July was always a great time for me to grab a week of vacation and spend a good amount of time preparing for the fall ministry. My goal as a small group pastor each year was to continue focusing on a balanced ministry, but also to pick one area of the ministry to work on improving during the next year. Recently, a client and friend who works in the area of organizational improvement for Microsoft shared with me the maxim:

“You can’t improve what you can’t manage. And you can’t manage what you can’t measure”

So, here’s the question: what do you want to improve in your ministry? Is it health of the groups? Growth? Prayer? Time in the word? Leadership development? Missional activities? Outreach?

How are you going to manage and measure to evaluate improvement?

As you think about these questions, please keep us in mind. We have uniquely designed Churchteams to collect the information you need to measure and improve your ministry.

We haven’t mastered this by any means, but we are definitely moving the ball ahead on it. We have a solid way in place now to collect, measure and manage the health of individual small groups. If you’re not sure how, meet me on a webinar.

Growthfinder can survey to help with other measures, but we’re also trying to learn how to measure other things like prayer and service through normal usage of the tool.

Why improve? To win the prize of our calling.
But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. (Phil 3:13-15)

Picture the closet with the fan running to keep the server from overheating. Remember the frustration of the server going down and lost time as well as the repair cost? Remember back further (those who can) – there was a day we didn’t have a server in the church office. We used a rolladex and index cards and miles of files. I’m glad the rolladex, index cards and the miles of files are gone; but I miss being server free. What if we could have both? I’ve had several conversations the last few weeks about such a church office heaven. Yesterday with Greg Atkinson of the Church 2.0 project and a noted blogger and speaker on church tech. You have to check out his stuff for leadership network as well as GregAtkinson.com. Especially check out his blogs on May 5, 2009 and the responses. It’s beginning to happen. Churchteams was made for such a time as this. For almost 10 years we’ve been preparing for the future. It is exciting to see that it is just around the corner. Someday, we’ll look back and write about church servers and categorize them in the same file as the rolladex. Just watch. When you’re ready check in with Churchteams. We are ready now and will even better then. BTW, we’ll give you a simpler tool and save you a bundle of money. That’s the beauty and value of the Internet!

There’s this huge intersection in North Dallas called the High Five (Wikipedia, Youtube) because of all the major highways and streets that merge. It used to be a horrible place to get through. But now due to a fantastic work of civil engineering and construction, traffic flows freely. As churches grow the old highways and streets become cumbersome and the movement toward spiritual belonging and maturity is slow. They are trying to get too much traffic through too little space. They need a High Five to alleviate congestion and get things moving again. Churches are looking to small groups to help ease the congestion. But small group ministry is different and it takes some serious engineering if it is going to be successful. Just like the High Five.

The other night the Mavericks were tied with the Timberwolves with seconds left. They were at home. They had trailed earlier. Playoff positions were on the line. 5 … 4 … 3 … 2. Jason Terry takes the jump shot and sinks the game winner (Youtube). You can change the teams even the sport, but you know what happened next. The place erupts! Everyone is hugging each other and giving each other … high fives. Why? To celebrate a victory. To join in the community of fans who’ve experienced the community and emotion that draws us back to sports time and again. How do you celebrate a win at church? How do you know you’ve won in your small group ministry?

In your ministry, you need some engineering to help the flow of traffic and you need it to be something to help you define and celebrate the win that will keep you coming back. We designed Churchteams to be the engineering to help you with flow. We also designed it to help you discover the win. But, you need to know what’s behind the software. I need to introduce you to what I call, the HIGH FIVE! Stay tuned.

So, how do all the new technologies work together? My wife, Pam, is great at Facebook and both of us have reconnected with lots of old friends through Facebook. It helps us keep up with our kids and our kids friends. Even my parents facebook now. I started this blog over a year ago and it has been hit and miss. What’s the point of putting time into it other than maybe some Churchteams technical help, I’ve wondered. Now, texting is definitely something we understand. It is the quick way to check in with the kids or to plan a meeting with friends in real time. I like it because it allows me to take a few seconds, grab my phone and share a thought. It is incredible for the family especially. It’s just not as easy to type on as with my laptop. Then, email, well I live on email. It drives my interaction with clients. It keeps me updated on my banking. I file my traveling receipts there. I still prefer my more personal and certainly business communication to be on email. Some info just isn’t for public broadcast.

Several weeks ago, Pam and I were talking about the interaction between all these and the implications for Churchteams. It seems to us that blogging is like a book or a journal in raw form. This is the venue for working out your thinking on a topic. Except, now you can get input along the way and watch the ideas and story unfold. Social networking is like your own, personal magazine. Lots of information with little tidbits from everywhere and all kinds of options available for off the beaten path exploration or interaction. It’s like that old friend from high school is an old/new product available for you to invest in if you want. Except the product is a relationship and instead of money, you have to decide if you can budget the time. Texting is the new phone call option. I have unlimited business calling to talk to clients and 200 texts a month. Pam and the kids have 700 family minutes and unlimited texting. We’re talking thousands of texts a month. And they never come close to using all 700 minutes. Google has done this thing with email, calendar, tasks, contacts, docs and all the rest such that email; for me at least is the heart and driver of my business applications. In the old days that was: task list, rollodex, word processor, spreadsheet, phone list, inbox, outbox, copier, fax, stapler, hole punch, shredder – you get the idea.

When SNS (Social Networking Systems) hit the scene years ago with Xanga, then MySpace; Mark and I talked a lot about their value for relationships and potential for small group ministry. We watched as several SNS were developed just for that purpose. They are really slow to catch on, if at all. Now, there’s LinkedIn, Plaxo and Twitter besides Facebook. Oh yeah, YouTube, Vimeo and Tangle are in the SNS world as well. Then there are website development tools like Wordpress and many others. There are sites like Photobucket, Flickr and Snapfish for sharing pictures and stories. And I’ve talked to other Christian entrepreneurs about sites for prayer requests, quiet time & scripture notes, salvation stories, service opportunities. If you guys are reading this, please add a comment. I don’t remember the names/websites exactly. Bottom line: there’s lots of stuff out there.

The implications for Churchteams? We decided that instead of recreating or aligning with one app or the other, let’s affirm them all and provide a way for leaders of groups to integrate whichever particular application they like into the information they present about their group on a church’s website. I love that diversity. Instead of fighting and struggling to control or compete with all of it, we’ve decided to embrace the chaos. To be a student of the technology. To learn the parameters and value of each app as best we can. And to listen and interact with our clients to come up with the best ideas and solutions together.

I don’t know if you know who Larry Osborne is, but he is the pastor of North Coast Community Church and also the author of “Sticky Church”. I met Larry the first time years ago in Nebraska over a meal with another small group pastor. The second time was a few weeks ago at the Innovation Conference in Dallas where he told me about his book. So, I picked it up and finished reading it last night. I’m going to start recommending this book as the one “must read” for pastors and staff interested in small groups. By the way, others have been telling me about the book and conference even before I saw Larry a few weeks ago.

Why did I like it? Not so much for their particular model of sermon-based groups, though I like that; but primarily because of the analysis of some vital small group questions. Questions like: Connecting people, launching leaders instead of multiplying or birthing, making groups central to church life, apprentice versus educational leadership development, keeping it simple, and most of all closing the back door. Looking for a great tool to engage your thinking about groups, check out Sticky Church by Larry Osborne.

I talk to a lot of pastors and church executives about software. That’s what we do. I got off the phone a couple of hours ago with a friend in Seattle who works at Microsoft and also leads small groups as a volunteer staff for his church. We’ve known each other about a year now and I have learned a lot from our interactions about using information to get at what you really want and need. Their church is one of our first ones to use Churchteams as a membership and contributions database as well as small groups. However, they needed something to do children’s check-in and we’re not ready with that feature. Then, their worship guy has a software for planning that he loves. So, we were talking about the question of this blog.

In the conversation I asked him why Microsoft offers Word, Excel, Access, Publisher and Outlook. They are not one application. They look a little bit alike and have some common logic, but they are all different – designed with different problems in mind. With all the software applications out there now, it’s good to know why they were created. What’s the big idea behind them. Our big idea is making disciples and building teams (i.e. Church Teams). Always has been.

So, where do you think it will head? What will pan out in the end? I’m no future-teller, but here’s my stab at that question. Look at the nature of ministry itself. Years ago I learned from Bill Hybels’ teaching that church has three areas of focus: Worship/large group, Community/small group and Administrative/Business. I think in the end there will be a unique place for worship, community/discipleship, website host/management, and accounting software. You will have the option to mix and mingle the companies that provide each of these. It is good that they are separate because that means you will have better products. Competition should push us to provide simpler, more powerful tools at very affordable prices (even wal-mart low). So, my answer is 4. At this point I reserve the right to change my mind.

I was reading “Sticky Church” by Larry Osborne the other night and think I’ve found a new recommendation for senior, executive and small group pastors who are thinking through their strategy for small groups. I talk to people from every persuasion of small groups and consider all of them great friends. My vantage point is that of an experienced discipleship / family / administrative/ small groups pastor who now serves many hundreds of churches in a support / consultive role. So, before I get too far away from my church staff experience. I thought I would write down my best lessons through all the years. Nowadays the way to do that is in a blog. And I haven’t used this one for awhile. So, I created a new category for these blogs simply called “Ministry.” They’ll help me capture these lessons and hopefully, somewhere along the way, be of some value to others. Here’s my starter outline. My foundational values for small groups.
1. The High Five – Overview
2. Belong
3. Grow
4. Serve
5. Launch
6. Together