Yesterday our guest on The Spotlight was Larry Osborne, pastor and author of the new book Sticky Teams. We had great participation, and actually didn’t get a chance to get to all of our questions, so here are three more from the audience:
Q: What if the pastor and staff have a great vision and plan - but they get push back from the volunteer team who is to implement that vision?
Larry’s Answer: That’s often a sign that it’s time to slow down and really hear what the objections are based on and make some adjustments to overcome them. It’s also important that those who create the vision be willing to charge the hill to get it done rather than just giving out work to others.
I’ve also found that sometimes I’m in touch with God’s vision but not his timing. Resistance that can’t be overcome is often a sign that I’m either ahead of God’s timing or the resisters are sinfully holding back. To determine which takes humble introspection, prayer, and the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Q: What do you as a church do to create this "team" culture? Do you have times when all teams get together or expectations that teams get together outside of their time of serving?
Larry’s Answer: The smaller the church the more spontaneous these times can be. But as a team grows larger, these kind of team building events need to be planned. At North Coast, a lot of the team building and social interaction takes place at ministry meetings where people from various teams interact on a common project, spontaneous barbeques put on by our facility team, and numerous all-staff training and social events we schedule (probably totaling about 10-12 a year when added together).
When the church and staff were smaller, retreats, longer lunches, and social events did the trick.
Q: How much time do you personally spend with your team to stay sticky and tight?
Larry’s Answer: When the church was small, we’d go out to lunch as a team about once a week.
Now with a huge staff, that is no longer possible. Instead, I spend a significant amount of time each week with a smaller segment of our staff in planning meetings (10 to 15 key players) and much less with the rest of the team. That said, in a larger church the lead pastor still has to be available (and visible) to some degree. The ultimate goal is for each of our staff members to have their own circle of staff and lay leaders that they are bonding with.
I look at it this way. The smaller teams are similar to the nuclear family units of our staff and the staff as a whole is much like an extended family. So while I’m expecting healthy relationships among all of us – I am not expecting everyone to be equally close or to spend the same amount of time together.
Thanks again to Larry for taking the time to be our guest, and to all of the participants who made the webinar a success!
If you were not able to be on the live webinar yesterday, you can download the recording & slide presentation here. (Note: the file is very large, and will take at least several minutes to download on a high speed internet connection. When prompted, choose “save file” and wait for the download to finish before opening the recording.)
I’ll be announcing upcoming Spotlight topics in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stephanie Plagens is the Publications Manager for Leadership Network.
Comments