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Repost – How Your Family Can Survive Multiple Christmas Eve Services

December 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

If you serve on the staff of a church with multiple Christmas Eve services, you may already feel the tension mounting.

You know that this is one of the highest-impact seasons on the church calendar, and yet if you have school-aged children (or younger) no season of the year demands more of your family’s attention.

It’s the classic Christmas tug-o-war.

In my early days as executive pastor in a church of 2500, with six Christmas Eve services, I felt this tension mount every year at this time.

On the one hand, since Christmas Eve was like our church’s ‘Super Bowl’, I felt I needed to lead by example by being there for each service.

On the other hand, we had family Christmas traditions to uphold, and I

didn’t want to let down my wife and children.

By my third year, however, I had learned that it really is possible to be fully engaged in multiple Christmas Eve services, and still be fully present with my family. And if you find yourself in the same stage of life, this can be true for you too.

The key, I learned, is to fully engage your family in your church’s Christmas Eve celebrations. Rather than looking at our Christmas Eve services as something that was taking me away from my family, all five of us became volunteer maniacs at Christmas, and it became an irreplaceable part of our family Christmas traditions.

Specifically we learned four vital ingredients to achieving this:

  • Getting your children excited about the genuine fun of serving in the Christmas Eve services.
  • Guiding them into volunteer roles that interest them and suit them.
  • Reconnecting as a family during breaks between services.
  • Throwing yourselves a family party when the last service is over.

Try it. You really can win the Christmas tug-o-war

How do you manage this tension?

Filed Under: Christmas, Community, Joy Tagged With: , , ,

Why Leaders Need to Seize EVERY Moment

November 15, 2011 By 2 Comments

There are no throw-away moments in leadership.

As you think through your upcoming day, your leadership horsepower is likely focused on a key meeting you’ll be leading, an inspiring vision talk you’re preparing, or perhaps a crucial decision you’re anticipating. All important.

But there are no throw-away moments in leadership.

I saw this truth lived out when I was a teenager in a moment that has stayed with me for 30 years.

BC LionsI was 16 years old and was trying to come up with a birthday present for my little brother Dean who was turning 12. I wanted to get him something he’d really love; I just didn’t have any money!

I knew Dean was a big fan of the BC Lions football team, so on a whim I decided to head down to their team office at old Empire Stadium in Vancouver and see if I could find anything for free I could snag for him. I was hoping for a lapel pin or a team schedule.

I pleaded my case to the secretary at the front desk. But as she rifled through her desk drawer looking for any knick-knack with a team logo, I noticed one of the team’s assistant coaches off to one side listening in. He chimed in and said, “I think I may have something in the back.”

He disappeared for a moment, and then returned holding a game-worn BC Lions jersey.

He tossed it over the counter to me and said, “Would this do?”

I was speechless.

I doubt that the coach who tossed me the jersey gave it another thought. It likely seemed like a “throw-away” moment in a day filled with important leadership moments like team meetings and inspiring speeches.

But two profound outcomes resulted from this. First of all, I was able to give my brother one of the most meaningful gifts I could have hoped for. And secondly, my personal loyalty to that team was so deeply forged it has lasted more than 30 years.

As you head into your day, pour all the leadership fuel you can on your “big leadership moments”. But remember, the moment of greatest impact could present itself when you least expect it.

Because there are no throw-away moments in leadership.

When have you been impacted by an unexpected leadership moment?

Filed Under: Leadership, Sports Analogies Tagged With: , , ,

The Seinfeld Moment That Every Dad Should See

August 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Someone recently sent me this clip featuring Jerry Seinfeld on Late Night with David Letterman, discussing fatherhood.

If you’re a dad you need to check out this hilarious 43 second clip.

Usually I blog about what I’m learning in organizational leadership, especially church leadership. But this clip struck me as not only hilarious, but also very “close to home”.

And it has prompted me today to share my learnings in one of the most vital leadership roles many of us ever experience; leading our families.

I believe that, apart from loving our wives, there is no higher calling that God has given to men than to lovingly, patiently, diligently and prayerfully impact the lives of our children.

But I’ve seen too many families where it’s tough for the dad to play that role because, as Jerry describes it, “The kids, they don’t really know what you’re doing there…and they’re trying to figure out, ‘And what do we need this person for, exactly?’”

I won’t claim to have come close to getting this right all the time, but in each season of our children’s lives I’ve always looked for creative ways to remain meaningfully connected with them.

As the kids grew older one of these ways was to have a one-on-one trip away with each one. This priority is particularly poignant for me today, as I’m enjoying what may be the last one of these trips.

I’m in Chicago, taking in the U.S. version of the Global Leadership Summit, and my son Adam will be joining me. I’ve already had my trips with Amy and John, so this trip with Adam would appear to be the final chapter in this parenting season.

Oh, I know I’ll always be “Dad”, and I will always love and support my kids. But in a sense this week I’m celebrating the closing of an important leadership role I’ve been playing for 22 years.

I don’t know how to measure the impact any of this has had on my kids.

But I’m grateful we never had a Seinfeld moment where one of them had to walk up to me and say, “I’m sorry…is someone helping you?”

Filed Under: Fatherhood, Parenting Tagged With: , ,

Surrey Biker Church Welcomes All Patches

January 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Earlier this week I posted an article that covered the rapid closures of churches across Canada, but in particular in the Atlantic provinces. I posted the story not to raise a white flag, signifying the inevitable demise of the Canadian church. Rather, I wanted each of us to increase our resolve to see Canada’s churches become more healthy and robust than ever.

biker churchI needed to wait just a day for the Canadian media to provide a surprising dose of inspiration.

Checking out Vancouver’s Province newspaper online I read that the spirit of innovation that is truly spreading across the country had appeared in a most distinctive way.

Check out this new expression of “church”, and be inspired.

Surrey Biker Church Welcomes All Patches

By Tom Zillich, Surrey Now

“We are definitely not a club, we are a church that welcomes all patches,” church founder Chuck Pearce said. “We have to be sensitive to all that, because in the biker community, when you wear a patch it has huge significance, just like membership does. We are all about being a family, being a brotherhood, and that’s what bikers look for. They want to be accepted.”

Read the full article by clicking here.

Filed Under: Canadian, Church, Community Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Guest post by Carey Nieuhof – Are You Actually Attracting Unchurched People?

December 10, 2010 By 1 Comment

Today’s guest post comes from Carey Nieuhof, lead pastor at Connexus Church, with campuses in Barrie and Orillia, Ontario. Carey is one of Canada’s sharpest Kingdom leaders, and in today’s post he poses a question that I believe every church leader in Canada needs to wrestle with; ‘Are we REALLY attracting unchurched people to our faith communities?’ But Carey takes it one step further, by outlining the steps that they took at Connexus to come to terms with this vital question.

Read, and be challenged.

Click here to visit Carey’s blog

Most church leaders says they want to reach unchurched people. So did we when  we started Connexus three years ago.

Saying it is one thing.  Living it is another. From the start, we adopted an “invest and invite” strategy.  We encouraged followers of Christ need to build authentic friendships with people in their community, family and workplace.  We see our job as creating the kind of environment they can invite their friends into.  We tell the people who attend Connexus all the time that we designed the church with their friends in mind and to please bring their unchurched friends to church.

But we realized when we launched we created a dual system.  While telling people to invite their friends we also had a ‘safety net” – we advertised, inviting people with no relational connection to come to our church as well (that’s what traditional advertising is – selling a product to people with whom you have no relational connection).

In 2009, we stopped the double talk.  We cut all forms of external advertising:

  • We canceled a very well listened to radio show featuring our messages.
  • We stopped all flyer distribution to homes in neighbourhoods
  • We decided to spend nothing on any form of external advertising.

We made it almost impossible for our church to grow unless the people who attended Connexus invited their friends.

But how do you measure that?  The church could still be growing but it might all be transfer growth.

So early in 2010, we completely redesigned our welcome card.  We designed it to measure whether people had attended church before coming to Connexus, asking them if they never attended church, rarely attended church (1 or 2 times a year), attended monthly or weekly.  We also asked them how they got to Connexus, giving three options: invited by a friend, invited by a family member, and ‘other’.  (We didn’t know what other would be, but we put it in anyway).

People have to go to the Welcome Desk in our foyer to fill out a card, and we in turn give them a gift basket with CDs, orientation material and (yum) chocolate in it.

We have had 285 families fill out a card to the end of October.  Here’s what we learned:

  • 85% of the people at our Barrie campus were invited by friend or family
  • 70% of the people at our Orillia campus were invited by friend or family. (Orillia is a smaller city, so we wonder if word of mouth might be the 30%)
  • 68% of our first time guests were not regular church goers (didn’t attend or attended less than once or twice a month)
  • 26% of people who were not weekly church attenders have become weekly attenders this year

We’re still learning tons about how to figure this out, and we can probably get a lot better at this, but here are some quick thoughts on why the trends are encouraging:

  • Cut the safety nets – make it hard for your church to grow unless people invite your friends.
  • Give your regular attenders space to build a life.  We have almost no mid-week programming.  We like families to build into each other and into their neighbours, not be at church six nights a week.
  • Program to your target.  That means potentially offending Christians.  We play songs some churches wouldn’t play.  We even tatooed people once on stage.  Christians left.  That wasn’t the goal, but it can happen.  While a few Christians have left,  unchurched people came.
  • Commit yourself to seeing life-change.  If you don’t see people being baptized and moving into a growing relationship with Christ, you’re missing the point.  It’s not attracting a crowd that’s the mission – it’s leading people into actual life change.

If you want to see a cross section of some Connexus stories, check out the comments on the Connexus blog from November – December 2010.

Otherwise…what do you think?  What have you seen as effective in helping a church reach its mission?  What’s the potential downside you see?

Filed Under: Church, Community, Leadership, Missional, Tension Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,