It's About People, Not Policies. Create Margin.

Policies are frames that you put around people when you want them to act a certain way. Policies create the acceptable range of motion. the extent to which you will say Yes, and the boundaries where you must say no.

Think about it for a minute. If you’re anything like me, you love setting the broad frame under which everything else must operate. Haven’t we all gotten a little caught up in creating policies…especially the idealistic communications people.  I like to have:

• policies about deadlines.
• policies about content.
• Policies about who can update the website.
• Policies about why your ministry can’t have a logo of it’s own. 
• Policies about which logo to use and whether or not to make it the biggest thing on the page.

While it’s ideal to think that people will be good at adhering to the frames we set for them, the reality is that People, not Policies are the reason we all do ministry.

Something I’m learning to do now that I haven’t done well in the past is creating margin.

Here’s some ways I’m trying to bring margin into my role at the church:

1. Take time for conversations. Without engaging with people to learn what drives their passion for ministry I make a lot of assumptions about them. And then I manipulate them. Conversations lead to understanding. Understanding leads to mutual respect. I don’t manipulate people I respect. Take time for conversations and really try to know the heart of the person your working with.
2. Create Yeses out of No’s. I use to think I could keep up by doing every little communications need that people had. I needed to brand it and make it professional. I couldn’t keep up, but I still get the requests. I’ve been trying to learn the art of saying, “I know I can’t physically do this for you and still get home and see my wife and kids at a decent hour, but here’s how I can empower you to do it for yourself…No I can’t, but yes you can.”
3. Provide context, make exceptions once, then define the lines. I often get asked to put stuff in the bulletin or announcements past the deadline. I really don’t want to take on your late planning as my problem. But I will if it can be used as a one-time opportunity to share with you how being late affects the process. If you know that somebody ends up working on Saturday to compensate for your late action and they’re missing their time with their family to make sure your info gets out to the community, that context will make them think differently in the future.