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Asking better questions.
Do you ever feel like you’re working hard to provide solutions…to the wrong problem? Are you exhausting your energy to make small gains relative to small problems, while the bigger problem is the 800 pound gorilla that no one is acknowledging in the room?
As church leaders we spend so much time trying to figure out how to get more. How to get more volunteers. How to get more people to come to church. How to get more people to give financially. So often we’ve defined the problem incorrectly.
We don’t need more volunteers, but we may need to ask ourselves how can we help people recognize their potential kingdom impact through serving?
We don’t need more people to come to church, but we may need to ask how can we motivate people to become active participants in their relationship with God?
We don’t need more money, but we may need to ask how can we help people see the fruit of giving to God’s mission?
A good question creates value through empowerment.
Asking empowering questions opens people up to dig deep, define nuanced problems and provide accurate solutions. This is critical to successful meetings, successful strategic planning, and successful relationships built on trust. If we’re not asking the right questions, it’s more than likely we’re not going to arrive at the right solutions.
Judith Ross has a great article over at Harvard Business Review that will help leaders ask better questions…in hopes of reaching empowered solutions.
The most effective and empowering questions create value in one or more of the following ways:
- They create clarity: “Can you explain more about this situation?”
- They construct better working relations: Instead of “Did you make your sales goal?” ask, “How have sales been going?”
- They help people think analytically and critically: “What are the consequences of going this route?”
- They inspire people to reflect and see things in fresh, unpredictable ways: “Why did this work?”
- They encourage breakthrough thinking: “Can that be done in any other way?”
- They challenge assumptions: “What do you think you will lose if you start sharing responsibility for the implementation process?”
- They create ownership of solutions: “Based on your experience, what do you suggest we do here?”
Create a culture that embraces questions
Are your leaders asking you empowering questions? Are you asking empowering questions as a leader?
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Does the Communication Department support ministry, or is it a ministry unto itself?
This is a question that I’ve had to wrestle with in my role of leading communications at The Sanctuary over the years. I see many churches struggling with creating an integrated ministry environment, because the communication department is sitting on the sidelines, waiting for instructions from the “real ministries” of the church.
It often happens like this…
A pastor or ministry leader, gets an idea. The idea is talked about with other ministry leaders. The roadmap is written. A plan is put in motion. A few weeks before launch, the discussion arises of how are we going to get the word out….Now bring in the communications department so they can make the bulletin, create graphics, storyboard the video, etc.
While this certainly can be an effective approach, it assumes that the communication department is in a supporting role only. But in my mind, there are only two ministries of the church: Show & Tell. We’re here to Show God’s love and Tell people how they can experience and show it too.
When the Communication department is recognized as a vital ministry area, it can be empowered to both show and tell the story of Jesus in such a way that it inspires and motivates change in people’s lives.
To draw upon another vital kindergarten skill, excellent communicators are simply people who are able to connect the dots for people. As we draw a line from one dot to the next, we begin to see a picture take shape. The story becomes clear. The end result apparent. Great communicators are able to connect a big picture message to a small dot in people’s lives. They connect moments and ideas, to round out the message.
Right after the day of pentecost in Chapter 2 of the book of Acts, we see the first ministry of communication take shape. This unexplainable and perplexing moment happens when men of all languages are speaking in the same tongue. People standby perplexed, wondering if the men are drunk.
Peter steps in to connect the dots. He connects this unexplainable event to the story of scripture. He points people to an understanding of Jesus. And in verse 38 of chapter 2, we find the audience ready to take their next steps, “Brothers, what should we do?” the crowd asks…
Peter was an ordinary man. A fisherman. And now a man with a newfound gift as a communicator. As he retold the story and connected the dots, people became inspired to want more. The audience was ready for life-change. Thousands were motivated to seek Christ that day.
Communications is a forefront ministry in the modern church.
With touch-points reaching into the web and social media networks. Into advertising and marketing strategies. Into the hands of ordinary people with the tools to share the message themselves.
So I wonder where the leverage of communication falls at your church? Is communication in a supporting role only, or is it recognized as a vital and necessary ministry area?
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Dream To Do List.
Have you ever felt like you spend so much time doing the little things, that you never have to for the big picture or better yet, don’t have time to dream?
I’ve started something recently to help me not loose site of all things bigger than the immediate.
So I’ve got a new To-Do List with 3 columns that I’ve been using for a bit now and here’s how it works:
Column 1 – Tasks
Just being realistic, this is stuff that I’ve got to get done every week. Either me or a volunteer needs to pull this stuff off and there’s no getting around it. I want to spend as little time as possible performing “tasks.”
Column 2 – Big Picture
It doesn’t have to get done this week, but thinking through strategies for where we’re going in the long run is essential part of organizational growth. I can’t afford to let a week go by where I’m not thinking about a corner we want to turnaround, a new tool that needs to be implemented to make us more efficient or a new process that can help us better achieve our goals. These things take time to chart out, document and plan.
Column 3 – Dream/Future
I could let this go, but why would I want to? I love thinking beyond my role and my immediate needs. Scheduled dreamtime allows you the opportunity to be creative, thought-provoking and challenging to the status quo. For me this may include time to think about broader ministry beyond communications. It might be about seeking out new ideas for tired ways of doing things. It might be simply about devoting time to a particular interest that may or may not be helpful to the here and now. It’s like a Liberal Arts education. I may not have an immediate use for the Art History Survey Class, but I’m more well-rounded for having learned a thing or two about the development of ancient art.
I get bored and burnt out when I’m nothing more than a taskmaster trying to get things done. Building in time to look beyond today invigorates me and propels me to live more excellently.
Here’s a sample of this week’s To Do List:
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Freebie Giveaway: Kem Meyer’s Less Clutter, Less Noise.
The first book giveaway isn’t even over but I’ve got another one to give away for all you church marketing peeps.
You all know about our great teacher Kem Meyer, and most of you probably have the book. For the rest of you, you need to read it. I’ve got an extra copy or two laying around, so somebody else might as well benefit.
Leave a comment on this post and I will choose a random number to give one away to on end of day Wednesday.
Read my review of the book here.
UPDATE: Mr. Chad Maag has won the thesis of our responsibility.
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Delivering builds trust.
I dropped my car off this morning at the mechanic to get my brakes done. I’ve been there a handful of times. It’s a family-owned gas station, a couple of brothers working together. Every time I’ve picked up my car there, I’ve been surprised at how inexpensive they work and how truly honest they are.
When I was leaving, the owner asked me, “Do you want me to call you with an estimate after we get the wheels off or should we just go ahead and fix it?”
It took me about 2 seconds to think about it and respond, “No, just go ahead and do what you need to do.”
It came down to trust. I realized they’ve never given me a reason to second guess how much it’s going to cost or if they’re going to try to fix something that’s not broken, or if they do something wrong, I know they will own it. I don’t have much money, but I don’t have any reason to believe they’re going to break the budget. So what’s their marketing plan? They deliver what they promise.
Marketing is all about the story people hear when you’re being yourself.
- Don’t promise what you CAN’T DELIVER.
- Promise what you WILL DELIVER.
- When you break your promise, figure out HOW TO DELIVER on it anyway.
Delivering builds trust. Trust builds relationships. Relationships build futures.
UPDATE: I picked up my car and was indeed shocked again to pay far less than I expected. Northsiders, please go to Fairchild’s Sinclair on 42nd Ave.
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Innovate09 Social Media 101 with Kem Meyer
Why in the world would you want to be immersed in Social Media?
Is it good for you? Is it good for your organization?
Social media is about discovering the potential of your hidden network. There are opportunities and value in discovering who you’re connected to.
Use tools like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Vimeo, YouTube, etc. to discover your links to
- The World
- Personal & Family
- Team & Staff
- Church & Professional
- Tools & Resources
Wherever you jump in to social media, begin to think about these things:
- Who is your primary audience? (Keep in mind your secondary audience)
- Figure out what you want to do. (A journal, an expression of personality, to connect)
Then,
- Get help
- Take it one thing at a time
- Watch for a while
- Start interacting
Posted by jeremyscheller | 1 Comment
Innovate09 Kem Meyer
Kem always brings us back to the basics of communication.
Communication is not about sending the right message, it’s all about getting the right response.
How to clarify your message for the right response.
- Check your ego
- Get an image consultant
- Keep it simple
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Bells & Whistles actually make your site too noisy to use.
This is insane. I’m not knocking these businesses, but these websites are enough to drive me batty. See for yourself and ask yourself you’re able to find what you’re looking for.
QUICK RULE OF THUMB: Any time your site navigation needs instructions, you have failed.
Reduce the noise in your navigation. I’m not looking for some intensely dynamic visual adventure when I go to most websites. Especially those that need to be strictly informational. If you could please just help me get in and out with the information I need, I would be a much happier customer. Thank you.
Be Clear.
Be Precise.
Create easy pathways.
That’s all that matters.
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Diary of a Website Overhaul: 3 of 4
Extending Sanctuary Online. Not just building a website. Design, Tools, & Teams.
We are a beautiful church. What we’re doing here, isn’t common. If you subscribe to the words of Dr. King 40 some years ago, “Sunday morning at 11am is the most segregated hour in America.” But not at Sanctuary. The Sanctuary is beautiful place to worship because of the diversity of its people.
One of the biggest criticisms of our old website was that people couldn’t really see who we are. So when I thought about extending our church online, it wasn’t just about what we do, but it was to give people a “sneak preview of heaven” (as Pastor Efrem always says) and to see the faces that make up this multi-cultural community.
I’m a designer.
But there are few things that are harder for me than to feel settled about a design I’m creating for myself. So I knew I needed some outside help. A fresh perspective on the look and feel of Sanctuary. Over the past few years, I’ve participated in the Church Marketing Lab. It’s a place for design feedback and community support. I’d been impressed with the work of Elliott Munoz. He has a talent for web design that I’ve never had. I’m more of a print guy myself. I’d known for a while that I was going to connect with him about designing the Sanctuary site.
We had an initial conversation and I shared with him a bit about our culture, our community, our vibe, and I sent him this wireframe for what I was looking for.
After a few minor tweaks, we ended up with the look and feel we have now. He’s got talent.
Additional Design Element: Photography
Photos. Photos. Photos. To see who we really are, you have to see our faces. So now and moving ahead, I’ve made a bit of a switch in philosophy. I used to think we needed to create graphics for everything and try to limit the use of photos from our actual congregation. I think it was a mistake, especially when you see who Sanctuary is.
So this round, I relied on some awesome photography from Philip Hussong and Amy Mingo. Both are talented and offered up their services. Philip is a friend and has also worked with my company. Amy is a member at Sanctuary and awesome volunteer.
We still have some blank spots, but my plan is to use photography to show the face of Sanctuary on almost every area of the site. Real photos. Real people. A real place to get connected to.
Tools
The other major component was our content management system (CMS). Aaron Kardell and Cindy Schaller from Sanctuary forged the way as we analyzed a few CMS’s, Namely Drupal and Expression Engine. Our last site was built on an old version of Joomla. Joomla works, but I was really unhappy with a number of things about it:
- I’m a visual guy and I thought the GUI was miserable. (At least the 1.2.x version we were on.)
- Open source is great and free, but thousands of plug-ins and extensions built by “the community” meant most things didn’t work right out of the box. It was a pain to customize.
- Joomla always left me frustrated because the layout and organization of the control panel didn’t seem to make much sense to non-programmer types. (I tried to teach it to a number of people over the years without much luck)
As we talked about the pros and cons of Drupal and Expression Engine, we could have gone either way. Both systems could do what we asked of it. So what it came down to was based on ease of use, non-open-source (I like the way the have extensions that are EE Certified), and a strong GUI. I’m also impressed with the developer roadmap for Expression Engine. I think it will be strong well into the future with 2.0 release coming soon.
Since we’ve started using Expression Engine, I can’t imagine using something else right now. It just works so well. I’m sure drupal could have worked well too, but I just love the organization of EE’s control panel.
Project Management
We used Basecamp to manage the entire web project after the design phase. Basecamp helped to:
- manage to-do lists
- keep track of deadlines
- keep a record of the progress
- keep track of bugs
- have a unified meeting place
Next Up: Content is king, it’s all on the web, Feature highlights, Looking like “Us” not “It.”
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Diary of a Website Overhaul: 2 of 4
I know what I want, but how can we make it happen?
Prerequisites, Conversations, and tough decisions.
Based on an honest look in the mirror, I landed on 3 main issues that this website was going to tackle:
- Connecting people to Sanctuary events
- Connecting people at Sanctuary to each other
- Streamline processes and eliminate paper
The process part is where I got hung up. We had internal process issues around:
- Communications
- Priorities
- Database infrastructure
- Team mentality
Communications, Priorities and Team issues are always in the hopper. We’ve been going through a year long staff development process that is helping us solidify a team mentality and opening up honest talking points around our goals and priorities as a church.
The database/church management system (CHMS) was another beast all together. For a few years we’ve been “using” a database that, in reality, nobody was “using.” It was complicated. It was clunky. It was hard for the average user to dive in and be comfortable without lots of training.
So, at the same time as I helped form a web team, I launched a database discovery team.
We started with a survey of several of the main players in the field.
We did a SWOT Analysis of our current tool. Then evaluated our options for these criteria:
- Data Security
- Data Capture
- Vistior/Attendee/Member Management
- Tracking Involvement
- Network/Gifts/Skills/Strengths Tracking
- Web/Database Integration
- Event Management/Registration
- Financial Tracking
- Training and Facilitation
- Education
- Deployment
I’m happy to say we landed on Fellowship One as our CHMS.
The implementation of Fellowship One took precedence over the website. It didn’t put the website on the back burner, but I didn’t think there was much use in launching a website to connect people if we didn’t have processes in place to help keep them connected.
It took about 8 months to truly make the transition to F1 (8 months for us, more or less for you, this is a staff culture and timing thing). We’re not perfect. We make lots of mistakes, but as we increase our implementation of F1, we’re beginning to make the holes in the net a little smaller, so fewer people fall through. I highly recommend getting your CHMS in order before recreating your website.
We’re all about people, but processes help promote a healthy community.
Next up: Extending Sanctuary Online. Not just building a website. Design, Tools, & Teams.
