It was wonderful to be able to sit down with Ed Young Jr. and talk about creativity in the church, reaching the lost, and something Fellowship Church has come to know as Spontaneous Baptism.

Ed Young Jr. is the pastor of Fellowship Church mainly located in Grapevine, TX. It’s one church. Six locations. Over the last decade Ed Young Jr. has mastered the craft of creative communication in the church world. As stated in this interview by Ed, being yourself is one the keys to effective creative communication anywhere. Often times, we are tempted to mimic what somebody else has already done. Watch and listen as Ed shares with us some of his keys to success.

The first time I saw this video I laughed my head off. (I love this kind of humor)

Do you use models for the creation/tweaking/developing of your ministry? Models are key to any organization or company’s success anywhere. There are thousands of models out there that work for specific communities/churches. The question is, which model is best for your organization? Or do you need to create your own model? One that has never been seen before.

Here are some tips:

Know why you use models

They can be easy to change

They make complex ideas simple

They help you and your team see the vision

They can display all the possibilities of growth

Know the dangers of models

People can get the wrong assumptions

They can portray perfection

People can get stuck doing things one way

Know how to implement models

When creating models allow for team input

Build a culture that gives permission to make mistakes

Find an organization that is already doing something similar to what you want to accomplish and pick their brain.

I would love to hear from you on how you have used a model to help create your existing paradigm in ministry.

“Stuff Your Sorries In a Sack”
It is a classic line from the TV show Seinfeld where George has a hard time accepting an apology from Jerry. Really what George is saying to Jerry when he says, “You can stuff your sorries in a sack,” is your sorry means nothing to me without action.

This weekend I took my family to see the musical, Mary Poppins. While the actual experience of watching that musical was great, the getting there and leaving was horrendous. What we didn’t realize when we booked the tickets was the musical was going on the same time as the UT/OU Red River Shootout just one block away on the fairgrounds. As you can imagine with an extra 100,000 people there it made for a traffic nightmare. Because of that we decided to take the DART train into the musical. Well, so did 85,000 other people so it was the worst transportation experience of my life. I ended up not even taking the train back to my car but finding a cab to take me.

When I got in the car this morning, talk radio was on and the person in charge of the DART rail system was on the show. The host asked him this question, “What are you going to do to regain the trust of the people you failed this past weekend? Are you giving them a refund? What is your plan.” This guys response was, “Really, all we can do is say sorry…” That is when I immediately thought of those wonderful words of George Costanza, “You can stuff your sorries in a sack, mister.”

No matter how many times we say, “Sorry”, to the people we connect with on a daily basis, “Sorry”, doesn’t change the fact that a trust was broken or that respect was lost. Any motivational speaker will tell you that if you fail or if you fall, you have got to get back up. I don’t think the hard part is getting back up or returning from a failure. I think the real question comes after we’ve returned. How do you follow up failure? In essence, saying, “Sorry”, is just the beginning of actually doing the action of changing the behavior. However, there are some situations both in personal and professional relationships here you may be able to regain the trust you have lost due to a poor decision or action. So, how can you regain broken trust?

Here are some strategy tips that can help:
1. Why did it go wrong?

One of your first steps will be to learn why you lost the trust of the person in the first place. You can then take the proper steps to prevent this from happening again. Don’t waste time trying to over explain or justify why you did what you did to lose the trust.
Personnel - Were the wrong people on the job?

It’s pivotal for the right people to perform the right job. The portfolio of the job has to match the skill-set of the person performing. What adjustments do you need to make to fix past mistake?

Vision - Was the project not communicated properly?

For the people doing the job, do they know what you are expecting from them? Do they know what to expect from you? Is the task that they are working on clear and concise? When you reach a point where your employees are suppose to read your mind, you cannot and must not assume that they have that ability. Everyone wants room to be innovative, but the clearer you are, the less room there is for mistakes. There is a big difference between needing to make changes and making complete mistakes.

Game plan – Was there an execution break-down somewhere?

Perhaps the execution of the job was miscommunicated. In other words you communicated clearly what the job entailed. But the break-down is how the job is performed. Is it possible that an employee thought they could perform a job, but in the middle of the process they realized they were incapable? Figure out where the break-down was.

2. How will it be different - Action plan for change?

What plan can you put in place to make sure that everyone is ready in the event this mistake happens again? What plan can you put in place to prevent the mistake from happening altogether? Make a plan. Make it plain. Make it visible.

3. What did I learn?

Don’t let failure set you back. Learn from it, and let those under you let you know what you learned because the lessons you learn from failure will become some of the most valuable assets you can offer to someone who hasn’t worn your shoes yet.

Craig said, the difference between a good staff and a great staff is 10%.
A good staff is made up of…
20%-Great Leaders
70%-Good Leaders
10%-Average Leaders

A GREAT staff is made up of…
30%-Great Leaders
70%-Good Leaders

So there are two questions you must answer:
1. How do I get rid of the 10% average leaders?
2. How do I add 10% more great leaders?

Before you get angry and say how could a church “get rid” of people just because they are average leaders let me encourage you to develop plans to move them from “average” to “good.” The same way you will need to develop plans to move your “good” leaders to “great” leaders.

With that said (written), there will be a time to move people on and at that point you want to look to hire greatness. At the risk of sounding like a self-serving comercial I am going to tell you ONE of the best ways to do that is to utilize an outside firm such as HelpStaff.me to come in and assess your needs, develop a target profile for the position, and go out and hunt down greatness for you. I will get more into that in another post.

If you at times find yourself frusterated that you don’t have a GREAT staff, know this, you aren’t as far off as you may think you are from it.

When I say church junkie I mean I am into every part of it. From the staff positions that churches hire to the thickness of the seat cushions, I love it all. If I am on vacation or a work trip it is very rare that I don’t visit multiple churches in that area to take a tour or meet with one or some of their staff members. Since I have done this so many times I thought I would give you a quick glimpse of what I look at when I visit a church. Now this does vary from when I go visit. Many times it is not during a service time so I can’t get a good idea of everything that you would normally see when there is a service going on.

Facilities
-Foyer space vs. auditorium space
-Signage
-How good is the worst seat in the house
-Cleanliness
-Master planning

Staffing
-I like to see unique positions that churches have beyond the staple, kids, youth, music etc. I just met a generosity pastor a couple of days ago.
-Ratio of staff per 100 attenders
-Friendliness (helpfulness) of the staff. I have visited churches from 30-30,000 and the amount of people has nothing to do with how friendly and helpful they are.
-I’m obsessed with staffing flow charts. I find most churches don’t have these (we just finished ours at The Oaks)

Service planning
-Why are things put where they are
-How they do announcements (Usually the worst part of any service)
-Smoothness of transitions
-Stupid transitions (mic to mic hand-offs)
-Length of service. Some churches should have a two hour service others shouldn’t go more the one hour.

Preaching
-Use of Scripture
-Style (TD, Bell, Chandler, etc)
-Length
-Illustrations

Volunteers
-How many
-What positions
-Recruiting, resourcing, rewarding

I have honestly thought about adding “secret shopper” service to HelpStaff.me because I think it could be a huge help to churches but I haven’t yet formalized it. Look for it soon.

There are several things that I look at. What about you? What do you look for when visiting a church?

What I have noticed lately is that with an increase of email activity rather than push technology making me more productive it actually slows me down. It causes me to stop working on the task that I had deemed most appropriate at that time and look at something that 9 out of 10 times isn’t more important than what I am doing at that moment.

Additionally, I was noticing I wasn’t giving good energy bursts to one project at a time. I found myself picking up one, two, three projects at one time and therefore diluting my effectiveness.

Last week, I turned off the push feature on my iPhone. Although I still receive email on my phone it is only when I want to look at it. It doesn’t update me when new ones come in. This has helped me stay focused at the task at hand and decide for myself when I should be dealing with email.

Lesson Learned: Just because the technology exists doesn’t mean I should be using it.

Here is a little recap of my time with him:

He said lots of great things but what really stood out to me was his insights on relationships. Relationships with others are something that is very important to me so I jotted down some notes to pass on to you.

The greatest resource isn’t the economy but the equity of relationship (People pay millions of $ for other peoples mailing lists)

The best way to improve your customer service is to be someone who needs what you provide (You can’t direct people you can’t feel)He talked a lot about diversity in the community and the church and how even when we don’t agree we can work together for the common good.

He quoted a movie (unnamed),” a bird and a fish can fall in love, but where would they live.”

You can love people without having to live together

It is key to have the ability to like people that wouldn’t like each other
If you only interact with people who do what you do you will not be able to meet the challenges ahead.

There you go. I hope these were as helpful to you as they were to me.

I believe so much good information is wasted on not having a thought out process for how to have a meeting. We all learn so much everyday from the people we get to interact with. Make sure you are able to take that information and use it and pass it along.