Let the April Fool's Pranks Begin

Alrighty, the pranks have begun.
I've done six "tape over the mouse sensors", one "food coloring in the milk", one "rubber band around the sink sprayer" and will be setting the clocks ahead one hour.
I'll also be loading the "blue screen of death" screen saver on unsuspecting pc users and possibly will load the "broken screen" screen saver as well.
Oh, I forgot about the invert colors on the macs at our offices.
I know, I'm 40, but come on, it's April Fool's!

Church Staff 101
Wayne Geer

Mac + Water + PRAYER = Dodged a Bullet

Oochie mamma! I dodged a bullet last night. I'm settling into my favorite chair, about to check email from the day, thirsty so I go to take a drink and then splash! Water on the Mac PowerBook G4.
Ahhh! I unplug, tip over and run to our other computer to search online for "spill on laptop." I then run back to the tipped over Mac, power down, remove the battery and start with the hair dryer on medium. Throughout this time, much prayer.
Well this morning everything works fine so far. Powered on, screen looks fine, keys and trackpad work. I'm about to go into the office, so we'll see if all the plug in items work. Update coming... Yes, everything works.
By the way, I've been a Mac convert for about two years now and love them! Unless forced to, I'll never go back to pc again. You can check out the newest Macs here, here, and here.

Church Staff 101
Wayne Geer

LinkedIn and Facebooked

I took the plunge a few months ago and joined both LinkedIn and Facebook. Both of my accounts kind of languished for those few months until this past weekend.
I went on a social network blitz.
I took time to update both of my profiles and worked at connecting with friends, family and colleagues around the country. And it's been fun. I've reconnected with some old friends who I would never have found had I continued on my path of not connecting via LinkedIn or Facebook. Also, I'm interested in both networks being an avenue for me to expand my professional network. It seems to be all the rage. Have you had success connecting on either network? Let us know.

Church Staff 101
Wayne Geer

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