thinking.church podcast

Hiring is one of the toughest jobs in church leadership. Get it wrong and you can set your church back in its development, cause conflict and division, even a church split. But get it right, and it can be the thing that can catapult your church forward, create an amazing work environment and make ministry a joy. In this episode, we go into the problems of hiring, how to hire, who to hire, and what to do if it's all gone wrong.

Key Points

1. The problems
   1. Being over staffed
   2. Hiring the wrong person
   3. Hiring doers
   4. Short term thinking
2. How to hire
   1. Hiring for skill, hiring for personality, hiring for cultural fit
   2. Skill can be taught, personality can’t
   3. Take your time
   4. Clear job descriptions
   5. Is head hunting illegal?
3. Who to hire
   1. Can a volunteer do it?
   2. Vision setters
   3. Content Creators 
   4. Managers
   5. Doers
4. What do you do if you have the wrong staff team?
   1. Look at yourself first
   2. Speak to your HR Trustee
   3. Get help early

Got thoughts or discussion?

Email at [email protected]

If you've ever felt the stinging rebuke of a trustee for your plans, you're not alone. The problem is how we see the role of trustees, rather than gatekeepers, trustees can provide specific skill and expertise that can help you shape your plans. In this episode, we take a deep dive into the role of the trustee. 

Key Points

1. Problems that can occur between boards and leadership teams

2. It's all about your governing document

3. Spiritual direction vs charitable accountability

4. What role should trustees play?

- skill based vs "church stalwart" 

5. Should you have the same trustees and leadership team?

6. Do they need to be part of the church? A Christian?

Great churches need great vision, but without a solid financial plan to back it up, nothing will happen. When we can orient our financial plan around our vision, we set our church up to be able to achieve all that God has for it. In this episode, Chris & Lee talk all about how to think through your finance strategy, as well as roasting chestnuts and dad jokes. If you'd like to send us your thoughts or discussion on what we're talking about, email us on [email protected]. 

Key Points

1. Finance must serve vision, not the other way around

2. Setting your Expected Income

- Expected Growth

- Flat

- Trend

3. Planning by Percentage, not amount

- Scalability

4. Setting Margin

- Gift Aid

- Ability to remain flexible in uncertain times

- Do you need to spend your margin?

5. Setting floors

- Generosity

6. Setting Ceilings

- Staffing

- Debt repayment

7. Setting an Expansion Budget

Virtually every church has some sort of social media presence, but few know how to do it well. We often think that social media can only done well if you have a team of employees ready to churn out content on an hourly basis. However, when done effectively, social media becomes a method for churches to pastor people. Our guest this week, Alin Dragu, shows us how we need to think more about social media in pastoral terms than advertising.

About Our Guest

Alin Dragu is the Social & Digital Media Director for 12Stone Church in Atlanta, GA. 

Points Covered

1. Hi Alin, great to speak with you. Social Media has become a vital tool for churches, especially since COVID-19 struck. What are the common mistakes that you’re seeing churches make with social media?
2. I think that a big problem that churches face is that they don’t know why they are using social media. They’re often on it because everyone else is using it. What do you find is the best purpose for social media in general?
3. We all know the main platforms, Facebook, Twitter & Instagram. But there’s also Snapchat and TikTok too. Do different platforms serve different purposes?
4. Social Media is completely linked to a content strategy. Could you tell our listeners what that is, and how they can develop their own?
5. How often should we be posting on different platforms?
6. There’s lots of scheduling packages around… HubSpot, Buffer, Hootsuite to name a few. Which ones have you found most effective and why?
7. There are different types of posts too… Video, text, photo. Which posts work best in which scenarios?
8. We’ve all seen those posts where someone starts arguing with a post someone’s put up. How do we engage with negative comments?
9. Most of the churches in the U.K. are under 100 people, and that means that virtually all of the churches in the U.K. won’t have a social media staff member. What can churches do with zero staff?
10. If a church has zero social media presence currently. What next steps would you recommend that a church could take to start engaging with people on social media.

Well 2020 went as planned, right? We all set Vision plans for 2020, but life didn't quite work out that way. So how do you go about setting vision for 2021 when life is so uncertain? In this episode, Chris & Lee talk about what Vision is, and the different methods you can use to set vision during the uncertainties we live in. 

Key Points

1. What we mean by vision (goals)
2. The problem with long term goals
3. The problem with overly ambitious goals
4. Goodharts Law - why setting numerical targets are a bad idea
5. SMART
6. OKRs
7. 4DX
8. Agile
9. Our Method: 5 year goal, 1 year goal, Quarterly tasks
10. Why completing your goals is so important

For many churches, discipleship has become a one-off course that you run, but the Great Commission puts it right at the heart of the church's mandate. How do we do that more effectively? Now with the rise of online ministry, how do we effectively disciple people in an online setting?

About Our Guest

Nick Charalambous is on staff at New Spring Church in South Carolina. Nick grew up in North London, but has spent his ministerial life in the U.S.A. where he has had many roles in helping Spiritual Formation both in an online setting and in-person. He was also Newspring's Storytelling pastor, where he gathered stories of transformation throughout the church. 

Key Points

1. What does the mechanics of discipleship involve?
2. Isn’t Discipleship just a one-off course?
3. What does it look like to tie discipleship to a broader strategy?
4. What are the ways that we can start to approach discipleship online?
5. How do you weave storytelling into your discipleship or small group environment?
6. How have stories helped you gauge a picture of how well discipleship is going at your church?
7. What does it look like when your discipleship process is going well and when they’re not going well?
8. What’s the legacy of COVID-19 for discipleship on the church?
9. What things can we do now to help us work at a calmer pace when we re-open church buildings?

Christmas is a difficult season to plan for as a church. Planning for Christmas when you're not sure what the COVID restrictions will be is even harder. The great news is that you can still get planning, regardless of the rules at Christmas time. By planning the foundations, the variables such as platform and location can remain flexible. In this episode, Chris & Lee explain how to plan an awesome Christmas event in the uncertainty of COVID. 

Key Points

• Where we might be at Christmas with COVID
• Pre-Planning
  • Purpose: Set a purpose for the event
  • People: Determine a target market
  • Problem: What problem do they need solving?
  • Powers: What are we good at?
  • Positioning: How is our event unique?
  • Product: What is the core benefit you are providing to your target market?
  • Provision: What budget is there for this event?
• Creating the event
  • Story: what is the journey you are taking them on?
  • Name: Find a compelling Name
  • Theme: Find a design theme
  • Programme: Create the programme outline with timings, from first contact to last contact. Include before and after the actual programmed event. 
  • Kids Provision: What are you doing for children?
  • Time: What time will it take place?
  • Place: Where will it take place? Physical building? Online? Both?
  • Price: Are you charging for the event?
• Promotion
  • Creating a Marketing Funnel
  • Channels
  • Where do they sign up?

Why does your church believe what it believes? Because the Bible says so? How did you come to that conclusion? There's a saying, "Process over Product" but when it comes to what we believe, we spend more time thinking about the product than the process. Our theology is dependent on our process to get to that theological standpoint. What are the core mechanisms that should help us reach our theological standpoints?

About our Guest

Dr. John Andrews is an author, teacher and theologian, as well as being a great friend of thinking.church. John has written many books including First Day, Beyond Broken, and his latest book, Face to Face.

John is married to Dawn and they have three children together: Elaina (married to Dan), Simeon and Beth-Anne, not forgetting their sausage dogs, Pepperoni and Salami.

John loves long walks with Dawn, going to the cinema, reading and supporting his beloved Liverpool FC

Key Points

• What can we do to correct the lack of Biblical literacy?
• Have we focused too much on Leadership Development instead of Biblical literacy?
• How do we help people deconstruct and reconstruct their theology?
• What are the foundational principles of interpreting Scripture?
• Is theology fluid or static?
• How much of our theology is inherited?
• How has COVID forced us to re-think our theology?
• How do we construct a theological model?
• How do we allow people to wrestle with theological doubt?
• How does theology speak to strategy and change?

Church Values are on most church websites, usually tucked away in a dusty corner of the About Us page, and don't really mean an awful lot. In fact, they tend to be some words we like, but they have very little affect on how we do what we do. However, when used properly, values have the power to be so much more than we think. However, we need to move from static words to actionable phrases - simple guiding principles - to help your church use them in their lives, both in and out of church.

Key Points

• What are values?
• What’s the problem with values as we’ve always known them
• From Values to Simple Guiding Principles
• SGPs should be Memorable
• SGPs should be Universal
• SGPs should be Measurable
• Using SGPs inside the church organisation
• How to implement SGP within your church (Model it, Teach it, Celebrate it, Repeat it)
• Congregation using SGPs in their everyday lives

Leadership Development is a much talked about subject, but so little thought goes into systematising it. We often put it down to a natural born gift, or believing the cream will rise to the top. However, this rarely happens. As church leaders, it is our responsibility to grow the people within our care, including their leadership capacity. But how do you do this at scale? In this Podcast we talk with Simon Jarvis about Leadership Pipelines and using technology to develop leaders.

About our guest

Simon is the Senior Leader of the One Church Network, as well as being Leadership Development Director for AoG UK. Simon previously ran Youth Alive in the U.K. before moving to Gloucester in 2006 to become Senior Pastor of Robinswood Pentecostal Church, now One Church. One Church has grown over the 14 years to having 4 locations in the U.K. and 3 locations in Zimbabwe. 

Simon is married to Ally, and they have two adult children, Jack & Abi.

Key Points

1. Leadership development has become a bit of a buzzword in Christian circles in the last couple of decades, but it still seems like churches are struggling to develop leaders. Why is that so?
2. Your passion is for Leadership Development, why are you passionate about it?
3. I’ve heard it said that everyone is a leader, and I’ve also heard that leadership is a spiritual gift only for some people… which do you think it is and why?
4. I’ve also heard both sides to the argument about nature vs nurture when it comes to leadership. Is a leader born that way or can it be developed in anyone?
5. When you’re looking to develop a leader to take significant weight in One Church, what things are you looking for?
6. You’ve just introduced a Leadership Pipeline in One Church, what is that and how does it work?
7. You’ve also started something called Alps. What is it and how is it utilising technology to develop leaders remotely?
8. How important is face-to-face time in the development of a leader?
9. There are two schools of thought in regard to who the developer of leaders should be. Some say that leadership development should be done by more senior leaders, whereas some say that as long as you are one level up, you can develop the leaders below you. What have you found to be the most effective way of developing leaders in this regard?
10. The Leadership Pipeline provides the structure for developing leadership competencies, but you’re still a fan of running leadership development programmes. How are you thinking about using programmes in line with your Leadership Pipeline?
11. You’ve recently started overseeing Leadership Development for all of AoG in the UK. How do you start to develop leaders at scale?

Resources

One Church Website

AoG UK Website

How to make more my disciples with a Clear Pathway blog