5 Ways to Help Keep Your Students’ Attention

As a leader, how often have you looked into your audience, whether in a conference room, classroom or large group setting and realized what you were saying was, well, boring?
The Instructify website has a post titled, 5 Ways to Help Keep Your Students' Attention. Click the link and take a moment and read about five easy ways to keep people's attention no matter who's you're audience.

5 Ways to Help Keep Your Students' Attention

Transparency and the Draining Effect

Basically John said he was totally drained today.
I was in the same place yesterday, in fact I know most if not all of our Management Team felt the same way.

June 11 will be a day remembered for a long time amongst us staff folks at our church.

8:30 am: Lead Pastor, Executive, Worship, Nursery/preschool, Student, Small Group and me Children's pastor (Management Team) all together, one room, to work through the first layer of the pyramid from the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, by Patrick Lencioni.
We all knew we were "dysfunctional" we just didn't know our dysfunction was as deep, wide and murky.
We focused for most of the day, and yes, it was a full day - til almost 4 pm, talking about trust.
Don't get me wrong, we needed to definitely clear the air. The last few weeks have pretty much brought a whole load of dookie to the table that was once covered and put away.
It was just, wow, totally emotionally draining.
Pretty much in my experience I've never, ever, EVER been in a meeting where this much transparency and honesty has taken place. It was good, it just hurt.
My hope is we, gulp, continue this process; it would be a colossal shame to open this box to only have it quietly forgotten.
If you think about it, pray for us.

Wayne Geer
Church Staff 101

10 Things To Do Before You're Hired

Read a great article titled, 10 Things To Consider Before Your Church Hires Another Staff Member by Todd Rhoades.
It's an article geared towards churches before they hire, but it's an insightful post for anyone looking for a job as well.
Click here and jump to the site.

Wayne Geer
Church Staff 101

Gang Life

Francis Chan, session speaker at the Orange Conference and senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, told of a story about a gang member who attended his church once he was saved. After a period of time the gang member was starting to struggle. Francis had an opportunity to chat with him and found out he was wondering why church life was not as fulfilling as gang life. While in the gang, the young man always had people who were accepting of him, trusted him and had his back. His observation of church life was that people were unaccepting, did not trust him and did not have his back.
What a heart wrenching story. It was the last part that really grabbed a hold of me; having other's back. The phrase has been so important that it's been elevated to my prayer sheet.
I pose the question, do you have other's back? Immediately there's family, friends, co-workers. But what about there at your church? Do you have the lead pastor's back? The pastoral staff's backs? Elders' backs? And of course, the Children's Ministry back's?
Just something to think about.

Orange - Francis Chan

Pastor Chan is one of my favorite speakers. Truly, every time I listen to him I’m challenged and today was no different.
Three questions to add to my growing prayer list:
Is the Holy Spirit truly in me?
Do I have other’s backs?
What does God want me to do that I’ve not been doing?

This guy is powerful.

Church Staff 101
Wayne Geer

Orange – Family Experience: The Non-weekly Option

“80% of kids raised in church will walk away from church by the time they get to college.”
Carey Nieuwhof is one of my favorite presenters and today he was on fire. Great presentation about the wisdom of using the family experience on a monthly basis. Good emphasis on strategy; so vital to hear.
Once again, awesome.

Church Staff 101
Wayne Geer

Orange - Picture This!

Greg and Jen are leading this session about helping us all with story telling. I am not from a drama background, so the exercises/games they taught us were helpful. Certainly exercises I’ll work through with both our on-stage and small group leaders.
Great stuff.

Church Staff 101
Wayne Geer

Orange Conference Day 1 Preconference

We’re here! Flew in last night, picked up a very cool minivan; I know, I’m old. Drove out to the conference center and painlessly registered. What a relief. Beautiful hotel and now, Monday morning I’m in my first preconference session, Design on a Dime with Jeffrey Reed.
I sat in on a session with Jeffrey at Camp Kidjam and so I’m looking forward to his wisdom.
Update to follow…

Church Staff 101
Wayne Geer

How's Your Fire?

In the midst of prayer today, I thought about a meeting a couple of weeks ago when big, burly, manly-man, Wayne broke down and, yes, shed tears during prayer. Honestly, I’m not much of a crier, but there are times when I lose some salt. One situation that always brings emotion is when I’m brought back to the reality of why I do what I do; the calling God has placed on my life and the inherent urgency of ministry.
I certainly go through times when I look at ministry as just a job or an obligation. I wrestle with those periods; I do hate it when those feelings rise up. But no matter how crabby, stressed, cynical, or dull I feel “in the moment”, ultimately, it’s the calling and the urgency that are my fire.
The “fire” is not the programs I’ve been a part of, the events I’ve helped lead, or the object lessons I’ve brought. The fire is the urgency of knowing true eternal transformation is taking place in the lives of children and their families. The “how” we do what we do changes over time, but the “why” is always John 3:16.
And so I ask you, how’s your fire doing? My sincere hope and prayer is that you serve because of the desire, the calling, the necessity in your life to see others eternally transformed. I pray God would continually stoke the fire of urgency in you. This blaze impacts how you pray for “your kids” and their families, how you interact with them, even how you prepare your lessons. It burns away “job and obligation” and thankfully reveals calling and urgency.

I’m struggling with the ending here, so I’ll end with the question, “How’s your fire?”

Church Staff 101
Wayne Geer

Updated: Mrs. EVAN'S Famous Saying

"When someone tells you who they are the first time believe it!"
Ah, the famous saying from John Stickl's mom-in-law. It was about a year ago that I first heard it and from that very first moment, I knew this woman had great wisdom.
John is our Adult Ministries Pastor and oversees small groups; this guy is good. He and I talk a lot because I can always pick up some nugget from him. His MIL's saying has been one that has resonated with me. I wish I had known it sixteen years ago when I first started in ministry.
As I've looked back at first impressions of my different ministry opportunities, I've peeled away the "happy happy joy joy" parts of the visits. I've seen an interesting correlation between the first impressions and how the future at each particular position has developed.
People who have "told me who they are the first time" by going out of their way to be friendly, show trust, be respectful have been the one's who've proved themselves to be that way. Churches that showed characteristics of generosity from the first visit were that way in real life. The unfavorable impressions have also played themselves out. Very interesting.
So I'm adding the saying to my bag of wisdom in hopes of it being one more gauge to use.
Thanks Mrs. Evans.

Wayne Geer
Church Staff 101

Retooling

Retool - reorganize, revise, modify
I know businesses do it, restaurants, even Starbucks kind of did it last night by closing all their stores for a few hours so all their employees could be trained at one time.

Have you heard of a church retooling?

This has been a topic in our staff meetings and lunch discussions for a few weeks now. We realize we have some systemic problems, inefficient processes and a loaded schedule that's not allowing us as a team to devote long blocks of time to work things out. Thus the thought of a retooling.

Well, after a long and thoughtful staff meeting yesterday, no massive retooling is scheduled for anytime soon. Sad.

Our processing as a team has been helpful, though. So here's a list of things to think about if you're dreaming about retooling.

Retooling List:

• Pray - always a given.
• Timing - when is the best time to pause as many activities as possible to get some margin in your schedules to reorganize.
• Focus - really, truly what needs to pause and make sure you pause it.
• Focus part 2 - if you pause activities for a time period, tell everyone why you're retooling, then you and your team had better work VERY hard at retooling. Our thought was if we retooled in the summer, it may have been one of our busiest summers, but we would set ourselves up correctly for the short and long term future.
• Focus part 3 - everyone needs to either be on board (executive staff, associate staff, elders, deacons, key laity) or know the why for revising (volunteer leaders, those affected by paused programming, congregation).
• Schedule - set in stone the dates and times your team will meet and don't deviate.
• Be Strategic - Know what systems, processes, inefficiencies need to change, make a list and one by one come to a conclusion for each item.
• You may feel a pinch - this will probably hurt. You will have some hurt feelings, anger and you'll probably lose some folks. Is it still worth it?
  
• The Captain - ultimately it's the senior pastor who has to truly embrace the retooling. If he's not on board, the ship isn't changing direction

Pastor Bob Kapp, a great friend and mentor was realistic when he told me retooling sounds good but is probably easier said than done, he was right.

What about you, any thoughts of retooling? Have you? And if so, what lessons did you learn.
Let us know.

Wayne Geer
Church Staff 101

Stories Just Keep Coming

For about the last eight or nine months we've been reminding our leaders to email us stories of life change taking place in their worlds. It's always good to know that the effort being put into ministry is making a difference.

The stories we've been receiving have been inspirational, touching and most importantly, they've been personal, hands-on, real life stories about people they know. We email the stories out to the rest of our team. It's been neat to talk about and hear our leaders talk about the great things taking place.

Stories are powerful.

If you get a chance, check out my post about stories entitled, Country, Opera and Stories.

Wayne Geer
Church Staff 101

Orange Tour DFW - Session 3

Session 3 was with Carey Nieuwhof, a senior pastor from Canada. Great session with deep insight about the "c" word, change.

• Change is a constant
• Every change has a life cycle; an upswing and an eventual downswing
• Easy change takes place on the downturn, though this may not be the best time to change
• Well-led organizations change while on the upswing; this is the most difficult point of change, but potentially the most productive
• We may have to change stuff that was working in order to have greater impact
• We need to look at why we do what we do all the time

5 Steps to Implementing Change

1. Study the concepts
2. Get as many of your team on-board as possible – need leaders aligned
3. Define an action plan
4. Reorganize for change
5. Implement the change – soft launch, evaluate

A great session to wrap up an inspirational day. Tomorrow, Church Staff 101 continues the love!

Wayne

Orange Tour DFW - Session 2

Session two with Reggie. He talked about the phrases that need to come in-between the words from the two lists he talked about in session one.

So to get from list one to list two, we need to do the following:

• To get from focusing on Students to focusing on Leaders, we need to Integrate Strategy.
• To get from Content to Experience, we need to Refine Our Message
• To get from Production to Relationship, we need to Elevate Community
• To get from Age-focused to Family-focused, we need to Reactivate the Family
• And to get from Growth to Service, we need to Leverage Influence

Reggie passed out the “Calibrate” card. A "scorecard" to be used to see where our churches/ministries are at when it comes to getting us from the first list to the second list using the "in-between" phrases. Very good stuff. Even during our break, great discussions with our leadership that are here with us this weekend.

Check out Orange Tour to check out the conference and Church Staff 101 will continue the live blogs.
Wayne

Orange Tour DFW day 1

The giant ice storm was a dud, so right now, at this very moment I'm in the opening session at the Orange Tour DFW stop with the great Reggie Joiner. And as usual, incredibly "meaty" material from "the man."

Here's Reggie's list of things we probably think about every week:
Students
Content
Production
Age-focused ministry
Growth

And here's Reggie's list of things maybe we should be thinking about every week:
Leaders instead of students: most effective way of reaching the kids is us as pastors reaching the adult and teen volunteers who can multiply our influence.
Experience instead of content: There is a gap between what we’re teaching and what really happens out there, and it’s our job to close that gap.
Relationship instead of production: The world’s culture will always have better production, BUT what the world’s culture doesn’t have is the importance of relationship
Family-focused instead of age-focused: our 40 hours per year with the children we minister to has limited influence and impact. We need to leverage parents because of their 3000 hours of influence. We need to help make our parents experts at influencing their children. We need parents to fight for their relationship with their children, and we need kids to fight for their relationship with their parents
Service instead of numeric growth: serving must be a component of discipleship. We need people to volunteer for our ministries to help them grow spiritually, not for them to help us with our ministry

What would happen in our ministries if we moved from thinking so much about the first list and rather focussed more time on the second list?

Church Staff 101 will keep the updates coming.
Check out the Orange Tour website and sign up for the tour stop near you. It will be well worth your time, energy and money.
Wayne

Top 10 List for Most Ministries

As I was putting together the Top 10 List for Children's Ministry post at Children's Ministry 101, I realized the info would translate over to other ministries as well.

And so here's a top 10 list for most ministry programs and or departments. As always I hope it's a help to you and would love to read your comments.

Top 10 List for Most Ministries

1. Prayer. An essential, vital, can't make it without it, aspect of EVERY ministry. We can never pray enough, and we can never encourage our team's to pray too much.
2. Growth. Not numerical, but personal growth. We often say, "You can't give what you don't have." Spiritual growth is necessary as we pour spiritually into those around us.
3. Tell us stories. We love hearing stories of transformation taking place in people's lives, so we encourage our leaders to tell us and send us an email of stories they hear.
   
4. Be informative. All of our leadership are mouthpieces of our church. And so they are encouraged to be as informed as possible about their area of ministry and our church in general. Our job as staff pastors is to give them the info in easy to understand bits.
5. Continuing Ed. We highly encourage our leaders to further their knowledge about their area of ministry and spiritual matters. We provide a weekly email with ministry specific and church-wide info, provide relevant articles about their ministry role, encourage our leaders to attend local conferences (we try to cover some portion of the cost), provide two orientations a year and are always on the lookout for relevant books for them to read.
6. Be flexible. No, we don't offer Bible yoga classes, but we do want our leaders to be flexible about their serving role; always looking for areas of need and helping out in the moment, willing to change at the last minute if the time requires it.
   
7. Feedback. We do want to hear from our leaders. They are the "hands and feet" of our ministry, seeing things that we sometimes miss. We have an open door policy. Not every suggestion we're able to act on, but everything brought to our attention will be heard and thought through.
8. Free advertising. Our leaders know they are free advertising for the ministry so it's vital for them to be positive when talking about the it. Smile, tell good stories, have the "back" of the ministry.
   
9. Recruiters. Whatever word you use, recruiting, attracting, blah blah blah, our leaders, paid and volunteer, are the single greatest recruiting force we have at our hands. Planting the seed that they are needed to pray for more volunteers and talk to their sphere of influence about joining the team is a necessity. We tell our team to think in terms of replacing themselves this year with someone they've asked to join the team.
10. Membership. At our church, membership is mandatory if a person is leading other people. To us it shows that they are on board with the vision of the church

Again, let Church Staff 101 know what you think.

Wayne

Getting Started in Children's Ministry

Jason Rhode, children's pastor, co-founder of Children's Ministry University Online and adjunct faculty with Valley Forge Christian College, co-author's the blog, Children's Ministry Insights.

Church Staff 101 is always on the lookout for great insight from around the blogosphere and so check out his post, Getting Started in Children's Ministry. It's chock full of nuggets of truth everyone needs, no matter what area of ministry you oversee.

Check it out.

Wayne

How to Spoil Those You Lead

Jim Wideman, children's ministry professional and one of three authors of the blog, The Way We See It, writes:
"I love being spoiled. My wife has spoiled me for over 29 years. My daughters have spoiled their Dad all their life, my employees spoil me at the office on a regular basis. Because I like it so much I want to spoil others. A great goal for the New Year is to purpose in your heart to spoil your volunteers outside their classrooms as well as in. You’ve heard me say this before, you gain those you serve. It’s a spiritual law. Christ Jesus came to serve not to be served."

Read the rest of the blog article and Jim's Top 10 List for you to stand out in your church as a leader who serves their volunteers, How to Spoil Those You Lead.

Wayne

Country, Opera and Stories

Alright, here it goes. I'm going to let you in on a closely held secret about my life. This may radically change the way you think about me, but I'm willing to be transparent.
I like to listen to country music and opera.

Yep, you read that correctly. The music I hated as a young man, I love now. There is something about an opera piece or a great country song that just grabs me. In fact, this morning as I listened to one of those gripping country songs, I asked myself what made it so appealing to me? When it comes to country, I do like the twangy voices, the music, especially the steel guitar, and I like the story. Opera; the music, the female voices singing and again, the story. It's the narrative, the telling of some event in a compelling way that I love because honestly, it moves me.

So, what's so special about the story? As I listened this morning, even as I write now, it's the tale that made the impact. A good story can greatly affect. It can change our emotional state sometimes instantly. Many times I've come home from work in one mood and after hearing a great story from the day told by my wife or children, I'm completely transformed emotionally.

The story has the power to transform us partly because it helps us focus. You know it's true, when a story is being told that somehow piques our interest, we're glued. We hang on every word. We don't want to miss any details because we're wrapped up in the story. And the outcome is that oftentimes we're inspired by what we've heard.

Ok, Wayne, but what does this mean for me? When in ministry, it seems like most of the time it can be a rough uninspiring road We don't always see fruit in those we are pouring our lives into. And you know, sometimes people are just downright mean. But it's the compelling stories we hear that once again drive home the point that what we're doing is worthwhile, eternally worthwhile. It's when those we minister to come and tell us about how they are living out their walk with God that we are then re-energized. It's as if God the Father reaches down and pats us on the back, wow what a wonderful feeling!

And so I challenge you to look for and be encouraged by those stories. Go ahead and feel good about the ministry that's taking place through you. Thank God for Him showing you a glimpse of what He sees and knows. Take that story and let it inspire you until the next one. And lastly, pass those stories on to those around you. What a precious gift you hold, when you see a peer who is struggling and needs something to affect them, and then you tell them the story that's been your most recent pat on the back.

So what great ministry (NOT country or opera) stories have you heard lately?

Wayne