I believe that Twitter is a good thing.  I’ve been using it for over a year now, and have found many great uses for it.  As some of you may know, John Piper is one of my favorite pastors and authors.  He’s written a great post on why he is beginning to Twitter.  Read it below.  Does this convince you to use Twitter, if you don’t already?

 

People want the newest and the latest, right?  That’s why a new iPod can come out, with very few new features, and have a splash in the market.  That’s why new movies, new sandwiches, new TV shows, and new churches can initially do really well.  That may not be what keeps people longing for second helpings, but “new” attracts people.  Since I’m a blogger, I’m always asking myself, “What’s the the next new thing with blogs?”

I don’t know.  I can’t answer that question for you.  But somebody will.  And they’ll launch with a splash in the market.  It may be completely different, or it may be a twist on what you see now, but rest assured that there will be another wave.  Let me assure you of one thing that will have to be present for that blog, or website, or ministry to continue to be effective and relevant: genuineness.

Blogs that are effective now give a glimpse into a person’s life.  Ron Edmonson is a great example of that.  I read his blog, and love it.  He shares great information, communicated through his personality.  It’s a snapshot of him. Warts and all.

I believe that this is a big reason that Twitter has become viral.  Twitter is a way for people to say, “This who I am.”

These days, I believe that people want content that communicates personality, not just information.  Cutting-edge information is great, and is needed, but if it’s stale and lifeless people will leave it on the shelf.

How are you communicating, whether that’s through a podcast, a blog, Twitter, Facebook, sermons, or presentations, using your personality?  Go ahead and try it.  Be vulnerable, honest, real.  Your audience will appreciate it.

 

This year, I’ve taken up gardening.  I wrote a little bit about that here.  Before you write me off as a girly man, hear me out.

I built four raised plant beds to plant some mini-gardens in my back yard.  I don’t have room for a full-on garden, and raised beds tend to look tidier.  In addition, they’re supposed to cut down on weeds.  Based on the word supposed, you can guess that that’s not exactly the case.  At least it’s not so when you use dirt that’s full of weed seeds.  You see, I got the dirt from my grandfather’s farm, and though the dirt is unbelievably rich, it had some weed seeds in it.

My wife and I planted lots of vegetables: carrots, bibb lettuce, red cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and other stuff I can’t remember.  We also have herbs and flowers in the garden.  As they began to germinate and eventually sprout up out of the ground, we got really excited.  Except that we weren’t sure whether these new green sprigs were veggies or weeds.

“Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field.  But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away.  When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.” (Matthew 13:24-26)

There will always be “weeds among the wheat” in the church.  You can be upset about that if you’d like, or do something about it.  Does the fact that there are “weeds” (and by “weeds,” I mean that there are those there who don’t really belong to the kingdom of God, i.e., they’re not saved) bother you?  I hope it does, because it should!  Weeds are not meant to be there!  Someone else, not the true Gardener, has placed them in the garden.  What should we, the Church, do about these unwelcomed, ugly, ultimately life-sucking weeds?  Cut them off?  Cast them out?  Try to build our garden so that no weeds enter (which is not possible, by the way)?  No.  That is unloving and un-Christlike.  The answer to the question, “what do we do with the weeds?” is that we love them.  We evangelize them.  We live and preach the Gospel in hopes that God transforms them from a weed into a beautiful plant that bears fruit for the Kingdom.  Instead of sucking the life out of the Church, we plead with them to give the desire of their heart to Christ and begin pouring life back into the Church!

Don’t forget…you were a weed once, too.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:43-45)

 

In my last three posts, I’ve given you the positives of apprenticing.  Here’s part one on an example and encouragement to find an apprentice, and part two and part three giving you reasons I think it is a viable option of raising up leaders.  In this post, though, I’m going to give you my observations on why it is inefficient if used as your sole method of recruiting leaders.

As I said earlier, apprenticeship is not the only method we use here at Grace Community Church.  We use a hybrid method, encouraging apprenticeship but also being willing to put somebody into a leadership position who has not yet been apprenticed at Grace.  The reason we do that is that apprenticeship has its limitations.

Limitations of Apprenticeship:

1. It doesn’t always happen.  As much as you vision cast and “require” leaders to find an apprentice, not all group leaders buy into the idea.  They see it as yet another responsibility placed onto their all-too-full plates.

2. It doesn’t always happen as you would like for it to.  Some leaders buy into the idea initially, but aren’t able to fully develop their apprentice.  For a number of valid reasons, apprentices aren’t being produced.

3. It is a slow process.  Apprenticing takes a long time, and if you’re in an organization that is growing, you will find yourself in a leadership deficit really quickly.  How do you even measure when apprenticing is complete?

4. Not all groups have future leaders in them.  In our small groups, not every group has an apprentice, because quite frankly, not all groups have somebody with leadership potential.  That’s not a slam against anybody.  Everybody is not called to lead a small group.  There are some people who are leaders and others who are followers.  Sometimes, groups are full of followers.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but I paint myself into a corner if I require all groups to have an apprentice.  When I do that, group leaders are investing lots of time into developing leaders out of folks who are not called to be leaders.  That’s frustrating for all involved.

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I’m sure there are more reasons why apprenticing alone is an inefficient way of recruiting leaders.  However, whatever system you are using, you must be recruiting leaders.  It is absolutely essential to sustained growth.  Whether you are a pastor, the CEO of a major corporation, a store manager, or a small group leader, your organization will suffer if you are not intentionally raising up leaders.

You can take that to the bank.

And if you do, be sure to find out how they’re raising up good leaders.

 

I’m a small groups pastor, and the major way I communicate with small group leaders outside of Sunday morning is via email.  I’d love to be able to have coffee with all of them regularly (because they’re some of my favorite people), but it’s just not possible.  With the fast-paced nature of our society, and our group leaders in particular, combined with my own personally busy schedule, the ability to communicate important information to multiple people at once is essential.

When I communicate via email, much of the information I send out is never read.  In fact, one of the guys on staff (who will remain unnamed) told me that if my email is more than one line long, he won’t read it!  I could get upset about this, take it personally, and require group leaders to read the weekly (though it’s more like bi-weekly) emails.  But you and I both know that that approach would not lead to increased reading and response to this important information.

I’ve tried vastly shortening my emails.  Now, instead of a devotion before the “important” stuff, I start with “Here are the vitals you and your group need to know…”  I give them a list of a few major things, and that’s it.  But still, the emails are not being read.  Why?

Why my emails (and yours) aren’t being read:

1. Their inbox is already full of other important information.  My email is 1 of 1000 that they “have” to read.

2. It takes thought to read emails.  Reading my emails is not always mindless, because they need to read and process the information for their group.

3. My emails are boring.  Since I’ve pared them down to only vital information, they’re pretty boring.  Concise? Yes.  Thrilling? Not even by a long shot.

4. “I’ll read it later.”

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So are we seeing the end of email?  Maybe.  Email is boring and lifeless.  It’s often filled with spam, and forwards that we don’t want to read.  We get mass emails and “reply all” messages that don’t pertain to us, and our inbox rarely reaches zero.  The rest of the world has taken massive leaps forward in terms of communicating, yet email still seems to lag behind in black & white letters and numbers.

I’ve begun utilizing Twitter and Facebook to communicate with my team.  Both of these platforms integrate networking with information sharing.  Communication moves from the mere passing of information into the realm of knowing somebody better.  I put a face with a name in Facebook.  I get a snapshot of a person’s life (at least what they want the public world to see) in Twitter.  That’s where lots of the group leaders at Grace Community Church “hang out,” so that’s where I’m going to communicate.

I have recently begun using The Flip video camera.  I’ve really liked the ease of use, because I can throw it in my bag and have it ready to catch the many things that my wife and I don’t want to miss our son doing.  In addition to family videos, I’ve begun using it to shoot some videos for our small groups.  I have a lower quality version, but there are even some new, HD models of the Flip available.  At the end of the day, I’d sacrifice video quality for ease of use.  Based on the response of my small group leaders, they’d much prefer watching me yack on a video than reading it.

Is email dead?  I think it’s being quickly outpaced by lots of other mediums.

How do you communicate?  What medium to you prefer?  Maybe, more importantly, which mediums do “your people” prefer?

Here’s the video I sent to my small group leaders.  It’s not the best video you’ve ever seen, but I know that more people watched it than normally read my emails:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZeKsUGJx74&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

 

This is the third part in a series on one specific model of recruiting leaders.  You can read parts one and two if you’d like.  These are my concluding thoughts on the value of using apprentices to grow leaders in your organization or ministry.

Advantages of using apprentices to grow your organization (#6-#12):

6. They have seen leadership in action. In my role, as small groups director, this is huge.  I love when a group leader has an apprentice, because that apprentice has seen their group leader navigate difficult situations and lead people effectively.

7. They are insiders. They’ve been a part of the organization for some time now, and the company’s DNA has become their own.

8. Others in the organization don’t wonder, “Where did this guy come from?” They have seen the apprentice in the halls on Sunday, or in the office throughout the week, and they’ve built a relationship with the person, whether that’s a surface-level or deeper.  There’s a credibility and trust that has been built.  Credibility and trust aren’t built overnight.

9. They have been preparing themselves for the specific role. They knew that this move was coming.  They knew that, at some point, they would be asked to lead.  They’ve been praying about it, reading books on it, talking with other leaders who are doing what they will be doing, etc.

10. They have influence within their sphere. They aren’t somebody who has no relationships.  They’ve been working to develop relationships.  When they’re asked to take the lead, there are people who will immediately follow them.

11. It’s not a risky way to find leaders. Leadership develops over time, not overnight.  The apprentice has been developing over the course of months, or even years.  If at some point you need them to lead, it’s easy to evaluate whether they’re ready or not by talking with their leader, who has been evaluating them over the course of their apprenticeship.  If they’re not ready, just give them some more time to develop.  No harm, no foul.  You can avoid placing them in a leadership position that they aren’t ready for, which is a definite “win”.

12.  You can put them in the exact position that fits their gifts. You have observed their leadership potential, have gotten to know them, and can help evaluate strenghts, weaknesses, and areas of interest.

In the end, apprenticeship sets up future leaders for success, equipping them for the leadership role to which God is calling them.

However, apprenticing has its downsides and challenges.  Check back for my thoughts on the disadvantages.