The team I lead is in the early stages of some significant change,  and I’m learning something interesting about myself along the way: Even though I am the one who has initiated this, I may also be the one holding it back the most!

Here is my initial list of “why leaders who want to implement change  sometimes struggle to do so”.  Some of these I have seen in myself, and others came to mind while I was chewing on the subject. I would love to hear your additional thoughts.

-  Very few people “bleed” the ministry like the leader does, so he/she usually has more history with the status quo and has probably invested the most into it. In short, it’s often very hard for the leader to actually make the changes he/she knows need to be made.

- If the changes don’t go well, everybody else gets to hide behind the leader and say, “It was his idea!”.  The leader has no place to hide.

- The leader has to defend/sell/propose the changes to those higher up the food chain…which isn’t always an easy sell. Many leaders don’t have the political pull, the trust of sr. leadership, the “fight” etc. to go to bat on behalf of the changes they want to implement.

- Oftentimes, a leader will point to roadblocks (tradition, budget, resources, climate of the church etc.) as an excuse to not make the change. While all of these things must factor into change, they can easily become the reason change is never implemented.

- Healthy change takes work! Many leaders love to cast vision and then move on to the next big idea without ever getting their hands dirty. But change takes more than simple proclamation, no matter how eloquent the leader can communicate the need (Think about President Obama…great example of change not happening automatically just because the vision is cast…).

There are certainly more…those are just my initial reflections. What would you add?

A few totally unrelated thoughts:

- Tiger Woods: Sadly, lots of people have marriages that are in trouble and lots of people contribute to, or respond to, their marriage trouble by having an affair. And for most people, they get to navigate all the ramifications in private. I really wish we would let Tiger and other public figures do the same. He messed up…but why are the details any of my business?

- Token Tiger Woods Joke:  “Apparently, he drives an SUV the same way he drives a golf ball…into the trees.”  Of course, the irony isn’t lost that the only reason I can pass that joke along is due to his problems being aired in public.

-  President Obama: In the interest of full disclosure; I didn’t vote for Barack Obama primarily because I just wasn’t convinced that he had enough experience for the most important, most stressful (note the increase in grey hairs already on his head!) job in the world. And, in my humble opinnion, his charisma, youth and oratory skills allowed him to hide his inexperience.  Bottom line is that I’m not sure our President has ample leadership experience, and it seems like watching him navigate health care and the war(s) we find ourselves in are bearing this out. BTW, I’m not convinced John McCain would have been any better. My feelings are that men/women who serve in the senate don’t typically have enough exposure to the types of decisions and leadership scenarios a president faces. I’m certainly not like B.C. Israel crying “Give us a king!”, but I would like to be led by somebody with a confident, authoritative voice.

- Exercise: In my quest for a new form of exercise (my wife and I cancelled our rarely-used gym memberships), I have been contemplating getting into mountain bikes. The cost scared me off as did all the recent stories of friends who have had pretty bad wipeouts and injuries. I’m convinced it may be more dangerous than riding my dirtbike!  My new exercise: Swimming Laps. Yesterday was day #2, and I swam 16 fairly brisk laps in an olympic sized pool….almost died!

- Junior High Ministry: For the next two weekends in our junior high ministry we are having “Reindeer Games” which will be a program that has music as usual, 4 christmas themed games, and then a short video-driven message. I filmed both lessons yesterday and I’m actually pretty excited [...]

Continue Reading “Random Randomness”

The good folks at Simply Youth Ministry are having a massive Christmas sale and talked Andy Brazelton into making a promo video. I’m Not sure how this video will help increase sales, but it’s stinkin’ hilarious!

The winning caption wins the book of your choice from Simply Youth Ministry. Entries welcome until Monday afternoon. Here’s wishing you a wonderful Thanksgiving.

UPDATE…WINNER: After much debate, the winning caption goes to David: “You think if we smile big enough, she’ll actually cook it?”

David, shoot me an email at kurtj@saddleback.com with your mailing address and the book of your choice from the simply youth ministry website and we will send it out right away!

- This past weekend we wrapped up our three-week, “Piece Of My Mind” series. One of our volunteers who is an executive at UPS did a FANTASTIC job of sharing his heart with our students. So apparently the answer to the question “what can brown do for you?” is: Lead an excellent JH lesson!

- I read Tony Jones’ blog because he makes me think about things I normally don’t in ways I normally wouldn’t. I haven’t made any comments about the YS sale to YouthWorks! because I really don’t know enough about either organization to have any credible insight. But, I have said in a few circles that I believe the youth ministry world needs a vibrant YS. Here, Tony has a great post sharing some of his insight that helps me feel confident YS will continue its youth ministry calling under its new ownership.

- Speaking of Youth Specialties, I’m pretty sure most people that read my blog also read Marko’s (but I don’t think most people that read his also read mine as I’m sure he has WAY more readers), but in case you don’t, you can see here that he is available for speaking and training events.  He is a fantastic communicator/trainer, and I’m trying to come up with an excuse to use him myself!

In Tuesday’s post, I mentioned that I have asked our JH and HS teams to begin to brainstorm what a cleaner, more streamlined ministry plan might look like.  There was only one comment left in the comments section, but I thought it was a powerful one:

“Perhaps a bigger “what if” for most of us is what if we were allowed to try that.”

I really don’t know of many churches that give the leaders and pastors more freedom to try new stuff than Saddleback. Throughout the years, Pastor Rick has encouraged us to think differently, try new things, make changes, and make mistakes…and he has led by example. But, with that being said, change is ALWAYS tough and it will be tough for us to make significant changes to our ministry, but we simply have to try.  And I think that would be my response to the comment above.  You may not be allowed to try to make changes, but as a leader, you have to try to try!

In our setting, ministry has simply become too cluttered.  Our calendar of events and programs is cluttered, our infrastructure is cluttered, our team is cluttered (and I’m not talking about my office!), and our work days are cluttered. There’s lots and lots of really good stuff happening, but much of it has been overrun by all the clutter.

It won’t be easy, and I’m sure we will hit some obstacles along the way (both internal and external). But God is doing something special in our ministry and things are better than ever and I feel like we are poised for something amazing….I don’t want the clutter to get in the way.

Simply Youth Ministry is having a huge sale as they prepare to move their warehouse to a new location. Tons of books are on sale for $3.99 and shipping is free if you spend over $99 (use the promo code: COLDOUTSIDE).

- The weekend was a pretty good one! It was week 2 of our “Piece Of My Mind” series where we ask a different volunteer each week to teach on any subject they would like. This past weekend we bent the rules a little bit and allowed one of our full time JH team members to speak. Jaime spends most of his days “producing stuff” for our ministry. He is in charge of most of the weekend programming, our blog, our promo, our graphics, our videos etc. He is a talented guy who has never taught our students so we thought it was a good time to give him his first shot. He was excellent! Since he spent so much time preparing the lesson, the rest of the weekend was a little more “bare bones” than usual, but sometimes less can actually be more.

- Last week I spent a full day with 5 other JH/Middle School pastors beginning a project that I’m really excited about! I will share more about it in the near future.

- Our JH team is in the middle of a project that you may want to consider (if you work with JH students….). We are conducting a “what if” scenario. What if we decided to cut our programs and “stuff” by 25-50%? What would we keep? What would get cut? What new stuff would we create? My hope is that we will create a fairly fresh looking ministry plan that is less cluttered and leaves much more time for relational/organic youth ministry to flourish.  For now, it’s just an exercise to get our minds thinking and our juices flowing, but I’m hoping we can translate it into an actual ministry plan at some point soon.

Rick Warren posted this tweet this morning that has me thinking: “Be as much troubled by unjust praise, as by unjust slander.” – Philip Henry

Some of my thoughts:

- Everybody loves, and to a certain degree needs, a “good job, buddy” now and then. So encouragement is valuable.

- As a leader, a whole lot of the “good job, buddy” comments you hear are really because of what somebody on your team did…you just happen to get the praise.

- The “higher up” you are, the more “back slaps” you have had along the way and the more you need to dish out to others on their way up.

- It’s interesting how many back slaps and “good job buddy”statements are at the expense of somebody else: “you are doing a much better job than our previous youth pastor”, says a parent. Or “You’re way nicer than our last small group leader, says a student”.

- The source of the praise is usually a pretty good indicator of how valid it is. Do they have something to gain by slapping your back or is it because they have your best interest in mind?

- As for the quote itself…OUCH! I’m embarrassed by how bothered I get by unjust criticism while unjust praise serves to feed my ego.

- Mark Oestreicheris back to blogging! His blog has been a longtime favorite of mine, and I’m glad he’s back at it.

- Weekend Update: This past weekend we kicked off week one of “Piece of My Mind” where we ask one of our volunteers to speak each weekend on any subject they want. Our first week was amazing.

- Since I’m not teaching for three weeks, I am ditching Sunday services at the Lake Forest campus and visiting one of our regional campus youth ministries each week. On Sunday I visited our original regional campus in San Clemente.

- Speaking of regional campuses….my heart is torn on this new trend (“trend” may not be the right word as I think they may be here to stay). I love the ability for successful churches to expand their reach by expanding into regionals, but I also wonder why these same churches don’t just send a pastor they trust to the same community and let him/her plant a church of their own?  That being said, I am super impressed at the way Saddleback has approached our regional strategy. Our regional campuses are much more autonomous than many I have seen.

- Saw “The Box” a couple nights ago. I can’t decide if I absolutely loved it or absolutely hated it. It had some really good  spiritual themes and I think it could have been a great flick but there was a whole layer of unnecessary plot, in my opinion. Is  it a remake?

- I feel the Broncos slowly opening my chest cavity on their way to ripping my heart out.