• Interview with C.J. Mahaney on biblical masculinity ? The Shepherd’s Scrapbook
  A fantastic, fantastic interview. Much to learn have I.
  (tags: masculinity interview)

Dear Delta Airlines,

I can’t decide whether to be mad with you or not. I was definitely not pleased with a 2.5 hour delay in Cedar Rapids and a missed connection + 1.5 hour delay in Atlanta. But I was happy with how easy it was to get booked onto the later flight, and the first-class seat was nice, given that I had to sit in it for an hour on the ground before we ever took off.

Hoping for better luck on the way home,
Chris

Dear National Car Rental,

I’m not sure why my reservation was with you instead of Hertz, but it was really lame that your employee was still there at 1:30 a.m. but told me you were closed and I couldn’t get my car.

Hoping to not deal with you again,
Chris

Dear Hertz,

Thanks for staying open past your posted 1 a.m. closing time. I wish I could’ve gotten a nav system in the car, but the map worked OK.

Your loyal customer,
Chris

Dear Hilton Savannah Desoto,

I was so glad you still had my room reserved when I showed up at 2:30 a.m. The bed was comfortable, too, Five hours in it was definitely not long enough. And kudos on the free wi-fi. Here’s a hint: if you use the same SSID throughout the building and just vary the channel, it makes it less hassle connecting as I move around the building.

Feeling bad for bringing up such a minor point,
Chris

So it’s been a nice weekend. Ryan decided at the last minute to come visit for the holiday, so we’ve enjoyed his company over the long weekend. Watched a lot of football, ate a bunch of tasty food, and now the weekend is over. Still, only a month until Christmas.

At the moment I’m waiting for my flight from Cedar Rapids to take me to Atlanta, which in turn will connect to Savannah, GA. This flight was supposed to leave about 3 pm today, but is now looking more like 5:20 pm. I think my connection in Atlanta will be delayed enough that I can make it. I’m happy that Atlanta is getting rain and all, but couldn’t they have gotten it tomorrow after I’m there?!? This is the part of air travel that I so dislike. Ah well.

Tomorrow evening I’m planning on meeting a college friend (Daniel Schaffhauser, if that name rings a bell) and his family for some supper and time to visit. Should be a good time. Otherwise, I don’t know what Savannah will hold for me, though I’ve had a slew of recommendations. So little time to play tourist… but ya gotta roll with it. What else can you do?

Last Wednesday night we left the girls at church (Laura for AWANA, Addie to play in the nursery) and ran a few errands, then arrived back a few minutes early to pick them up. Becky went over to chat with one of her friends, and I, having a few minutes on my hands, wandered into the sanctuary to play the piano.

There are few things I enjoy more than the chance to sit down in a dark, quiet room and play a nice piano. I don’t get to do it very often any more. So I sat and improvised a little George Winston-esque jazz, just enjoying the sounds and textures. Occasionally someone would come through the sanctuary, hear the piano, look up, and nod or say hello, but otherwise it was quiet. Then Cubbies got out, and here came the three and four year olds.

I could hear them tearing down the hallway toward the sanctuary. Laura’s friends Abigail and Ella got to the door of the sanctuary first, but stopped short as the entered the doorway, saw the room dark, and heard the piano music. They looked up at me to see where it was coming from, then just stood there, not sure what to do, but intimidated by the room and the situation.

Then Laura reached the door. She followed their gaze to the piano, saw me sitting there, and took off at a full run up the aisle to the piano, yelling “Daddeeeeeeee!” at the top of her lungs. She crashed up to the piano, gave me a hug, and proceeded to show me the picture she’d drawn at Cubbies.

Now I’ve not used this blog to draw lots of devotional illustrations from my children thus far, but this one was so immediately obvious that I just couldn’t let it go. Hebrews 4:16 instructs us to “…come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” We aren’t to fear coming to God with our needs and concerns, quivering at the dark door like some ancient Israelite priest. Instead, we’re called to come in boldly, running up the aisle to the One who we know loves us like no one else can. Thanks, Father, for the vivid reminder.

I was going to make this part 3, but this all really ties together too much, so let’s just talk about it now. What about oversight? Too often I think of “oversight” with a negative flavor; the person overseeing is the one who either a) gets to be the disciplinarian when things go poorly or b) has to take the blame when things go poorly. No fun either way. But if oversight doesn’t kick in until things go poorly then we are failing.

So back to those evaluations where people said the Sunday morning service was good. I think one of the key reasons the Sunday morning service was good, and got better, was that we held weekly meetings on Mondays to critique and review. As a staff we sat down for an hour and discussed the music, the sermon, the rest of the service. What was good? What was bad? What could be done better for next time? Those meetings were good learning times for all of us. I can’t think of a single time, though, that we did that kind of evaluation for any of the other ministries I’ve been involved in at the church.

Why don’t we do oversight? First, I think it’s the negative connotation. We don’t want to be the bad cop who’s offering criticism when something is done poorly. Now sure, it’s more comfortable not to offer criticism, but we don’t usually shy away from it. Why do we shy away from it in church ministry?

1. We’re afraid of losing volunteers.
If the gal who runs the overhead projector or the guy who greets at the west door get criticized for doing a poor job, they may just decide that it’s not worth it at all. Then we may be out a couple of volunteers… and isn’t having someone that does a hit-or-miss job better than not having anyone? There are a couple responses to this one: first, teaching and shepherding of our people to have them understand the importance of service; second, making sure that we talk to folks regularly, so we have opportunities to praise them for doing an excellent job… which makes the sting of constructive criticism easier to take later on.

2. We feel guilty for overworking our volunteers
It’s the old 80-20 rule, right? 80 percent of the work gets done by 20 percent of the people. In some churches it’s probably more like a 90-10 rule. So when one of those 10 percent, a faithful, hard-working volunteer, is doing a poor job in a ministry, we hesitate to mention it because, you know, they’re already doing too much already, but we really need somebody to do this, and, well, they’re busy, and it’s hard to get it all done… so let’s cut them some slack. I am one of those 10 percent people. Even today I have responsibilities that I am doing poorly because I have too many things on my plate.

So what’s the response to this one? First, don’t overload your people. If somebody’s volunteered for too many things, tell them so. Then help them to prioritize so they can do a few things really well. Then get some of those 90 percent people to fill the gaps. If there’s no one to fill in, leave a hole there for a while.

3. We feel guilty because we haven’t trained well
I’m as guilty of this as anyone. To my silly engineering mind, most of these tasks are “easy”, so I tend to let them go with just a little bit of training. “Here, it’s just Powerpoint. Turn on the projector, use the remote to flip the slides, turn it off when the songs are done.” To most people, things aren’t that obvious. The best solution for some of these tasks is apprenticeship – get a new volunteer to work with an old, experienced volunteer for a while to learn the ropes. In times when that’s just not possible, set up a time to work with the new volunteer and train them until they’re comfortable with the task. Don’t just throw them into it on a Sunday morning and leave them hanging. I’m ashamed to say I’ve done it before… and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Active oversight

So here’s my call for active oversight of for every volunteer in every ministry going on in the church. Maybe a weekly meeting is infeasible, but a conversation or phone call every couple of weeks would work. As a leader, ask these questions:

• How do you think it’s been going? Good? Bad?
• Have there been any times that you felt unprepared or out of your depth?
• Is there anything I can do to help you do even better next time?
• How are things going in your life otherwise?

As a leader, be prepared to offer some feedback, too:

• How you actually think it went.
• Suggestions for improvement.
• Encouragement to continue well, and a reminder of why we’re all serving.

It is not the responsibility of the pastor to talk to all the volunteers every week, either – this oversight responsibility should delegate down. Let the nursery coordinator be the one that contacts the nursery volunteers on a regular basis. Let the head technical person keep in active touch with the folks who run sound and video every week. Then let the elder overseeing the nursery ministry talk to the ministry coordinator, etc. Flow things up. If everyone gets in the practice of talking to their two or three on a regular basis, everyone stays on the same page, and improvements get made. Just keep in mind the end goal: effective, well-done ministry, in service of God’s people, and for God’s glory.

The rest of this series:

• Introduction
• Part 1: Don’t Overload the Workers
• Part 2: Active Oversight (this post)

This seems like such a no-brainer that it shouldn’t even need to be mentioned, but based on my experience, it does. Sundays aren’t even the best view of this. Look at it through the week. Are the same people that are teaching Sunday School the same people that are hosting a Bible study at their home on Monday, leading kids’ clubs on Wednesday, volunteering in the church office on Friday, and showing up on Saturday to help with the work project and get things prepared for Sunday again?

Another place to look carefully here is at the impact not just on individuals, but on families. At one point in time at Noelridge we had six women serving as deaconesses, and of those six, three were elders’ wives, and the other three were deacons’ wives. Now I’m sure this isn’t too uncommon – after all that heart for service really should run together in couples, but as a leader, be acutely aware of the combined family schedule, especially for younger families that still have children at home. More than once I have had someone wonder why I thought I was so busy when I was only committed to two or three different activities per week(!) at the church. When I asked them to figure in my wife’s commitments, and then remember we have small children at home, well, suddenly expectations change a bit.

Discernment is required here to understand who truly has the time and desire to serve greatly and who is working from feelings of compulsion and guilt. We do not get the best service from our people when they have a dozen things on their plate. Something will get missed, and something else will be done poorly. To my shame, I have done this often enough myself. As leaders we need to be willing to protect those overly-willing servants by telling them when they have enough on their plate, and then to fill the gaps we need to get a fire lit under those who aren’t helping out.

I visited a friend’s new church website the other day and under the tab titled “what we do”, I found these refreshing words: “At Grace Central, we basically only do three things.” Wow, I thought, only three things? Now those spread out a bit in ministry, I’m sure – it’s not like there are only three events on their calendar every week. But still, the focus: only three things. If it doesn’t fit in one of those boxes, it’s not essential, and we’re not going to do it.

From their website again [emphasis mine]: “…we want to try very hard to limit what we do to only those things which we are convinced are essential. That way people are encouraged to take what they are learning at Grace Central and go out into their lives to apply it and to discover the radical implications of God’s grace. We think being a responsible church means our people should have time for relationships and activities outside of our church as well.” Amen.

Also in this series:

• Introduction
• Part 1: Don’t Overload the Workers (this post)
• Part 2: Active Oversight

Last week Richard (my pastor for the past 8 years who is also leading our church plant effort) asked me this question: What do we need to do to have more effective ministries at the church? He shared with me that in the past 15 years when he has had the opportunity to conduct “exit interviews” of folks who have left the church for one reason or another, the predominant theme he gets is that the Sunday morning service is good, but that the ministries that go on through the week leave something to be desired.

So that got my wheels turning. Why is there this disparity? What can we do to change things to make it better? This is crucial both for our existing ministry at Noelridge and our upcoming ministry at Imago Christi. Are there processes we should put in place that would help? Are there things in place right now that are unnecessary hindrances to the effort of ministry?

I had a few answers for him there in our conversation, but I want to take the chance to explore them more fully here on the blog. So over the next few days I am going to explore some areas where I think we can improve things in our ministry – and I’m hoping it’s applicable and useful for my non-Noelridge readers as well as the locals.

As a note to my Noelridge readers: please don’t read any of this and feel that it’s a criticism of you, of your efforts in ministry at Noelridge, or of your dedication to the Lord. The responsibility for this stuff falls on the leadership. We are the ones that need to take a hard look and then, if need be, change things. It’s entirely possible that some of the ideas I explore here won’t even be good options for Noelridge. What I am hoping these accomplish is to get us to think on some things and have a productive discussion. So please, leave comments and discuss.

Also in this series:

• Introduction (this post)
• Part 1: Don’t Overload the Workers
• Part 2: coming soon
• Part 3: coming soon

• Just Win, Baby! – byFaith Online
  A good article on competition, but also interesting because of the author: former NFL QB turned theologian Frank Reich.
  (tags: theology competition)

OK, rarely will I write a full post to recommend someone else’s post, but the latest from software-manager-par-excellance Rands is just too good to pass up. He has me nailed. In his latest post, Rands lists off his “Nerd Handbook”. Becky had only to read the first two sentences and she was chuckling in the knowledge that this guy was describing me:

A nerd needs a project because a nerd builds stuff. All the time. Those lulls in the conversation over dinner? That’s the nerd working on his project in his head.

Guilty as charged.

A few other priceless bits:

Understand your nerd’s relation to the computer. It’s clichéd, but a nerd is defined by his computer, and you need to understand why.

First, a majority of the folks on the planet either have no idea how a computer works or they look at it and think “it’s magic”. Nerds know how a computer works. They intimately know how a computer works. When you ask a nerd, “When I click this, it takes awhile for the thing to show up. Do you know what’s wrong?” they know what’s wrong. A nerd has a mental model of the hardware and the software in his head. While the rest of the world sees magic, your nerd knows how the magic works, he knows the magic is a long series of ones and zeros moving across your screen with impressive speed, and he knows how to make those bits move faster.

Yep, that’s me.

Your nerd lives in a monospaced typeface world. Whereas everyone else is traipsing around picking dazzling fonts to describe their world, your nerd has carefully selected a monospace typeface, which he avidly uses to manipulate the world deftly via a command line interface while the rest fumble around with a mouse.

The reason for this typeface selection is, of course, practicality. Monospace typefaces have a knowable width. Ten letters on one line are same width as ten other letters, which puts the world into a pleasant grid construction where X and Y mean something.

Ah, monospaced font, how I love thee.

Humor is an intellectual puzzle, “How can this particular set of esoteric trivia be constructed to maximize hilarity as quickly as possible?” Your nerd listens hard to recognize humor potential and when he hears it, he furiously scours his mind to find relevant content from his experience so he can get the funny out as quickly as possible.

Got me again.

And the most painful:

Your nerd has built an annoyingly efficient relevancy engine in his head. It’s the end of the day and you and your nerd are hanging out on the couch. The TV is off. There isn’t a computer anywhere nearby and you’re giving your nerd the daily debrief. “Spent an hour at the post office trying to ship that package to your mom, and then I went down to that bistro — you know — the one next the flower shop, and it’s closed. Can you believe that?”

And your nerd says, “Cool”.

Cool? What’s cool? The business closing? The package? How is any of it cool? None of it’s cool. Actually, all of it might be cool, but your nerd doesn’t believe any of what you’re saying is relevant. This is what he heard, “Spent an hour at the post office blah blah blah…”

Cool. I mean, ouch.

There is a lot of good stuff that I didn’t quote here, so if you really want to get an insight into me, yeah, go read the article. For my sensitive readers, yeah, there are a couple bad words in the post. Ignore them. Read the rest of it. Well worth it.

Yep, 105 comments held in moderation. All of ‘em spam. I guess I should tighten up Spam Karma 2 a little bit. But still, not hard to bulk-moderate ‘em all into oblivion.

Other thoughts from the week:

• Cell phones showed up yesterday via Fedex. It was easy to activate them, then dialed 0 to get out of a weird automated service and talked to a very nice real person at Verizon who got our number port going.
• One odd thing: in the store and on their website, Verizon claims that porting a number over will take between one and four hours. When I actually initiated the port yesterday afternoon, the woman told me it could take up to 72 hours. It’s been 16 hours so far, and still nothing.
• We’ve had colds most all week at our house. Not fun. Haven’t actually slept through the night in a couple of weeks. No wonder I’m tired.
• Going back to Standard Time from Daylight Time makes it feel like winter to me. That’s what I associate with winter: that it’s dark by suppertime. And so it is this week. On the positive side, we’ve been getting to bed earlier, though whether that’s due more to the time change or the sickness is anyone’s guess.
• It sounds like we are ever-so-close to having a building deal done for our church plant. It will be nice to get a start date set and then get this thing going. I’m guessing the first Saturday in January – that would be 1/5/08.
• I had no meetings scheduled at work yesterday, and none again today. Must be some kind of record. Not that I’m complaining.

So that’s pretty much my week. Not very exciting.

Oh, one last thing I should mention: congratulations to my friend Geof who has won a Space Flight Awareness Award from NASA. It’s a big deal. Wish I could come with you to see the shuttle launch, G, but I don’t think I’ll get free. And I’m not a single woman, either, so I’m a bit out of your target demographic.