Archive for November, 2011

Terminating Staff in a Church Setting

Thursday, November 24th, 2011

Tips on Terminating Staff in a Church Setting
It doesn’t matter if you have a staff of one or, like we have at Lakeside, a staff of 25 full and part-time employees; there may come a time when you have to terminate someone. I’ve worked in the marketplace for 17 years and I have been in ministry for 17 years and I have had to do this probably a dozen or more times. I’ve never enjoyed it and would avoid it if I could, but when you are a senior leader in any organization, this painful task sometimes falls on your desk.

In ministry, when I have had to terminate a staff person, I had a single goal in mind— do whatever it takes to minimize the negative consequences. I would negotiate long and more-than-fair severances. I would let them work for a few weeks before they had to leave. I would let the “terminee” have a say in almost everything. The announcement to the church community would be as upbeat and positive as it could be, using words like “mutual” and “agreed upon.” We would have a farewell lunch for the staff person. In an attempt to minimize the negative consequences I’ve followed the same process over and over. But here is what I discovered: sometimes the consequences were minimized, but most often they were not. Even when I was trying to be as “fair” as I possibly could. Time and time again, after going overboard in severance and saying goodbye, I still got the blame and the consequences were not all that positive.

After learning a few things along the way, I compiled this list.

Dave’s Top Ten list for staff termination in a church setting:
1. Hire well. If you get this one right the rest of what I am about to share won’t matter.

2. Deal with performance issues promptly and professionally. Don’t let them linger. Don’t avoid them hoping they will go away. They won’t.

3. Be truthful about why this termination needs to happen but do it with grace. If it is a performance or personality issue, communicate it to the entire church community. If you don’t tell the whole truth then people will make it up.

4. Determine a severance ahead of time and refuse to significantly negotiate.

5. Have the person leave as soon as possible. The longer they linger the more opportunity for negative talk to happen – especially with other staff.

6. Balance the “family/body” aspects of the church with the “business/organizational” aspects and don’t lean too far to one extreme.

7. Set up a personnel team so the burden and blame do not belong to you alone as the senior leader. You will get enough of it already.

8. Always follow the legal requirements on termination and in some cases get legal advice about how to handle it. If a person leaves poorly they will be getting their own legal advice.

9. If it was the right thing to do, others on staff or in the church knew it long before you did and have been waiting for you to take leadership on this for a while. The longer you wait, the more they might question your credibility.

10. Be prepared for negative consequences from “loyal fans” of the person that is leaving. No matter how you handle it, this will always be the reality.

Do I do this well yet? No, but I am learning as I go, and am simply sharing the lessons with you that I have painfully learned over the last 17 years. I hope they help. If you have a difficult situation right now, feel free to contact me at dralph@lakesidechurch.ca. I will be glad to share my experience and maybe save you many of the mistakes I have already made.

Dave Ralph is the Lead Pastor at Lakeside Church in Guelph, ON and also a VMC Board member. Before entering full-time ministry, Dave was a funeral director for 10 years and VP for a financial institution. He and his wife Susan have been ministering at Lakeside since 1999.

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Doing the Work of Ministry?

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

Doing the Work of Ministry?

This week my neighbour died. Ray was a pastor at a Japanese church here in Toronto. We had first met on a trip to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago several years ago. We had swapped war stories about church ministry and found we shared some common ground. We exchanged business cards but didn’t realize that we were neighbours. It took us about two years to discover that my backyard backed out onto his. We were just so busy doing ministry that our paths didn’t cross even though we were right next door. I remember when we made the discovery. We talked, prayed, and agreed that we should pray more often. Meeting together had energized and refreshed us.

I wish I could say that from then on we met regularly and built a close friendship but both of us would go weeks and months without even a ‘hello neighbour’. It seems that doing ministry was more important than being a good neighbour. How ironic when you consider that Jesus himself said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… and…Love your neighbour as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37–40).

The irony of it all got me thinking, why don’t I view things like getting to know my neighbours as ministry? Why is it that creating sermons, planning church events, counseling couples, leading meetings, and writing blogs count as “ministry” but working on my marriage, building my relationships with my children, getting to know my neighbours, and spending time alone with God don’t seem to qualify?

In his letter to the Corinthian church, Paul says, “…I urge you to imitate me. For this reason I am sending to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.” (1 Cor 4:16-17 emphasis mine). It would appear that Paul’s ministry extended far beyond the tasks of ministry. Sharing his way of life with people was part of his ministry (1Thess 1:6, 2:8, 2Thess 3:7). Paul expected and instructed his coworkers to do this too. “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them…” (1Tim 4:16a emphasis mine).

If I told our church to “imitate me,” would they find anything to follow that would enrich their relationships and deepen their faith? Would I be reinforcing the manic frenzy of the world around me? It seems to me that the state of my heart and the quality of my living is as much ministry as preparing a sermon. In our world today it is just as important.

The careerism of North American culture and the professionalization of the pastor’s role in the church may push us towards a narrow view of ministry that leaves us with not much of a life to share with others. I’m changing my thinking and making changes to my schedule to make room for the ministry of my marriage, my children, my neighbours, and my intimacy with the Lord. God uses all these things to build his church.

Matt Craig
Lead Pastor Don Valley Bible Chapel Toronto
Matt Craig is the Lead Pastor at Don Valley Bible Chapel. He is a graduate of Tyndale University and has over 12 years of ministry experience. Matt is currently pursuing a Masters of Ministry with the Antioch School of Church Planting. He is married to Sue Craig and has two children, Charlotte and Joel.

www.dvbc.com

http://pastormattcraig.blogspot.com/

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Transitions, Making the Most of Change

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

Managing Transitions, Making the Most of Change, author William Bridges

Change—envisioning it, encouraging it, enabling it, or whatever part we play, is inevitable for any of us who carry the mantle of leadership. I have been pondering the verse written by Paul, “being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Eph.4:3, NASB). What does this look like when I am at it again, pressing for things to be better for His glory? How do I preserve peace, but push forward?

The easy answer to this is don’t rock the boat, do everything you can to keep people happy. My flesh likes that. One of my greatest “idols” is wanting to be liked. I certainly know that Jesus wasn’t a people pleaser, He rocked the boat at almost every step He took. My idol has to die; keeping people happy is not the answer.

I came a across a very insightful book over a year ago that has helped our leadership team immensely. We have seen a lot of change—good, purposeful, Christ-exalting change—while genuinely wrestling with how to do it wisely and in love. Managing Transitions by William Bridges, has been a best seller in the business world for close to a decade, but was new to me. No, the church is not a business, it is a living body made up of people, people who struggle with change, and many of those same people also work at an office. Bridges has keen insight into how to wisely help us transition through change. He starts off by telling us that “it isn’t the change that does us in but the transition.” His book is all about enabling us to manoeuvre wisely as we transition from one stage to another.

Bridges first grabbed my attention when he said something that was opposite to how I think. He said that leaders put 10% of their energy into selling the problem and 90% into selling the solution. But people aren’t in the market for solutions to problems they don’t see, acknowledge, and understand. He advises spending 90% of your time on the problem. Around the time I was reading that part of the book, we were dealing with a mini crisis of our own doing at Wallenstein Chapel. We were hurting because of changes we had made. Just has Bridges had warned, we had undersold the problem. The changes hurt and people were questioning what we had done. Come to think of it, we see the gospel in its glory only when we first recognize the problem—how lost we are. Bridges is on to something.

At present, we are working though some major paradigm shifts at the church and have spent a high percentage of time discussing the problem—with a lot of people. Interestingly we are more united than ever. Some of Bridges’ concepts have helped us put “meat to the bones” to be better at “preserving the unity” while pressing forward into new territory.

*William Bridges, Managing Transitions, Making the most of Change (Philadelphia PA: De Capo Press, 2009)

Ron Seabrooke is pastor of Outreach/Teaching at Wallenstein Bible Chapel in Wallenstein Ontario. www.wbconline.ca. Ron and his wife Win have been involved in ministry for over 25 years. They served as missionaries for 10 years in the Middle East and in church planting in Ontario before coming to WBC in 2006. Ron is currently working on his DMin in leadership at Tyndale University/College.

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Discipline of Strategic Estimation

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

The Discipline of Strategic Estimation
My first summer out of Bible College I worked at a base camp on the edge of Algonquin Park that outfitted groups to go on canoe trips. The director and I had dreamed up this plan for me to work with a few teenage guys throughout the summer building a 20’ long cedar strip voyageur canoe that would be able to be used by groups. The idea was to use the canoe as an excuse to disciple young guys along the way. I had 8 weeks of summer to build my first canoe. I bought books, gathered tools, and ripped about two hundred 16’ long 1 inch wide cedar strips on a table saw. I was excited.
By the 1st of August I had a growing queasiness in the pit of my stomach that I couldn’t shake. I was beginning to realize that I had bitten off way more than I could chew and I was running out of summer.
The end of summer came and I had a very rough shell of a war canoe that was only 60% done. Feeling guilty about not finishing what I had started – I made arrangements to move the shell into a local barn for the winter so that I could finish it the next summer.
The moral of the story? I never finished that canoe. I am not sure where it even is 16 years later. I learned one of the hardest lessons we can ever learn in life – accurately estimating what it will take to finish something we start. It is a hard lesson because if you are like me you have had to learn this lesson so many different times in many different contexts!
It reminds me of Jesus’ words in Luke 14 as he seeks to clarify the cost of being his disciple. He says:
Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’ (Luke 14:28-30)
When I think of that war canoe sitting under a growing layer of pigeon droppings in some forgotten barn I feel ridiculous—for underestimating the blood, sweat and tears it would take to finish it and for overestimating my ability.
That’s why Jesus was trying to steer attention towards what I believe is an unavoidable characteristic of the human condition – chronic under-estimation.
I think we do it because if we really had understanding of what things were going to cost us we might never get off the couch and do anything! Look at parenting – if the “ghost of parenting future” transported us into the two am nursery scene with a baby that refuses to settle for the 15th night in a row – we might well turn tail and run from the twinkle in our spouses eye.
Sadly one of the temptations that leaders fall into is the belief that if we present a vision that is too demanding then no one will get off their “couch.” Too often we have been tempted to soft-sell the Gospel on the front end, hoping that people will grow into enough conviction to carry their cross at some point in the future.
I reflect on our congregation’s decision to help establish a new congregation in the midst of Trent University two years ago. I think we did a good job of helping the congregation understand and appreciate that God was clearly behind this opportunity. We also helped the congregation understand and appreciate that the predominantly young adult core would need a number of mature families to leave our congregation as pioneers to establish this as a local church. And we did a good job of challenging those pioneer couples with a realistic estimation of what they would be giving up, how hard the work of church-planting is, and how they were entering an extended season of giving more than they would be receiving.
Three years later, I see that we did not do a great job of helping the Auburn congregation realistically estimate the cost of being a part of a group that was birthing a new church.
I think that we could have done a better job at helping people think like parents. Good parents live and breathe and work for the sake of the next generation and make peace with the reality that some personal wants are lower priority than the needs of our kids.
For reflection…
• In your opinion, what are the three biggest under-estimations in ministry leadership? Are there any similarities between them? Trends, habits, patterns?
• Do you have a significant ministry endeavor around the corner? Do you need to do a “re-estimate?”
• Is there someone in your midst who is at risk if you underestimate the cost of what you are considering?
Jay Lehman fulfills his calling to “Lead, Feed, and Seed” as Lead Pastor at Auburn Bible Chapel, Peterborough, Ontario. He and his wife Christy have 3 sons, Noah, Jonah and Isaac.

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