Aug/090
Staff Culture: Awareness
I hate the word relevance, because it’s so overused. But in order to work well on this team, you’ve got to be aware of what’s going on.
When we ask you about the last movie you saw and you say “Karate Kid,” then that’s not a good sign. If your email address still has @hotmail in it, then you might not be as relevant as you think. People around here have to keep up with the times. Like the men of Issachar, you need to understand the world in which we live.
You know what’s going on in the world, on the TV, in the movies and on the radio. And it’s not that you’re trying to keep up to be cool, but because you want to reach people where they are.
Being aware isn’t limited to what’s coming out of Nashville or Hollywood either. You need know what’s going on in our town and in our community. Here’s some questions to test your cultural awareness.
- What’s the last movie you’ve seen?
- What’s the last book you’ve read?
- Who are the movers and shakers in our town?
- Who is the mayor of of your city?
- What new businesses or restaurants are coming to town?
- What are the big needs in your community?
- What big events happen in your community?
Aug/090
Staff Culture: Frugality
To make it on staff at Oak Leaf Church, you have to be a coupon cutter.
Maybe not literally, but one of the words that define our staff culture if frugality. We’re a three-year-old church, and things are always tight. We operate in a constant state of frugality, because we want to be good stewards.
You better realize that you cannot purchase your way out of a problem, and you better be willing to plan, wait and come up with creative solutions. One of your greatest assets is people and time…because when these things come together, you can get more done with less money. It’s often poor planning that lead to rushed printing jobs (with rush charges and expedited shipping) and that stuff doesn’t fly around here. Saving money is one the reasons I am so passionate about good planning.
This doesn’t mean that we are cheap, stingy or don’t care about excellence. It’s quite the contrary. But realize that throwing money at unnecessary things doesn’t make a kingdom difference.
Aug/090
Staff Culture: Intensity
A few weeks ago, we wrote out some words and metaphors that describe our staff culture…what it looks like and feels like to be on staff at Oak Leaf Church. It was a great exercise for our team, and I thought I would share the results.
Great linebackers play with intensity. They do not approach the line of scrimmage flippantly, but they are dialed in and charged up. They will get in your face and they will not stop until they hear the whistle.
If you’re on staff at Oak Leaf Church, you must have an intensity about you. You must have a whatever it takes attitude. If something needs to be done, you’ll do it, and you’ll do it well. If that means staying late, you’ll do it without complaint or trying to bug out early the next day. If you need something, and it’s in the back of a 26′ UHaul, then you will unload it in the rain to get what you need. You will do way more than normal, and constantly look to exceed expectations.
You’re relentless about the details and you operate with urgency, because you know what is at stake. After all, this is not a hobby, or a hamburger stand…this is the Church.
I’d love to hear what describes your staff culture.
Jun/090
Job Descriptions
Here’s our job descriptions. If you want ‘em. A few of them are being revised and tweaked, but you’ll get the idea.
Mar/090
Strengthfinders
We’ve recently taken most of our staff through the Clifton Strengthsfinders assessment, and I highly recommend the process. You can buy the book for about $12, and it comes with a code to take the test online.
You’ll learn a lot about yourself, and about your team. You’ll learn what challenges a certain kind of person and how to communicate with that person. The short little book does a great job describing each strength.
Here’s a breakdown of the strengths for the people who are on our Lead Team. It’s cool how my assistant compliments my strengths. And there are quite a few strategic thinkers on this team, which is great.
Mar/090
Student Ministry Leadership Philosophy
Traditional thinking tells me that we should have hired a full time student pastor about a year ago. But every Wednesday night, we gather about 130 students together for a student ministry service, and we still don’t have a youth pastor on our staff. I’m not saying we never will…but what we’re doing now works, so why change it.
I was a student pastor for 12 years, so I know the mind of a youth pastor. I think most up and coming student pastors have in their minds that the most important thing they will do is teach students. And it’s still true that most youth pastors want to be “real” pastors one day.
But the #1 job of a youth pastor, especially for us, is not teaching. I have 5 or 6 people on our staff, plus several people in our church that are more than capable of teaching students. So why hire a youth pastor, 90% of whom want to just teach, to do that?
Instead of a traditional youth pastor, we have a student ministry team. I call them the super team.
- There’s a worship leader, who leads worship at the student ministry service.
- There’s a very organized person who administrates, communicates and makes sure details are handled.
- There’s a student ministry intern college student who does the hosting and relationships and hangs out with students.
- And there’s a young married guy who leads a group of student leaders…discipleship kind of stuff.
- I take care of the teaching…either teaching myself (60%) or arranging for other speakers (40%)
Instead of getting a youth pastor, who may be good at one or two of these things, we have four people who are in their sweet spot. Organizationally, they all report to our Family Pastor.
I’m not saying you should organize your student ministry this way, but it works well for us. I’m not saying we’ll leave it this way, but it works great now. The key is to create a system that works for you, not just hire someone because you ought to.
Feb/090
Staff Structure Chances
We’ve gone through a process of realigning our staff, creating a new org chart and tweaking our structure. I believe this strategic move will allow our church to double in size. I’ve got a series of post in the queue on my blog set for next week.
Feb/090
Hiring Process
Getting a job at Oak Leaf Church is a big deal. We all work hard, and our mission is very important. Honestly, it’s tough to get a job here and I’d say that 90% of people that work at other churches wouldn’t make the cut. Most of our staff is hired from within, meaning that they are already volunteering, serving and giving before joining the staff team. Here’s a run down of our hiring process.
1. Create job profile (not job description, but a write up of the kind of person we are looking for)
2. Receive resume and supporting materials
3. Answer preliminary questions via email
4. “Get to know you” chat with someone on staff.
5. Review Job Description and salary range.
6. Ask them to fill out an Oak Leaf Church Application.
7. Interview with supervisor, in person or via phone.
8. Spiritual Gifts Inventory at www.churchgrowth.org and Ministry Insights Assessment.
9. In person interview or conference call with Lead Team (or some other team if it’s more appropriate)
10. Executive Pastor checks references.
11. Strengthfinders test
12. Talk to advisory team if it’s a pastor position.
13. In-person visit (includes Sunday morning) and meeting with Lead Team
14. Spouse/Family get together.
15. Tweak job description based on person’s strengths.
16. Counselor evaluation.
17. Background and credit check
18. Review salary package.
19. You’re hired.
Dec/080
Tell me how I am doing!!
I don’t know if there is a more effective tool in all of leadership then feedback. You can give all of the directives, make them read all of the books, listen to a great sermon, but your staff will never know if it really paid off until you tell them how they are doing. If you have kids you do it naturally, because you are desperately trying to build their confidence and feed their self-worth. I would ask, why do we stop with the people that we lead? They can’t lead a ministry for years on the accolades of their high school baseball coach or their Mom’s gleeful smiles when they got the main role in the high school play.
At Oak Leaf, we don’t necessarily do anything so much better then any other church, but I do use two tools to make sure that I am properly investing in our staff.
One is the 6-Month Staff Evaluation and the other is a Health Report (you will have to e-mail me for that) that tells me if I am regularly investing in them as a person and a Pastor. The Health Report gives me a couple categories of investment and feedback and let’s me put in dates to track my deposits into their well-being.
Use these tools and I’m sure your staff will appreciate it!
Anthony Gratto
Executive Pastor
Apr/083
Job Descriptions
Here’s a zip file with some of our updated job descriptions. You’ll find mine, our Executive Pastor’s, our family pastor (soon to be hired), creative arts guy, and several others.
Resources
