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Potential Hosts

Occasionally, I have a long trip across the country to do one meeting at one church. I would like to be able to tack on an additional conference just before or just after this one meeting. I am developing a list of churches that are interested in hosting conferences. If you might be interested in hosting a conference if I am in your area, please email your name, church name, and contact information. I will contact you if I am in the area.

josh@joshhunt.com

Leadership and Management

"The world is over managed and under led." I am not sure where I heard that the first time. I wish I had a nickel for every time I have heard it.

There is, of course, some truth in that saying. People do need broad, compelling reasons why we do what we do. People need to be challenged by a dream that is bigger than all of us. A dream like doubling the "capital C" church in the next twenty years.

And, people can be over-managed. Micro-managing kills motivation. People get real excited about their own ideas. They don't get so excited about someone else's. The more we can give people a general direction and let them work out the details the more motivated they will be.

However.

This slogan, "the world is over managed and under led" implies that vision casting is all that is needed and managing the minutia is not all that important. This is a gross misunderstanding of reality. My pastor, Frank Zamora, is fond of reminding his staff that much of ministry has to do with managing the minutia. It is checking and double checking calendars, making phone calls and making sure things get done. It is not just vision casting and pulpit pounding. It is real work.

All good ideas degenerate into work. Sometimes people will ask me, "Will this plan work?" No, it won't. Plans don't work. People work. And yes, if you and your people get really excited about the plan, and implement it in the details, it will work.

Success is in the details. It is not so much in the broad principles as in the nitty gritty implementation of the details.

This is why franchises work so well and why our world is dominated by franchises. It is not because franchises understand the broad principles of culinary arts or customer service. It is because they implement in the details.

If you would lead your people to double their classes every two years or less, you can't just wave a flag around the idea of doubling and expect it to happen. We have to implement in the details.

Here are a few of the details it will take to make the double system work.

1. We need a list of names of people who have raised their hand to say they will give Friday nights to Jesus.
2. We need to call these volunteers and assign prospects to them. Especially, we need to assign new visitors to the worship service.
3. We need to inspect what we expect. We need to call our volunteers back and ask, "Did you get a chance to have these prospects in your home? How did it go?" We will fully expect life happens. Sometimes, although they have good intentions, they don't get around to it. We ask if they will be able to contact the prospects in a timely manner.
4. We reward what we want to happen. Many visitation programs have a reporting time for this reason. This is what the DOUBLE system needs. It needs that accountability loop of a reporting time. I suggest you make Sunday night, or Wednesday night a reporting time for doubling groups. Try to arrange a testimony every week of someone who would say, "We had so and so into our home. It was a lot of fun, and I noticed they joined the church this last Sunday."
5. We need to lead by example. If the pastor, staff, and top level leadership are not joyfully helping groups to double, it is highly unlikely than anyone else ever will. Modeling is the single most important factor.

Nothing succeeds like success. We spend too much time telling people what we want them to do and not enough time talking about what they did right. We desperately need to catch people doing something right and get a big spot light to shine on them.

We explore these ideas more fully in my training piece, TIGER Training, 8 Things Teachers Must Have from Their Pastor and Staff to Double. It is available in video, cassette and MP3 format.