Do What Only You Can Do.
“What can only I do?”
It is a mantra that I repeat multiple times throughout my day. It’s not new, but it is essential.
- It emerges when I find myself avoiding the big leadership boulder that only I can push up the hill.
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- It emerges when I find myself distracted by facebook or twitter, avoiding the vision initiative that only I can tackle.
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- It emerges when I spend time checking my inbox multiple times throughout my day – instead of setting a specific time in the morning and late afternoon to open my inbox – give it some love – and then walk away from it and attack a problem that needs a thoughtful solution that only I can bring.
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- It emerges when I find myself spending way to long thinking about how something sounds or appears instead of getting the raw meat of the idea down on paper so that I can move on to a specific task that has a time oriented deadline attached to it.
I’m only a few months into this holy and helpless calling of starting Soul City and I am already becoming acutely aware of what I have heard form my courageous friends that have travelled this road before me – There will never be a day when all the boxes are checked, the tasks are completed, the mission is finished – It just won’t ever happen. That is the beauty of being an entrepreneur. There is always something in front of you – a course that has not been charted or a new adventure that needs to be started. But if I waste all of my energy doing tasks that someone else can do – I will quickly begin to burn up my vision, insight, and energy on what is not only non-important, but non-specific to me.
So one of the things I am relearning daily is the art and skill of finding great people and developing them through the giving away of leadership possibilities early on in the process. Of course as the Leader out in front, you have given up everything. You have given up your home, your salary, your comfort, and more time than you want to admit bringing this Vision into existence. So there is going to be a part of you that thinks you are the only one that can do something since you are the only one that is sacrificing EVERYTHING!!!! And even that thought reveals a flawed perspective. You should be inviting those already on or about to join your team into that same level of sacrifice. Sacrifice is NOT something that only you should do.
Remember – This is not your thing. This is not YOUR church or YOUR vision. It is God’s. Don’t ever forget that. Don’t ever start believing that you are the only one that can lead, cast vision, implement strategies… you need to do what only you can do and give away the rest… and if that list totals more than about 8 – 10 specific things… then you are probably going to be in trouble.
Here’s 3 great questions to ask yourself when giving a task away.
- Is the task a way to actually see if the person has a skill that maybe isn’t being utilized in the church.
- Is the task a way to develop a relationship with a new volunteer.
- Is the task a way to give away more leadership – which will in turn create more authority and ownership of the vision instead of followership and implementers of the vision.
So here’s to giving things away this week! (BTW – If you’re connected to Soul City Church…look out! You’re probably getting a call this week.)
A Different Way of Asking
When we knew God was inviting us to start this church, one of the earliest conversations we had was about our deep commitment to doing this with a team. We have both been extremely blessed throughout the past 15 years to have served on several amazing staff teams. We’re grateful to have worked with people of high capacity, deep character, and natural relational chemistry. We would never think about trying this on our own. We believe that if we’re going to experience God’s transformational impact on the world, we’re going to experience it together, as a team.
So early on in the process we began to pray for the team that God was assembling to lead Soul City Church with us. Through the prompting of a wise member of our Personal Council (which we will talk about in another post) we were challenged to ask people to PRAY instead of asking them to COME. We know that we can cast a compelling vision – attract people towards the exciting idea of starting a new church – paint the idea of what Soul City Church can look like…but only GOD can lead them to come. We would much rather have a team that is assembled by God’s prompting vs. a team that we built through some savvy convincing and our vision casting capacities.
So instead of just asking people to COME – we have been asking people to PRAY. It has proven to be a huge step in our own development of Dependence. We have been able to put our complete trust in God to build this team. It doesn’t mean that we don’t share the vision – it doesn’t mean that we don’t lean into looking for the right people to get on the soul city bus – but we have chosen to invite our potential staff and leadership team and future soul city starter team to simply pray. To ask, listen, and respond to what God is doing through Soul City Church.
In fact, we would love for YOU to pray through the idea of joining what God is doing at Soul City Church. To ask, and listen, and respond to however God is leading you right now in your life. You can download our BE Prayerful exercise HERE.
We Need Healthy Heretics (pt.2)
In the last post we looked at how Healthy Heretics are critical to our Teams, Ministries, and Churches. (Great thoughts still brewing). In this post we’ll explore how a TEAM can embrace and even become more Heretical…in a healthy way.
- A Team Without Any Heretics will stay stuck doing what they’ve always done, missing key opportunities to improve, innovate and succeed at the Mission God has given them.
- A Team with Too Many Heretics will challenge everything while accomplishing very little.
Here are a few ideas for how Your Team can lead in a Healthy Heretical Way
- Create a list of the Top Ten ASSUMPTIONS you are currently operating on
- Write out how you have REACTED and RESPONDED to these Assumptions
- Determine whether or not these Assumptions are even TRUE anymore (or ever!)
- Ask the TOUGH Questions -
- What are we doing that doesn’t directly accomplish our Mission and why are we still doing it?
- How do we measure and determine if what we are doing is working?
- Are we measuring the right thing? Are we measuring it the right way?
- What are we doing that nobody else is doing to reach people that nobody else is reaching? (Craig Groeschel)
- What do we need to stop doing so that we can do the thing(s) that only WE can do?
Once you’ve completely questioned and challenged everything you do, go out and get yourself a nice Iced Mocha. Breath. Pray. And begin dreaming and exploring how you need to Stop doing what you no longer need to be doing, Fix what needs to be fixed, and Innovate and Create new Mission Minded opportunities and experiences.
- Don’t just jump to the New (that’s too easy, and potentially too harmful)
- Don’t base decisions on hunches, assumptions, or that “one email you got” or that “one blog you read”.
- Work Collaboratively. Believe it or not, you are not the only person who know what’s wrong or what’s next.
- BETA Change. Some New Ideas need to be lead full force, most need to be experimented, tweaked, and tried again.
The team that I’m currently a part of is 2 rounds deep into Beta Testing a Whole New Way of helping people connect in our ministry called Micro Events, as well as Beta testing a significant addition to another part of our ministry (shhh…top secret stuff). We could have just Plowed Through with our new ideas (a speed that Heretics operate at), but we probably would have done more damage than good and would be right back in the same spot a year from now.
- While EVERY TEAM needs a few Healthy Heretics,
- ANY TEAM can begin to lead this type of Healthy Change.
How about you and your team? How are you breaking through your assumptions and leading Healthy Heretical Change?
- (In the next post in this series we’ll explore Biblical Examples of Heretics
- and why Jesus may be the Healthiest Heretic of them all)
