Checklist for my Last Day

Today's my last day with Crossroads. Here's what's gotta be done (or I've done already).


NB. Drink Coffee should appear after each item. I've left it out because--let's face it--I don't need reminding.

Jobs that should have been done before now:

• Spring Clean your filing cabinet.
• Cleanse your work files (electronic and physical):
• retrieve any personal files
• tidy stuff up, file it right, name it right
• Call external stakeholder to
• say thanks
• let them know who their new point of contact is
• give them the relevant new contact details

Jobs for the last actual day:

• Play Daft Punk.
• Do a weekly review
• Incl. make sure *every* inbox is at zero: email, physical, notebooks, desk clear, computer desktop(s) cleared, downloads folder emptied, wallet, etc.
• Give keys back (office, filing cabinet, etc.)
• Get IT to 'extract' you (or do it myself)...
• Remove yourself from the website (contact info.)
• Remove website login
• Remove Access to work files
• Remove Facebook Page Admin Access
• Remove Mailing List Identity
• Add self to supporters@ email list  (i.e. the email list for past members)
• Send the boss a Final Review email
• project status for every project (and a reminder of who they've been handed to)
• clear next actions for him/her
• a short note for any misc. loose ends that may entangle him/her down the track, with your recommendation
• Modify email signatures on all devices to remove work references.
• Change voicemail message to remove work references.
• Tell everyone you're signing off and provide them with a guidance on how and when to get in touch (by email and text), and who they should contact in your absence.
• Tell IT you're gone.
• Teary, emotional emails are best here. Those guys love this stuff, and email is perfect for it.
• Tell the Board of Management (BOM) you're gone.
• Tell the elders you're gone.
• Go have a... [insert from Facebook recommendations].

What have I missed?

Ministers, Beware the Rabbit Hole

Until last week, Jonno Haines and I were reading through Rebecca Manley-Pippert's (excellent, old) book, Out of the Salt Shaker.

This little gem stopped me in my tracks.

"We must not become, as John Stott puts it, 'rabbit-hole Christians'. When I worked among students, the form it would take is this: A Christian student leaves his Christian roommate in the morning and scurries through the day to lectures, only to search frantically for a Christian to sit by (an odd way to approach a mission field). Thus he proceeds from lecture to lecture. When dinner comes, he sits with other Christians at one huge table and thinks, What a witness! From there he goes to his all-Christian Bible study, and he might even take in a prayer meeting where the Christians pray for the non-believers on his floor. (But what luck that he was able to live on the only floor with seventeen Christians!) Then at night he scurries back to his Christian roommate. Safe! He made it through the day, and his only contacts with the world were those mad dashes to and from Christian activities." 109-110.

It actually reminds me of how an ex-mormon friend described his former life as a latter day saint. So absorbing and insulated from meaningful contact with 'outsiders'.

My life may have different twists and turns. But (at times) it sure looks like a rabbit-hole.

I plan to change that.

How to Run a Killer Workshop

Ok, overstatement.

This weekend I'm running an event on Starting a Business worth Building and Taking it Somewhere worth Going. I know practically nothing about the subject. But I know how to put an event on, and I know people who know the subject backwards.

As part of the program, four wonderful people are running workshops. They're all (in my opinion) pretty brilliant at what they do, but they're not all confident with actually chairing a discussion--running a workshop. So here's (some of) the advice I've just emailed to them.

• Think of a specific “who”. It helps to prepare with a specific person/case in mind. Describe to yourself how they’ll benefit from your workshop, what problem they’ll be equipped to overcome.
• ...or two.It may help to specifically think of two/three different kinds of folks: the beginner, the expert. Again, think of specific people in those shoes and imagine what they’ll be looking for from the workshop.
• Beyond “knowing”. Aim for more than your attendees just “knowing more about…”. Aim for their “gaining confidence to…”, “developing enthusiasm for…”, “becoming relaxed about…”, “feeling prepared to…”
• I'm no expert... If you don’t feel like the expert, in a workshop (especially) that’s actually fine. It can help disarm fears and get conversation rolling to make your icebreaker, “The challenge I’m facing in my business right now is…” 
• Decide in advance what's essential. The ‘body’ of your workshop will need to be elastic enough to adapt to varying levels of contributions on different topics. The key thing here is usually knowing which topics you feel you must cover, and when to simply stop conversation on topic A and move to topic B with that purpose in mind.
• Plan to use specific, prepared questions. Questions can function very well as topic-changers. e.g. “Ok, I’m going to change topic now to talk about handling criticism. Here’s a question for you: “A visibly-irritated customer walks back into your cafe and slams their take-away cup down on the counter, loudly complaining about the ‘tide being low’.” What would a bad way to handle that situation look like? What would a great way to handle that look like? Ideas?”
• For each topic, come armed with at least:
• a clear question to get the group discussing it
• your top bits of advice on the topic
• the very best example of it you’ve seen (what you aspire to)
• the pitfalls to avoid, the beginner mistakes.
• If you’re armed with those, then you’ve probably got enough for your folks to seriously grapple with.
• Which topics to include? There are two contributing factors here: 
• the needs of the workshop group (you’ll figure this out on the day). 
• the overall goal of the workshop from your point of view. This latter factor means being able to say, “Let’s talk about topic X now, because this workshop is all about W, X, Y, Z."
• Drawing a blank? Can’t think of memorable ways to put that idea? Call on your heroes. We all have our favourite people on a given topic or in a given field. Refresh your memory on how they say it and grab yourself a quote from them that you can share on the day. If your heroes live locally and you know them personally, pick up the phone. Seriously.

What have I missed? (Apart from, "Coffee").

A Guy who gets the Difference

Preachers spend a lot of time trying to get their hearers to really *get* the difference between (a) and (b). Specifically, to ditch (a), and to embrace (b):

(a) Do lots of good stuff in order to make God like you.
(b) Because God loves you, you will/can/want to/even must do good stuff.

We go to great lengths to highlight the difference. We dream up illustrations. We analyse the motivations and thought-worlds that drive all of us toward each. We thump pulpits...

So it's kinda weird to read that whole (a) vs (b) thing taken-up as an illustration in a thoroughly secular setting. Guy Kawasaki casually drops it into his new little book for entrepreneurs. Here it is:

"... don’t revise your product to get prospective customers to love it. Instead, revise it because customers already love it. Let me put it in religious terms: Some people believe that if they change, God will love them. Others believe that since God loves them, they should change. The latter theory is the prototype to keep in mind for how to get going and keep going for startups." Guy Kawasaki, The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything, 13 (my emphasis).

Weird.

For the record,

"This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." 1 John 4:10-11.

It's (b), not (a). *thumps pulpit*

There I go again ;)

Agile Results - Dipping My Toes In

Why bother checking out yetanother-fixall-productivity-organisational-workflow-listy-keeptrack-ohsosimple-changeyourlife system? Two things convinced me to take at closer look Agile Results.

One, it *gets* that long lists of next-actions arranged by context--thorough, as they may be--are uninspiring.

Two, the guys at Asian Efficiency--themselves huge fans of GTD (the backbone of my organisational system)--give it big props.

Qualifier: I've only begun to check it out. I don't even sense I've got the whole yet.

Two disciplines I've adopted so far:

• On Mondays, list three things you'd love to have accomplished by Friday. And put them in terms that actually inspire you.
• Each day, first up, list three significant things you want to do in the day.

Clarity, motivation, focus. I'm less distracted, and less distractable. And these lists aren't replacing my vast organisational system (GTD), they're just giving some texture, some colour to an otherwise vast, grey, flat landscape of to-dos.

Keen to check it out? To be honest, I've found it... awkward to look into. The main website is clunky to navigate around. There's no downloadable book-sample pdf. The best 'way in' is probably Meier's 30 Days of Getting Results website. This post, on his blog, is also a quick way in (long post, scroll to halfway down to '3 Wins to Rule Your Day').

Reflections on DiSC and Church Planting Research

Recently I read over a research paper coming out of the States by Dr Paul S Williams titled, The DiSC Test as a Predictor of Church Planter Success.

I found it here. It was published last year (ish) and interacts with (among others) the NCD survey, Jim Collins of the business world, and previous studies like Ridley's.

It was definitely worth the read. I'm certainly not in a position to critique it from a methodological point of view, so my reflections are just at the level of interacting with the conclusions / comments along the way.

Here are some things that stood out:

• Research Measures (i.e. what was 'success')
• His two key measures were:
• (a) average attendance growth, and 
• (b) per capita giving ($$) growth. (I gather they're very commonly used measures). 
• Attendance and giving were measures at 12 months in, and at three years in to the plant.
• Particular DiSC Patterns and Performance
• The 'Inspirational' (one of the high Di patterns)--which seems to be the darling pattern of many in church planting literature--was vastly out-performed by the 'Persuader' (a high iD pattern) on (a) attendance growth, and came dead last on (b) giving growth. It's not that the 'Inspirational' pattern did poorly at (a), though, it was still top 4.
• 'Persuader' pattern leaders was head-and-shoulders above the pack for growth in attendance.
• 'Creative' pattern leaders were strong on growing giving, but only modest in generating attendance growth.
• Variation was significant:
• "It is important to note, however, that in all but one pattern represented in the study […] there was at least one church that experienced growth equal to or greater than the average growth of the top four patterns." 81. 
• Given his very-small sample-size for some of the 'DiSC patterns', this surely renders some of his 'averages' tentative, at best, I reckon.
• DiSC and Jim Collins. Williams sees the 'Inspirational' pattern leader as a nearest match for Collins' Level 4 leader. So what about Level 5?:
• "From this researcher's knowledge of the DiSC test, it would appear that Level Five leaders would likely score with one of the other strong church planting patterns. Persuader Pattern, Results-Oriented Pattern, and Creative Pattern leaders seem to have the strengths that appear in a  Level Five leader.", 96.
• Fwiw, from my reading of Collins, I reckon a Level 5 leader has to be pretty extraordinary--a real mould-breaker. I'd expect him/her to exhibit a breath-taking versatility of behaviours right around the DiSC. i.e. I'm suggesting that none of the DiSC Patterns provide a neat match.
• Stability of your DiSC over time. Over time, an individual's DiSC assessment of behaviours holds 'very good' over one year, and 'good' over three years (the study length). But the implication from the data is that your DiSC behaviours drift over time, and beyond three years it does drop beneath a level required for a 'good' correlation. I guess that makes sense--patterns of behaviour change over time. We still believe in that, right?!
• Systemic Preclusion? The researcher hints at his own concerns that systemic issues are precluding some DiSC pattern folks from even applying to be church planters (non-'Inspirational' types, particularly). While I'm intrigued and I've wondered the same thing--and I'm certainly wary of letting my own failure of imagination preclude people-unlike-me from taking on big ministry roles--I'd be keen to see some actual research on it. It's too easy to cry 'systemic failure!'.

For the record, I'm High-D, High C, with average (not low) i. That means none of the Classic DiSC profiles neatly matches my behaviour pattern, but I'm kinda two-thirds 'Creative', one third 'Results Oriented'. The researcher fits a 'Persuader' pattern.

MCing at Church - some advice

Mike Jolly's ever-popular post on MCing a church meeting is well worth a read (as is the comment thread there, actually). And I think he's about to post on the topic again, so stay tuned!

Anyhow, prompted by a conversation with Mike, I'd like to share with you some things I've been thinking about (and working on) in my MCing recently. This isn't a 'balanced' list, in any sense; it hardly mentions biblical input, for example. Hope it helps :)

• Start Strong - the first 30 seconds either sets up everyone else to be heard, or makes their job harder.
• Sustained Eye Contact - make it, and hold it... then move on. Don't flit, flit, flit. Make eye contact with an individual, hold it for several seconds. Move to another. Repeat. That kinda eye contact takes confidence, but it establishes a very 'direct' connection with your listeners.
• Your Own Prayer - without meaning to sound all-pious, make sure you actually pray ahead of the meeting, on your own. And also pray with other key players in the meeting: preacher, band leader, Bible reader, etc.
• Give Feedback - be the guy who courteously but diligently strives for improvement with specific, timely, personal feedback.
• Relationships - the feedback thing reminds me: don't make 'giving feedback' the only time you talk to him/her. People are more important than the 'quality' of their contribution to your church meeting, so reflect that by building relationships that are more substantial than mere feedback-loops.
• Actually say, "Thanks" - I think it's nice to explicitly thank the bible readers, prayers, band leaders, musos, etc. Not necessarily from the stage (depending on the tone of the meeting), but certainly personally. Not every single week, necessarily. And try to make it specific, too, incorporating a touch of positive feedback. "Thanks for leading the band this week. I thought the arrangements in that second song really helped the chorus shine--brilliant!" That kinda thing.
• Deviate - Deviate from your 'habitual tone', sometimes. If you're the 'serious guy', then occasionally do a *really* up-beat angle. If you're the bubbly MC, then occasionally do a reflective, deep, thoughtful, serious kinda angle.
• Thick Skin - Some people will love your MCing, some will prefer the other guy--some might even think you stink at MCing. Be ok with that. It's the same for preachers, singers, musos, every public figure has to deal with it.
• Stockpile your Notes as a Resource - get organised and keep your MC scripts/notes, including prayers, etc. It's fine to reuse them sometimes.
• Prayers should be Excellent - Invest time and creativity into your prayers. They don't have to be long. But they should never be boring, or sound insincere. If you only barely believe what you're praying, then you can be sure that those trying to pray along with you are feeling the strain. "Dear God, thanks so much for your word": Perhaps you could think on it, and find ways to say it that are fresh to your ears, at least.
• Direction and Purpose - know where the meeting is going and take it there with a sense of direction and purpose. Do you *really* need to say all that stuff? Waffle should have been edited out well before you take the stage.

Fear Reality, not your Leader

How scared is my church? And what are they scared of?

Occasionally, I see someone acting scared of a church leader. Not because that church leader is an ogre. And not because of some deep and nasty sin in the person's life. I just mean scared because the person made some little mistake or hasn't got around to fixing 'that thing', and they know their church leader is pretty quick with feedback and has a fair bit of clout.

I recently read, Good to Great, by Jim Collins. It's brilliant. Essential leadership reading, I reckon.

This sentence stuck out to me more than any other in the whole book:

"The moment a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse." Jim Collins, Good to Great, 72.

Collins reckons that strong leaders need to face the brutal facts of reality themselves. More: they need their team to do the same.

But there's an obstacle: the very strength of that leader's personality can be the 'reality' that his/her team fears above all. So, Collins urges strong-personality-type leaders to come up with ways to make sure your team doesn't just tell you what you want to hear, out of fear of you.

Ways your smallgroup can Help Would-Be Attenders

Not everyone can make it along to our smallgroups. Illness, work, life-circumstances--ok, there are heaps of reasons. 

Anyway, a little while ago some of our smallgroup (mid-week Bible Study group) leaders put their heads together to brainstorm ways a smallgroup could possibly help a would-be attender.

Here are some of the results:

• Take your smallgroup to them occasionally.
• Send a text to them asking for prayer points that can be prayed by the smallgroup.
• Send them a present on their birthday.
• Send them a hamper.
• Take them a luxury dinner, something really fancy.
• Commit to praying for them individually (at home).
• Send them a picture (MMS or whatever) every week.
• Find a way they can give something to the group: perhaps they bake bread, etc.
• Mow their lawn, clear their gutters, lend a practical hand.

This list is yet another reason I'm so pumped to work amongst our smallgroup leaders team. Thanks gang!

Parenting Open Forum - Emma's Notes

Last weekend, I hosted what we called our 'Parenting Open Forum' at Crossroads. Lots of contributors, various formats--some workshops, some panel discussion, a couple of addresses.



Emma took notes.

Even better, she's happy for me to share them here. One important thing to remember: what follows really is "just a personal take on what was said and not originally intended for publication". It's personal notes, for her own benefit--she wasn't covering it with her reporter-hat on. Still, if you're like me, I'm sure you'll lap it up.

Thanks Emma!

Emma's Notes:
----

Book review

• "How to really love your kids" - basically about showing your kids you love them by giving them: lots of eye contact, lots of physical contact, and lots of focused attention.
  

[Panel Discussion on] "Beyond the primary years"

• When teenagers start telling you something stop what you're doing and give eye contact. Even if you're busy. For the sake of the relationship.

• Teenagers might raise some really important issue via a flippant or provocative comment. Sometimes you'll want to speak immediately but withhold judgement, even if you're freaking out! It's better to do more listening than talking, to ensure you keep the communication lines open. Let them put it out there, you can respond later. And a lot of their opinions will change on their own with time and experience (and mood/hormones!) anyway.

• In the same way you reflect on meeting goals at work, look back each week or month, and think about how much quality time you spent with each child and with the whole family. Especially if you work full time. 
• Working Dads - make special time, eg be available for the kids from dinner till bed.

• Kids might not be home every night, that's life, but you can make it a given that, on the nights everyone IS home, you eat together and read some Bible together.

• "Peer pressure is only as strong as your family identity is weak". Also, peer pressure can be positive. Your kids can start trends as well as follow!

• If you don't have discipline sorted by the age of five, good luck when they're 15!

• Teaching some apologetics before the age of 15 is important to equip for questions they'll face in school and ask themselves.

[Address on] Thriving together as parents

• "Weed" out things that destroy marriage - any kind of addiction or abuse, spending beyond your means, being too busy, too stressed etc

• Don't let the sun go down on your anger.
• Keep a healthy distance from your in-laws!

• Never side against each other, eg. with your parents against your partner. You should be on the same team.

• Help each other, encourage each other, always look for ways to express your love to each other. Do things together! 

• Marriage should be your most intimate relationship, marriage first, kids second (which is best for kids anyway). Kids love to see their parents cuddling on the couch after dinner, talking, showing affection, maybe even kissing (but won't admit it!).

• Our ultimate joy, satisfaction and delight should come from Jesus, not our spouse. To expect that from a human is a crushing burden they won't be able to bear = destined for disappointment.

[Panel Discussion on] Up to primary school

• You're never going to be a "perfect parent" - you might as well be a fun one!

• Communication and organisation can help you as a couple, eg. comparing diaries, looking at where you can help each other out.

• Keep time for your marriage, to have fun as a couple. Get a good babysitter. Do the things you enjoyed together before you had kids.

• Surround yourselves with other couples with strong marriages who you can talk to, lean on, learn from.

• Create positive family traditions, eg, Saturday morning pancakes, gingerbread at Christmas. Make a conscious decision to be fun parents. It's cool for kids to look back and say "we ALWAYS did X on holidays" or whatever.

• With punishment and discipline, decide what the non-negotiables are and be consistent. Eg. Stuff that would mean you're in trouble with the law as an adult - you're training them to be adults.

• They need you to follow up, to maintain boundaries when they test them, to demand respect.

[Address on] Raising kids as an act of hope

• Stay positive about people. Don't just think of them as an environmental problem!

• As Christians, we have something worthwhile to pass on to our children.

• When we arm them with what they need to navigate this world, we are planting someone in this world to work for its good. An agent of good!

• Are you hopeful? Do you have something positive to pass on?

Prayer and smallgroups

Last week Josh and I chewed over some of Col Marshall's ideas for prayer in small groups from his book 'Growth Groups' (which is a great book, btw). Here are some things we either liked, or came up with ourselves...

• Beyond the Minimum. Often prayer in a small group setting is little more than a quick note of thanks. Quick notes of thanks are good. But we can do more…
• Warriors / Wimps. Small groups are a great training ground for prayer, whether we utilise it or not. Col Marshall talks about training people to be prayer warriors or prayer wimps.
• Spontaneous, but when? When would you do spontaneous prayer in a small group setting? Perhaps when you've been discussing something heavy, and want to both honour the weightiness of the conversation *and* move things along to new territory. Pray there and then. Then move on.
• Focus. Work at setting the focus of prayer on God's kingdom, word, mission. Watch the balance of your prayers… is it all about your personal growth in godliness?
• Keep it Normal: normal voice, normal posture, simple, short.
• Partnerships. Find ways to encourage people to pray with one another outside the group, too. Prayer partnerships don't have to be just a 'while we're at smallgroup' thing.

Deftly Moving to Jesus-talk

The other week at smallgroup we talked about John Dickson's Q&A appearance, specifically, his deft movement from talk about creation to talk about Jesus.

Often the whole science/creation/cosmology discussion comes up. It's not like we haven't thought about it, not like we haven't got some kind of opinion on it. But how to actually connect that conversation with talk of Jesus--the core of our faith? That's a tough one.

Dickson's example seems a good one to follow. He spoke (if I may risk a summary) of the order, beauty, etc. of the world around us and suggested that observing the world leaves him with a sense that there's a Designer/Creator. (Now the important bit). Then he asked whether we've seen evidence that such a Creator has touched the earth in some tangible way. For him, the person of Jesus (life, teaching, miracles, death, resurrection) is just such.

I agree

...so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

Countless times I've rattled off a quick one-liner to explain the bible-word, 'justification'. I've usually used words like, 'God', 'declare', 'pronounce', 'sinners', 'me/us', 'in the clear', 'innocent'.

But next time, I think I'll try a bit harder to bring out the connection between the declaration and the cross--the 'justifying event'.

Donald Carson chews over how Paul talks in Romans about God's way of justifying sinners like us. He thinks we get a bit too simplistic in our talk of what God's justification of sinners is all about--we leave Jesus out of it, or, rather, leave ourselves out of Jesus:

"To think of the justification of the ungodly as mere declaration with respect to the believer, based upon the redemptive event but distinct from it, rather than seeing justification as the great event itself in which God simultaneously is vindicated while justifying the ungodly, thereby incorporating the declaration into the saving event, is a painful reductionism that fails to see how our being "in Christ" ties us to the justifying event itself." ('The Vindication of Justification', in Justification: What's at Stake in the Current Debates, 77, emphasis original).

When's the last time you wrote a sentence that long? I had to read it a couple of times.

Better

At Jono Lange's recommendation, I've been reading Ecclesiastes in the King James version of the Bible.

"Better is an handful with quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit." 4:6

"Better is a poor and wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished." 4:13