complete in Christ (Colossians 1:24-29) I am glad when I suffer for you in my
body, for I am participating in the sufferings of Christ that continue for his body, the church. God has given me the responsibility of serving his church by proclaiming his entire message to you. This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to God’s people. For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory. So we tell others about Christ, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all the wisdom God has given us. We want to present them to God, perfect in their relationship to Christ. That’s why I work and struggle so hard, depending on Christ’s mighty power that works within me.

Grow up to full unity in Christ (Ephesians 4:11-16)  Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

Deuteronomy 6
Luke 2:52

Relationship building
- Personality Testing (MBTI, excellent)
- Carving out time for team building and knowing one another
- Next+Gen Leaders want the culture of their staff team to resemble the culture they are wanting to see in their church
- Connected
- Doing life together

Adopting new Practices
“some specific ideas that have worked for us “Culture is not something that you manipulate easily, Attempts to grab it and twist it into a new shape never work because you can’t grab it. Culture changes only after you have successfully altered peoples action, after the new behavior produces some group benefit for a period of time, and after people see the connection between the new actions and the performance improvement. Thus, most cultural change happens in stage 8, not stage 1.” – John Kotter, Leading Change

Weekly meetings with a standing agenda and rotating participation.
- Weekly meetings are important for creating community. Once a month or every other week you are essentially communicating to the team they don’t actually need each others input for the day to day ministries of the church.
- Rotate responsibilities so everyone has a chance to lead. Devotional, Book Study, Prayer, etc are all things that should be moved around to the team members.

Standing agenda item: Ideas/Challenges
- Rotate ownership through team members. When it is a team members turn he/she brings an idea or challenge to the team. They present the idea/challenge to the team and we hold off on any discussion. Over the next week each member of the team is asked to set a fifteen minute appointment with the presenter. The following week after all the discussions have taken place we discuss the idea or challenge. I ask everyone else on the team to speak before the presenter. If possible we make a decision as a team.

One on One appointments.
I have gotten the most mileage out of committing to 30 minute weekly appointments with the men and women who work directly for me. When i first started the appointments i told each of them… “this is not an attempt to squeeze all our working together into just 30 minutes. I hope we have hours each week for collaboration and dreaming. however, because i know how busy we can get I have scheduled this meeting. Your ministry is too important to me to let a week go by where didn’t get @ least 30 minutes of one on one time.” These meetings have saved me a tremendous amount of time and energy.

Team leader buy-in.
In order to create a true team the leader needs to commit his or her time and resources to the projects of the team members. The player coach isn’t a model for successful teams, it’s for intra-murals. Often in ministry we are multi-taskers. The family ministry leader may also be the senior pastor, or the adult small group ministries leader, or the facility manager. This can create a tricky environment where our team senses the leader has their own agenda. In order for the team to connect they need to have a leader who will support their ideas, work hard for them, and appropriate necessary resources to accomplish the job @ hand. This requires creating an atmosphere of fair play where the items the team leader is responsible for don’t get all the attention or all the money. As the leader you have to leverage your influence and authority toward the accomplishment of each team members goals not just your own.

Weekly communication to all staff members.
I send out a newsletter @ the end of each week called the staff loop. It’s purpose is to encourage all our next+gen staff as well as keep the vision in front of them. It’s important the next+gen team leader is known to all the staff and connects many levels.

Pitfalls
Grafting a culture on to the existing norms and not altering the DNA
Fighting the equilibrium of silo organizations

Encouragement
Remember and respect the calling you have and the calling of your team members. As God works in the heart of your team they will come around to what God is doing in your church.

Resources
Seven Practices of Effective Ministry – Reggie Joiner & Andy Stanley
Next Generation Leadership – Andy Stanley
The Dip – Seth Godin
Tribes – Seth Godin
Leading Change – John Kotter
Gift based leadership – Tim Rath
Orbiting the giant hairball – Gordon Mackenzie
Manager Tools Podcast / Website