Good morning. I'd like to welcome you again to
the second part of this three-part
class on dynamic pastor or dynamic team. How
many of you were not here yesterday?
Which is okay, great. We're going to do a
little recap this morning to let
you know what you missed and to move forward.
First of all, I'm going to have
us reintroduce ourselves very briefly. And
instead of telling your background,
tell us one interesting fact about yourself.
Kent, start with you.
Kent Landrum used to live in Thailand. Used to
live in Thailand. That's pretty interesting.
I'm Chris Goldman. I'm the only one of mine
that thinks sarcasm is a hard form.
I used to, then I repented.
I'm Ryan. I once broke my little toe playing
football in my parents' living room by myself.
My name is Bill, and actually Goldman told this
about me last night, but I screened
benevolence at the Northwest Church. And please
do not come and ask for coupons
for your medical Marijuana. It just, something
about that just doesn't fit
well with my vision of what the church is all
about. So, although other people
think it ought to be. We are a leadership team
at the Northwest Church, which is a
fairly new concept for us within, in this for
several years. But we'd like, we'd
like for Kent to play a little video to tell
you kind of what you missed
yesterday in the process, and then we'll
continue on here.
Here's a quick preview from yesterday's class.
We discussed some of the various leadership
models used by churches, giving strengths and
weaknesses of the various models. We
discussed the need for both healthy pastoral
staff and healthy pastoral
elders, and introduced the concept of Catalyst
Leader. Catalyst Leaders work to
create a culture of mission and mission with
high expectation and grace in their
specific area of ministry. We spent some time
looking at the biblical basis for
shared leadership, and began to look at our
model of what we call the lead team.
We think of the lead team as a table, with
Jesus at the head of the table. Joining
him at the table were representatives from the
pastoral staff, the Catalyst
Leaders, and representatives from the pastoral
elders. This is the lead team,
which we'll hear about more in today's session.
Now we're going to have a time of questions and
answers at the end of the
time, but we'd prefer if you could, and Cassie
and Megan if you'll hand these
out. We prefer during the time if you find a
question that you would like for
us to answer, go ahead and write it down and
bring it up to the front. It won't
bother us during that time. We have some from
yesterday we're going to start with,
but that way you'll have an opportunity to
process some things with us and to
help us in that particular process. This
particular leadership model was born
out of a change that change often happens in
churches because of crises,
and we were in a crisis situation where we had
had a long-term senior minister
model, a very strong senior minister that was
very visionary and very cutting-edge,
and he left very suddenly, and in that
particular crisis we decided that we
needed to retrench and go back into a different
model situation. Since we
adapted this model, two of the four people that
are up here have come to be
a part of our leadership team, and so I'm going
to start by asking Chris. Chris,
you could have gone to a lot of places when you
decided that it was time for
you to leave Sacramento, and yet you chose to
come to Seattle after we
mutually talked. So why did you choose to enter
into a situation with a
model like this? Most of the conversations I
was having with churches
were about senior pastor roles that were a
rather large churches of Christ that
obviously interested me from a number of
standpoints, but I have a belief
that most senior pastors are type A
personalities. I certainly am, and it's
very easy for type A personalities to become
tyrannical if they're not in
accountability systems, and a lot of the
conversations with committees I was
talking to were making comments like, we love
our staff, but if you wanted to come
in and clean house, you would have that
authority, and I was thinking, wow, that's
pretty interesting that a person you don't
really know could come in and
decide on a whim even, that you know what, I
want to just start from scratch, and I
see why companies do that. I get why companies
do that, but the church
isn't a company. It's part of the kingdom, and
so for that I chose what I think is
a healthier choice for me. It's a system that
allows my type A personality to
appropriately flourish while not controlling
everything, and I tend to
reject the idea that any one person should run
any one thing. I think we
discussed yesterday that even really good
leaders, when they're put into
unhealthy leadership situations, can make
unhealthy choices, and so, myself
included, yourself included. Ryan, you're the
kind of a new kid on the block. You've
been at Northwest for about a year and a half.
Why did you choose to come to a
model that was like this? I had been fortunate
in my church planting
experience to be a part of a very collaborative
team leadership model.
Obviously, it was a rather small team being a
church plant, but it wasn't
perfect, but we really were exploring this
concept of being collaborative and
being mutually accountable, and it worked so
well. Prior to that, I frankly had a
wounding experience with a really strong
elder-led situation, so I had seen a
much more healthy way of functioning with the
church plant, and so I was thrilled that the
Northwest Church was seeking the same thing.
Ken, you had 24 years under your belt, and the
same senior minister was there
the entire time you had been there prior to
this. What's been different for you?
Well, the model is really different. It's
actually a more supportive environment.
The collaborative model helps bring out the
best in people. People who have
skills in a certain area, they get to use their
skills in the area that they're
gifted in, and so that's been a real blessing,
so it's it's been very
different as we as we get into you. What he
means by
supportive is that we're never ever in each
other's business.
No, that's not right. Just clarifying. We're
glad that Chris chose this so that we could
help him.
That's right. In this process. And so that he
could help us. It's therapy.
Coaching, not therapy. Oh, okay. We'll allude
to that later. We'd like to kind of expand the
model now for you so that you can kind of have
an idea of how we function, and
the model actually has several different
components for it. First of all, we want
to make sure that you understand this, and we
reiterated this yesterday, but
we're going to reiterate it again today, that
we really believe that Jesus Christ
is the senior pastor of the Northwest Church.
He is the shepherd. He is the one
who leads us. He is the one that works through
his Holy Spirit to form us and
to help us to function in the way that we need
to do to bless the people that
we've been entrusted with to lead. And so we
came up with this idea, Jeff
Berryman came up with this idea, of sitting
around a table and having a
discussion of what we needed to do to go
forward in vision and in purpose and in
leading pastorally in the Northwest Church. We
always made sure that Jesus
Christ was the head of that table. So go ahead
and flip to the next slide. Now the
discussion has to be how do you take a church
staff and how do you take a
church eldership, and how do you put those two
together in order to begin the
discussion to have a healthy leadership model
in a team concept. So what we came
up with was a concept called the lead team, and
we discussed this and introduced
this yesterday, but I'd like for Chris to flesh
it out a little bit more in this
particular process. Okay, so one of the
constant tensions in Church of Christ
model, which we really kind of adopted from the
Presbyterians right, is this idea
of typically unpaid localized men who fit the
characteristics in Timothy and
Titus who serve as elders. But we kind of took
it a next step and a lot of elders
feel a pressure from this idea is managing,
that the term management in
2,012 means something very different than
management in the 1st century. And we
take this idea of management and put so much
pressure on elders that you hear
comments like, if we don't do this right, it
could cost me and the entire church
their souls. Wow, that's pretty big for the
coffee pot choice. And yet they have
that pressure, is that if it's not managed just
right, every single penny,
every jot and tittle has to be just right. And
since I'm one of the managers,
I'm terrified if someone else makes that
decision. And so you find these
elderships that are controlling everything. And
if you ask them, do you
want to control everything, they say what? Of
course not. Do you intend to
micromanage everything, they say what? Of
course not. But we know in fact they are.
And so what happens is the question is, how do
these ministers, and understand,
the ministers are being required to get
master's degrees, if not higher, just to
apply for the jobs. And then they come in and
they're supposed to set all that
expertise and everything aside. So if you can
invite groups of people from both
entities, the staff and the elders, and
understand that you can't make decisions
with 30 people around the table. So take your
opinion leaders from
those that really can shape administration and
strategy and put
them together around that table. Now what
happens is the elders have a voice at
that table. It's not just a staff meeting
during the week doing it. And the staff
have a place at that table. Where I came from,
we would meet as elders and staff
for about an hour and then the staff would be
dismissed. And then the elders
would have the after meeting meeting. And
almost every time the elders would come
out of the after meeting meeting and correct
what they had said they were
going to do and agree to with the staff at the
original meeting. And it would
come off like this is, well Ryan we really
liked your idea for worship but
after you guys left, we had a conversation and
Bill really had some
serious reservations so we're not going to do
that. And what it led me to is this
point, is what on earth happened to Jesus
teaching that let your yes be yes and
your no be no? And in that schizophrenic type
leadership model, healthy
men started making really unhealthy decisions.
And so this kind of
circumvented. Kind of very quickly some popcorn
style. What are some things that
would be discussed around this leadership table
with the lead team?
Are we going to try and do raises this year?
Yes. What are we going to do about facilities?
Should we expand? Should we
plan to church? Should we stay where we are?
As we rehashed our benevolent policy, that was
a conversation that we included
the entire leadership team on. And we didn't
argue about medical Marijuana.
That's true. It was a brief discussion. Also
just some of our, even our spiritual
formation initiatives, our plans for the fall
and for the calendar. We share those
all together and let everyone weigh in on what
we're thinking and choosing a
direction. We also bring to the table how we're
going to communicate different
issues. How are we going to communicate
policies to the congregation? Are the
things that we're communicating to the
congregation, are they being effective or
not effective? You know, what is the
congregation hearing that we're
communicating? And are they hearing what we're
intending for them to hear? And
those types of things too are really important.
And it's important for you to
realize that not every elder of the Northwest
Church sits on this lead team.
In fact, the lead team is composed of four
non-paid elders and always the
chairman of the elders and the co-chairman of
elders, Kent calls him the
vice chairman, but I prefer to call him a
co-chairman because we have enough vice
going on in the church already. The chairman
and the co-chairman sit on that
along with two elders that are chosen by the
other elders to sit and it's a
one-year term and so they don't get burned out.
But not all the elders sit on
that and so I'd like for Ryan to, he's kind of
put some things on here on the
board, I'd like for Ryan to now expand the
larger pastoral team that, that exists
in addition to this lead team. The, what's here
on the right are what we call our
pastoral team, includes all of our elders and
also the catalyst leaders. And the
the acknowledgement here is that, and we
mentioned this yesterday, all of our
staff are serving as pastors. We all have
influence and spiritual responsibility
with this flock. So whether we have the title
of elder or not, we're
functioning in that way as far as loving people
and shepherding people and
hearing influence. So this pastoral team also
includes the catalyst leaders. As I
mentioned yesterday, part of that is so that we
can be the voice for the value
that we represent of the church and we'll
unpack that in a bit. One of the
refreshing changes that this model has allowed
us to do is that when we get to
this step, when we get to our pastoral team
meetings, we don't have to spend
time talking about some of those issues that we
just talked about as example of
what we talked about around the lead team. We
can spend our time pouring
ourselves in prayer and in conversation about
people. We can talk about people
that are struggling. We can talk about people
that need spiritual help. We can
also share about people that are growing well
in the Lord and that can
bless other people. It's not just talking about
the people that need help, but
people that are blessing the flock. Well just
to show you in the last
year, in the last year the speed of this has
picked up substantially. So a year
and two years ago we asked the elders, we said
how many elders, you know we have
several men that can serve, how many should we
invite? They were like let's
get a manageable amount so maybe we could add
three elders. So we invited and
out of the ones we invited, we added three
elders and they felt like two
years ago, all right this is a good thing. So
now two years later they've really
embraced shepherding that in this meeting
they're doing four things now.
They came up with this. The first part of it is
shepherding the shepherds. So when
they get together with a group, the first 20
minutes is let's break out in
groups of three or four as the pastoral team
and let's do a check-in. How are
you doing spiritually? Let's pray over each
other. So we divide up in the room
and everybody's praying with each other and
over each other. Then it's shepherding
the church corporate. We're gonna take 20
minutes and whatever the lead team has
come and said to the pastoral team we need
legal votes on this or we just need
to inform you about some big things that are
going on, we take 20 minutes to do
that. Then we have 20 minutes of training.
Training people how to anoint and pray
over people in worship. Training people how to
do hospital visitations. Things,
skills that elders need, right. So that's our
first hour. Then the second hour is
and this is once a month. The second hour is
now in your contacts what you've been
doing during the week. What do all of us need
to know about? Because maybe Ryan
has called a family in distress and has learned
more information that really the
full pastoral team needs to know about and so
we begin to do that and we kind
of leave the lines a little bit fuzzy on time
so that it can breathe and move. The
elders kind of know don't sit there and go I
thought we were just doing 20
minutes of prayer we're on 24. They don't do
that. They let it flow and let it
breathe. And in that time we can also invite
members in that really wants to
speak to the pastoral team and wants to either
unburden themselves or get some
advice about some very critical issues in their
lives. Or just be prayed over.
Or prayed over. We can you know if they're
facing a court decision we pray
over people and and it that way they can come
in toward the end of this meeting
when it's designed to have time for people. And
like indeed the last meeting
we had three they oh I was doing year to year.
So two years ago they said about
three guys let's add about three guys. This
year after getting to the
shepherding model you know what they said why
wouldn't we want everybody that
would and could? We said okay what does that
look like? So they sat there and
looked around the congregation they said we're
gonna invite 21 men bad to the
elders this year. And I was like yes finally
I'm at a church that's saying
what's the maximum amount of shepherds we can
get instead of what's the minimum
that we can control. And that's just fires me
up. A church of 400, 500, 600
people shouldn't have three or four shepherds.
They should have ten or 20
or 30 shepherds. But we make such a high bar
our bar is so much higher than the
apostle Paul. I think the apostle Paul go guys
those churches were brand new
churches and pretty hedonistic sections. Yeah
and brand new
Christians. So Kent can you kind of flesh out
not only do we have more elders
than sit on the lead team but we also have more
staff than actually sit on the lead team. Right
we do have more
staff. So we have our other staff our pastoral
staff like our youth
minister or children's ministers you know other
churches would have different
that's who we have. So we have the pastoral
staff that we work with the
catalyst leaders meet with them and check in
with them on a regular basis we
do that once a week we spend time praying with
each other praying for the
congregation praying through the prayer
requests the congregation submits to us
we spend time doing that and also just making
sure that we're on the right path
and vision that the lead team and elders have
set for us. So we want to
kind of flesh out for you now this catalyst
concept that we actually
represent. We are the four catalyst leaders of
the Northwest Church. So to do
that why don't there's four areas that we deal
with and one is our our encounter
Ryan's our encounter guy and that's all about
our relationship with with God
the spiritual formation and worship. We have a
connection about our relationship
with each other that's what Chris's expertise
is in and that's what he brings
to the table how we relate to each other how
this preaching of the word from the
pulpit love I'm the love guy and I like that
title and it's how we relate to the
community how we relate to missions in the
world locally and and globally and
also how we relate to each other pastoral and
then undergirding all that
any any organization has got to have what we
call service which is just the
nuts and bolts of the things administrative
things that budget and
buildings and insurance and issues and all
sorts of things like that we
princess we're having a rash of burglaries in
the part of Seattle that
we live in our church had been broken into
twice before we came here in the
last month and last night it got broken into
again our offices so who gets the
call obviously this guy and then he
disseminates the information to us so
that we can take an inventory of what they took
this time so that's probably
a poor analogy of what we do but I'd like for
each of you kind of take your
area very briefly I think it's got a slide for
every area kind of kind of
fleshed it out a little bit before we do that
let's explain what Ryan just drew
because I think it's okay that the the design
is that you have three key
portions of ministry that take place in the
church encountering God connecting
with people and loving God these are compassion
ministries your missions that
kind of stuff under underneath that is an area
that all of these need logistical
support for and so Ken is a specialist in
coming underneath and saying okay so
we have a 60 page booklet that needs to be
printed for this next spiritual
formation study that we're doing get the
content together and then I will take
and shape that print it produce it and get it
to you on time so we've got so
that these guys can actually hand off
logistical things that we may not be
talented with and you know where we can think
through so for example this is the
latest one just two weeks ago that you know we
needed about 500 copies of these
to go out to people so that they can track with
our spiritual formation
training and so Camp's the one who physically
makes that happen okay so now
let's go very briefly because I don't know it's
been a whole lot of time on
this but hit show each slide I think starts
with encounter obviously there's
overlap between these categories but that's
fine because we collaborate
encounter is about our connection to God so for
me that's our worship
gatherings and our spiritual formation elements
with prayer and the spiritual
disciplines helping people continue to grow in
their faith and also different
leadership development things with some coach
training and just equipping and
supporting leaders in our church family you
know mine they the preaching used to
live in real encounter but when they hired me
to preach they were like okay
you're more of a connect people guy but we want
you to still preach because
it's we're hiring you for and so we added that
we actually took it from real
encounter put it in connection so Christian
education children's ministry
Youth ministry and Adult Bible studies all fit
in that area all the different
group life fits in there and this is life
groups been redone to community
groups and then member life as well as
assimilation spiritual giftedness these
kind of things fall into that and that doesn't
mean I do all that certainly it
means that I keep an eye on it and ask the
question what is the church doing on
it and try to make sure it's in our conscience
live conscious lives so for
example in group life we did some training this
summer that we put
together the material but I was going to be in
Kenya for a good part of the
summer so these two guys actually trained all
the small group leaders
during Bible class time because it was just a
natural fit and and so now we
hand that back over we don't we were not
territorial except for maybe on one or
2% of our positions and in the love area church
has got to revision
itself that we're not just there for ourselves
we've got to be there for the
community we've got to make an impact and a
difference in the community and
so it's it's community outreach is particular
programs that will reach
into the community it's taking care of wounded
people people that need
benevolent health people that are addicted
people that are divorced it
also we have to have a vision that's bigger
than just our community and goes
regionally and into the world and so it
includes global missions and regional
missions and then also it talks about how we
can care for each other and and
and be where developing the pastoral team to
where we can be better pastors
and better cared for each other and then
service tries to undergird all of them
and make sure that they have the support they
need to fill their ministries we
also handle HR scheduling facilities we we
overlap with worship Prep I had the
technology part of part of the worship and so
one of the things you'll notice
and we should know is a lot of times because
we're collaborative boxes tend
to slide they're not static so if all of a
sudden we say oh Ryan's better at this
position some of the boxes can move from from
category to category to help make
sure they're in the place where they'll and
unless I'm undergoing all this go
ahead and go to the next slide is that
obviously as catalyst leaders if we
tried to do everything ourselves in every box
we there's not enough hours in
the day to do that and in fact that's not our
role our role is to equip people
in those areas to do the ministry of the church
to do the work of God and so we
see ourselves primarily as equipers and not as
doers and that's what we're
trying to evolve even more in that area and
Ryan did that yesterday when he
talked about the basis the biblical basis that
we have for this but we found
this quote that the core vision of catalyst has
always been to impact the
next generation by creating change agents
throughout the church that
possess wisdom and understanding the
opportunity is created to Usher in the
necessary adjustments in an ever-evolving
church it's not that the
doctrine of the church evolves is that
communities evolve is that culture
evolves and we have to be constantly aware of
what we need to be doing in
order to connect with our community in order to
connect with our culture and we
need a situation that is not established but
like Ken said where
things can move around and and where we can be
that equipping part of the church
so we'd like to go back to this concept of lead
team for just a moment and talk
about why it's the cornerstone of collaborative
leadership and why it's
kind of the the touch point where everything
else flows out of and Chris
wanted to mention that for just okay so when
you look at this model up here
it's really important to understand that what
you have to have a you have to have
a central communication point I don't care what
your church size is you have
to have a central communication this is who is
the group that's taking the
information from everywhere and talking about
it and so when you look at this
diagram you see the lead team becomes in
essence a very important hub of that
information exchange how many times have
churches had the elders knowing something
that the staff didn't know right and the staff
comes up and tells you how come we
couldn't be informed of this major thing that
we deal with every day or vice
versa that the staff knows that the secretary
really is the all-seeing
knowing eye of the church and the elders you
know the elders finally decide two
months later to say well we want to let you
know that Mr. and Mrs. Smith are
having marital troubles and the secretary's
like I could have told you
that six months ago so there's not that
communication or there's actually
holding information controlling information as
a control so I was going
to show you with this model how this all flows
so we have brainstorming sessions
brainstorming sessions that the pastoral team
and or the staff have right and all
this information is thrown up on the wall I
mean no bad idea right we get all
that kind of stuff and so then what happens
from the brainstorming this gets
sent now often to the catalyst leaders and
here's why the elders in the lead
team have vocalized this concept do not bring
to the lead team ideas that the
four of you are all souls on are at a process
they yeah if you have a process
and we don't want to waste our time if you know
Bill bring up an idea that all
three of us can sit there going it's the
stupidest ideas ever have the elders
like at least make sure you guys think it's a
valid idea so those
brainstorming sessions come to the catalyst
leaders to boil down then to
come back to the lead team then is going to vet
that through the
additional four voices of elders that are not
paid by the church and they're
going to really question and massage and
challenge ideas now from that lead team
it's going to go a couple of directions it's
going to go to the pastoral team
and it's going to come back to the pastoral
staff where that all hits and
comes back and from this from those
communications this whole model
continues to work and that's how the
communication flow goes so that
everybody's literally in the loop one of the
ways that this flushes
out specifically is for example in our if we
had a question here so how did how
did staff fit into this thing like let's talk
about Bev our secretary our elders
take their marching orders every week from Beth
period Bev goes through our
four to five pages of prayer requests we get
every Sunday and she knows this one
needs an elder to call this one needs a visit
this one needs a card to be sent
and she goes down those and then she by
authority of the elders the elders said
Bev you're the one that knows she goes through
and she says okay Bill this week
I need you to call this person you send a card
here and I need to go visit this
person and she does that with all the elders in
all the prayer requests and the
humility and beauty of that is that the elders
are telling us for the first time
in their time of being elders they feel like
they're really shepherding the
church the other the other beauty of that is
that it's all done electronically
and the reporting is done back electronically
and now what is all you
know group email and so when Bev makes an
assignment I know when Bill Herrick
does his assignment and what he what he
discovers about this call that he's
going to make pastorally and everyone knows
that everybody knows Chris just
real quick it is when the lead team hits to the
lead team or whatever is that
actually a decision at that point and it's just
communicated yeah both
directions yeah okay so there's no there unless
there are some issues that do
require an elder vote yes according to either
our bylaws or to our personal
policies that require a vote if that happens
then it goes from the lead team
and then it comes as a formal recommendation to
the pastoral team
they vote then it's disseminated an example of
that is if we're going to
spend more than $5,000 that was not budgeted
the lead team go takes that to
the pastoral team see where this came up our
sound systems dying we need ten
grand to do it so the we basically the lead
team said yes it's got to be done
so in the pastoral team meeting we went and
said we have a votable issue we
need we're recommending we spend 10 to $1,000
to fix this and we're
recommending unanimously from the lead team
that the pastoral team vote for
that voted on it and it was done sometimes we'd
like to sell the
building but we can't sell them yeah I mean
there's certain things that we are
too long here's the reach dogs just like you
know you're filtering through the
catalyst team first or catalyst leaders first
so the four of you have already
come to an agreement in essence it only takes
one other elder basically to make
a decision happen or whatever that's a great
question we we don't lead by
unanimity but we lead with consensus but we
find that consensus usually is
unanimous we have very few decisions that when
you when you vet it out end up
in any kind of disagreement yeah we're one of
the beauties of our system is
they didn't hire to get along they hired to
produce good thoughts and we'll see
that tomorrow I think we're going to when we
talk through how that we shape
each other in directions that we didn't
necessarily set off on I really think
that collaboration ends up in more unit
unanimity than leading from a strong
person because when you leave with a strong
person a lot of voices aren't
heard at the table at least the voices are all
heard at the table before you
reach that point and I think unanimity is much
more possible in a collaborative
process so we've kind of Ryan real quickly
we are you I think I took your thing I'm sorry
really in this whole process and
and collaboration is something that is evident
not only in this model but we're
trying to inculcate it in every aspect of the
church so I'm going to turn to
some of the questions that you have turned in
and illustrate some of this
and we'll get to some of the other questions
and if you have more questions
go ahead and turn them in and we'll get to them
first of all how our elders
selected was one of the questions and Chris
talked about that a
little bit but Kent why don't you flesh that
out a little bit this is something
that Alan Dunbar for the North American
Christian Convention really kind of
helped us with yeah the way we do eldership
selection is came from Alan
Dunbar from the Christian side church side of
things is our elders go through
and look for men who are qualified to serve as
elders and in August they begin
compiling that list and say who in the
congregation are men that are qualified
they sent out a formal invitation saying we
believe that you're qualified to be
an elder are you willing to serve once they get
that list they invite those
men to come and meet with them and make a
decision would you like to consider
being an elder but they don't they're not going
to put them in immediately
because they believe that two things one a
person needs to know whether or not
they really want to serve as an elder but they
can't do that without having a
little bit of experience behind them to know
what is it going to be like so they
invite them to come and walk alongside them for
six months and at the end of
six months during that time they've had time to
take it to know that these men
the men have got had time to get to know the
elders they've had time to visit
people to minister to people together and then
they can make a decision is
this really what we want to do because a person
may go through that six months
inside hey you know I really don't have time or
this is not for me or our
leaders may decide that you know this is you
know you're a great person but you
know we won't believe that God has blessed you
in this way either and so we
go through that process it's kind of like an
internship we call them what
elders in training are idiot first of all it
builds one of our elders so he
can get away with comments like that we're good
to several questions so some
of the questions have to do with the because we
are a merged congregation a
archipelago church of Christ and Christian
Church so one question was how
do you mesh those two models together you
really telling that story tomorrow
or is that today okay so I guess you have to
come back for that particular
situation leadership style in Christian
churches they have elders board of
elders traditionally the senior pastor also
sits on that as an elder as a as a
paid elder or as another elder in this
situation when we merged all of the
existing elders of the short-lived Christian
Church became full-fledged
elders of the Northwest Church of the combined
church we merged the two
elderships as well as merging the congregation
and that worked out very
well in the process I don't think there's an
appreciable difference as far
as the way men lead from the two streams of the
restoration movement I think that
and then they were very open in this
collaborative process and helped shape
and mold it they were on board when this whole
process began any other comments
on that another question we've had is in the
communication slide that's up here the where's
the congregation fit in we didn't
know how to really show that the congregation
is all the black space and
we really do it that way the congregation is
supported you know Peter
talks about spiritual house we view leadership
to be the foundation of the
house not the top not the front door if Jesus
the cornerstone we're all in the
millennium level right and we're building this
beautiful church that God
wants us to be so the congregation is all the
black space around that in and
around and surrounding us so we had a question
on what you run you told him
well we also quarterly yeah go ahead quarterly
we have what we call
Northwest directions which is a combined Sunday
school class if you will where
everyone just meets in a worship gathering
center and we we just
disseminate a lot of information and
communicate about calendar and changes
and big things going on so that's that's our
most effective and important way
that we try to over communicate to the church
do you check in with the staff
members meeting accountability encouragement
yes yes we do we do check
in on a daily basis we do a stand-up check-in
where we meet with them and say
you know what what's going on for the day in
addition to that we do yearly
evaluations and so we spend time doing that
that's a 360 evaluation so it comes
from below we ask you know people who are
serving in their ministry to evaluate
them catalyst leaders to evaluate them the
elders evaluate them and so they get
feedback constantly their catalyst leader each
each staff individual serves
in a different catalyst area and so as a
catalyst leader heading that area and
they meet with them and give them feedback on a
regular basis also as
things come up and if they have problems they
have an opportunity to kind of say
hey I need help with this or one feedback for
about this one tool we use
for that survey monkey we design a evaluation
survey monkey for each staff
person and then the catalyst and all of us and
the threshold is a minimum of 30
evaluations that are sent out and we let staff
members pick people who they think
will do it and then we randomly pick maybe 10
others that they think last
year I decided to get a little crazy and I sent
it out to the whole church but
let's just let everybody chime in on this and
so I just sent it out to the
whole church I ended up getting like 140 I
think 130 filled out evaluations which
really gave me a lot to think about I'm not
saying I recommend that but I think
Ryan and Bill were around second with around
90-100 that they solicited and
got and Kent ended up with about 60-70 so we
take that information this year
developers are asking us to more intentionally
do an internal evaluation
on top of that they want to hear how we
evaluate each other so that's the added
thing and I'm going to go to the next question
because it kind of plays off of
that what is the process for hiring and firing
paid staff let me go with the
firing part we have never had to do that yet in
this particular process but it
would be initiated more than likely one of the
initiation points would be in
this evaluation process and part of the day I
wish the process is not only to
look at the evaluation but to look at okay
these are some specific points that
that every one of us need to address that your
your fellow catalyst leaders
your fellow staff members your fellow the
elders as well as people in the
congregation these are some glaring issues that
they think that you need to
improve on and then we develop a plan each one
of us develops a plan on how
we're going to address those particular issues
and that is a much healthier
environment in my opinion than having a senior
minister type situation that is
you know directing and telling you what you
need to do it is very collaborative
it's very 360 and it has resulted in changes I
know that I've made changes in
my style of ministry as a result of getting
some bad evaluations that I
didn't like likewise I have felt very positive
about getting some evaluations
in some areas of strengths then and it helped
me grow that the hiring process
we've hired three people since we went to this
collaborative system and again we
use a collaborative system the congregation
chooses from among
themselves people that they would like to be a
part of the search team there
are representatives of the pastoral team of the
elders and of the pastoral staff
on that team but the team is very
representative age-wise gender-wise and
they have each one has as much power at the
table so to speak as far as both as
an as an elder for instance when we hired a
youth minister recently in the
last couple of years we had elder
representatives we had staff
representatives but we had parents and that
were currently in the senior high
ministry parents in the junior high ministry
parents in the Ministry of
grade school older grade school children that
would be coming into that ministry
we had teams on that ministry my daughter was
one of the people on that
ministry when she's a junior now they see you
but she was in high school and it
was important for her to be a part of that
process to interview to screen to
check and her vote was just as powerful as far
as what we should do as the
elder that have been there 25 years because the
voices of the people were
heard and the collaboration happened and as a
result of the collaboration I
think we got some really good people in that
particular process and so it was a
Charlie Cyberg kind of helped set up this
particular model for us and it was
a very healthy situation and the elders
discussion is when that team comes up
for recommendation what threshold would it take
for their personal opinion to
override the committee that's been working on
it for over a year and they
have decided that it has to be a extremely high
bar for them to ever go
back to that committee and say we appreciate
all the work you did but
between the three candidates that you're you're
picking a we really like C so
we're gonna go with what we like the elders
just simply don't do that we have
to tell about one other thing and then get a
teaser we've we are women is come
up several times in the questions we do have
women who do a lot of worship they
read scripture pray help lead worship all that
kind of stuff we are evolving
in our placement we do believe it as a group
I'm not saying all
individuals but as a group we are not
egalitarian when it comes to elders in
the characteristics in Timothy and Titus we do
believe those are faithful husbands
faithful men faithful fathers and we don't
think that's an insult to women at
all and so in that when we look at it we have
though an understanding that we
have a lot of women in our church that are also
shepherding people in the
church so our next natural move in the next
probably eight months is beginning
to branch out from this into what we have and
we'll try to show you the
graphic tomorrow to what we call a shepherding
team and that shepherding
team will meet with the pastoral team four
times a year for training but also
for information exchange because we we
acknowledge that so many of our wives so
many of the women we have some older women in
the church that are absolutely
shepherding and we want to have their voices
have a critical role within what
we're dating so that's how we're approaching
that a lot of churches that
tend to come to egalitarian things say well we
have to eliminate deacons and
elders because we think Paul just didn't
communicate well there our view is is we
don't have to diminish those to increase the
voices of the shepherding women in
the church at all and we can do that so that's
kind of our approach so we're
gonna give a real quick teaser because we want
you to come back tomorrow can't
Brian and Chris all three of you kind of share
some of the things that are gonna
happen tomorrow I'm gonna let Brian do that
well I'll start first tomorrow we're
gonna show you actually some good collaborative
tools that we use that we
found very useful for everything from taking
notes to planning to getting
feedback and so that'll be really helpful for
you also we'll spend a
little time thinking about how this model could
work in churches of
different sizes because obviously what we've
structured is here at our churches
size so we'll think through how it might be
adapted but even go ahead and you
kind of teaser yesterday that we didn't write a
little bit okay so as I said
yesterday we have this great case study of
where our church is having to deal
with the two worship styles and you have this
promise of acapella only services
till till we're dead and the promise of the
instrumental rock-and-roll services
and when it comes to the conclusion where
everybody leadership saying what
we're doing isn't working how do you fare it
through that with the
congregation and not lose a single family and
be collaborative and be
collaborative in the process and tomorrow we're
going to tell you that story
about how that all fleshed out because it was a
beautiful so thank you for everything