Andy Stanley of North Point Community Church (Alpharetta, GA) closed Catalyst Conference’s last and 10th session by discussing how to create a healthy work culture at your church.. Here is what he said:

I think that your church and your church culture should be the healthiest organizational culture in your city. I think that business people in your city should stop by during the week and say, “Wow! I have never seen an organization run so well!” I am not talking about on Sunday. I am talking about your church’s weekly work culture.

Think about this.

In the local church we have so much going for us culturally (if we follow the Bible… love, harmony, work as though unto the Lord) that we should have the best work cultures. Yest some of the meanest people I have met are on church staffs. Some of the laziest people I know are on church staffs. Some people think it doesn’t take much competency to work at a church because they lazy people who work at a church. And that is a shame.

Healthy people are drawn to healthy cultures. Healthy people don’t stay in unhealthy cultures. Unhealthy people thrive in unhealthy cultures.

Occasionally, there are gaps between what we expect people to do and what they actually do. As leaders, we choose what to put in this gap. And what you as a leader choose to put in that gap will shape your culture. And what you put into that gap, will also be what your staff puts in that gap. You will either assume the worst or expect the best.

There are a couple of things that determine what I put in that gap:

1. What I see
   If someone consistently brings you poor quality, you will always assume the worst.
2. Who I am
   Your past hurt and betrayal will influence what you put in that gap. We like certain types of people. And we dislike others.

Developing a culture of trust is critical to the health of your organization. Trust fuels productivity. The message of trust is this… I think you are smart enough to know what to do, and if you make a mistake, you will tell me then fix it.

A culture characterized by trust attracts healthy people.  You will never know who you can trust until you trust them. The longer you refuse to trust people, the longer that untrustworthy people can hide in your organization. The moment you feel to tightly manage someone, you might have made a hiring mistake. And if you don’t address the hiring problem, you might create a culture where everyone distrusts each other. You will never know who you can trust until you trust them. Trusting is risky. Refusing to trust is riskier.

Trust enables an organization to move faster. In an organization of trust, the culture is fluid. When their is a high level of trust, I am going to act/email/write/communicate as if I believe the best. Teams use trust as currency. The development of trust then becomes a significant leadership strategy. It feels 100% relational and 90% emotional.

Developing a culture of trust begins with a leader. Trust and suspicion are both telegraphed from the leader throughout the organization. We must learn to choose to trust.

When you choose to trust, you must choose to confront. The moment there is suspicion in a person, everything he does is tainted. When you and I sit on our raw assumptions, and it leaks out to our family and organization, the energy makes our suspicion grows bigger and uglier. And then all of a sudden, a handful of offense gets a huge response. If you want to build a culture of trust, you must confront fairly and quickly and refuse to sit on it. Before I assume the worst, I should at least ask for the facts. The consequences of concealment are far greater than the consequences of confrontation.

To develop a culture of trust, leaders must be trustworthy. Worthy of trust does not mean perfect. It means when I create a gap where your expectations don’t line up with the experience I give you, I talk to you about it.

5 Essential Commitments of Trust

1. I will believe the best.
2. When other people assume the worst about you, I will come to your defense.
3. If what I experience begins to erode my trust, I will come directly to you to talk about it.
4. When I am convinced I will not be able to deliver on a promise, I will come to you ahead of time.
5. When you confront me about the gaps I’ve created, I will tell you the truth.

The gaps are the opportunities… the gaps are the litmus test… for you to choose what culture you will have.

Questions to Ask

1. Are there people in your organization you have a hard time trusting.
2. Is it your issue or is it theirs? (if you have never chosen to trust it is still your issue)
3. What can you do about your part?
4. What do you need to address with them about their part?
5. Who do you sense having a difficult time trusting you?
6. Why?
7. What can you do about it?

If you choose to trust, you will create an organization that is more nimble and effective.

Rob Bell of Mars Hill Bible Church (Grandville, MI) discussed how to enjoy being where you are at during Catalyst Conference’s third session. Here is what he said:

I was recently talking to you pastor who said he wanted to quit. So I asked him to draw a pie chart of what he does every week. He had been a pastor for a year and wanted to quite every day. So I asked if he practiced Sabbath. [silence]

There are lots of concepts and truths that we would intellectually agree with, but we are made anxious by deep subterranean forces in our bones that drive us. We “believe” one thing but then do something else.

John 6 tells the story of Jesus giving expectations but the crowd thinning because they think they can’t do it. Sometimes the crowd thins. What would Jesus say to modern church growth experts that say if you do A then B then C, then there will be growth and numbers? Sometimes the crowd thins, and people leave, even ones who are close to you.

Luke 21 tells the story of the poor widow that gave “more” out of her poverty than what the rich gave. What we naturally think is an important measurement may not be how God measures things.

You are a living Eucharist. How can we break ourselves open and pour ourselves out, so that the people around us might experience God? The Eucharist is a sacred and holy thing. You surrender your agenda when you serve. But when you exploit the Eucharist and break it down and rank it, you destroy it.

In John 5:19, Jesus says, “the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing.” His work comes from a grounded, centered, calm place where He only has a few things to do, and He sets out to do it. He is not distracted. He is not stressed. There is a difference between something that is hard and difficult and something that is a burden. God will not give you a burden you can’t carry.

In Exodus 20, the first 9 commandments are external and measurable,  but the last commandment about coveting is not externally observable. The “tenth” is considered a reward. Meaning if you follow the first 9 rules then you won’t have a problem with the 10th rule because you won’t want anyone else’s life.

If you have a burden of feeling like you have not accomplished enough, God wants to set you free from that. Jesus wants you to simply enjoy the place that you are at and the work that is in front of you.

Is there any way in your ministry, that you have neglected to take care of yourself? You need to love your neighbor as yourself. You need to take care of yourself so that you can be energized. Which day do you take care of yourself, so that you can give during the other six days of the week?

Does your spouse get your very best, or does your spouse get what is left over from the church? Do your kids get your very best, or do they get the scraps? Our children pick up on what really matters to us without us saying a word.

If it is not going well at home, it will not go well at church. Jesus invites us into a peaceful, calm place in the center of his love.

Lately, I have been watching my artsy wife design handmade wedding ring pillows for her Etsy shop of creative wedding ideas. As I watch her lovingly cross-stitch a pink heart on a white ring pillow, I can’t help but remember how much care she put into planning our own wedding.

It is amazing how people spend months (or even a lifetime) planning the perfect ceremony - a wedding dress, wedding invitations, wedding cake, wedding songs, and the list goes on and on. Every detail must be perfect. Unfortunately, wedding planning is usually the only time I see such high-quality planning.

While not everything needs a meticulous strategy, most of us need to improve our planning in one area or another. Perhaps it’s your church service or your youth retreat. This week, just ask yourself:

What details do I need to plan like a wedding ring pillow shopper?

Remember, the more you sweat in preparation, the less you bleed in battle.

For Discussion:
- What are your best practices for great planning?

Sometimes blunt, crude words are the only things that can shock a person out of a rut and motivate him to improve to the next level. This four-part blog series is for the church worker who needs such forthright words.

What if you die today? Would you be pleased with your legacy?

If the answer is “no,” then you need to figure out how to change it. Life is short. Some of us need to increase our tempo. Some need to act instead of waiting for tomorrow. Some need training. Some of us are doing everything right, but we need time to achieve it. You need to take care of your body by eating right and working out so that you will have that time.

Is there anything distracting you from pursuing your purpose?
Is anything slowing you down?

At the same time, some of us need to be patient, wait for God’s timing, and not ruin things by forcing it on our own. You know the answers to these questions.

For Discussion:
- How do you keep yourself effectively working on a legacy?

Stay tuned for more crude words.

Read Part 1 - You Deserve to Go to Hell
Read Part 2 - You Will Die Unless…

Sometimes we create easy-to-use yet complex systems to work around the Bible’s difficult-to-do yet simple mandates.

Sometimes blunt, crude words are the only things that can shock a person out of a rut and motivate him to improve to the next level. This four-part blog series is for the church worker who needs such forthright words.

When achieving a goal seems impossible and you are not making any progress, imagine that:

You will die unless you achieve it.

In other words, ask yourself,

If my life depended on it, what would I do?

Circumstances are a powerful thing. It is amazing what people can accomplish under the right motivating circumstances. So when you feel like giving up on pursuing your goal, ask yourself, “What would I do if my life depended on it?”

Odds are you can give more effort. Odds are you can be more creative. And often the most brilliant creativity happens in times of desperation. So if you want to innovate, if you want to enhance your performance, figure out what you would do if your life depended on it.

This is a psychological mind hack. It gets you thinking past the limitations you put on yourself because you do not want to leave your comfort zone. And if you truthfully answer the question, then you must choose whether or not you are willing to invest that type of life-at-stake effort, passion, and willpower.

Stay tuned for more crude words.

Read Part 1 - You Deserve to Go to Hell

ChurchMetrics.com is a new, free church management web app that enables your to track trends within your church.

LifeChurch.tv (Edmond, OK) created Church Metrics as a resource to help track trends in attendance, salvations, baptisms, and financial giving. And soon the free church management app will be available for any church to use at ChurchMetrics.com.

In the future, more features may be added to Church Metrics, but LifeChurch.tv wants to keep it simple and easy to use for its launch.

Jeff Hook is the CEO of Fellowship Technologies, a company specializing in web-based church management software called Fellowship One.

ABOUT FELLOWSHIP TECHNOLOGIES

Year Began: 2004
Active Clients: 850
Staff: 65

Originally, the Fellowship One church management software was developed for Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX). Now, it is currently used by 32 of the top 100 largest churches in America.

10Q WITH JEFF HOOK

1Q = What is a church management system (CMS)?

At a basic level, church management systems help churches track information about their congregations.

Traditional church management systems were primarily simple databases of attendees/members for tracking addresses and giving records. From that, modern solutions have evolved to be complete “operating platforms” for churches to not only track vital data about the members of the congregation but to also manage processes more efficiently from outreach and assimilation to event registration and check-in to online giving and group management.

As the capabilities of systems broaden, the church is able to use computers to streamline operations much the same as commercial businesses do.

2Q = What are Fellowship One’s most popular features?

The fact that we are Internet-based is a big advantage over the more traditional solutions. This allows church staff to access the information wherever and whenever they need the data using any computer that has a web-browser. As computing becomes even more mobile through devices like the Apple iPhone, this ubiquitous access will help churches provide better service to their congregation members.

Also, because Fellowship Technologies is a Software as a Service (SaaS), all of the technical heavy lifting (such as backups, upgrades, security, etc.) is performed as part of the monthly service by us. This cuts down on the technical resources the church has to hire and manage. Because we are native to the web, true integration from the database to the church’s website is relatively easy and allows the congregation more convenience in conducting church business like managing online giving, registering for a special activity, submitting questions and inquiries, as well as looking for the right small group to join and submitting a volunteer application.

Functionally, the really big draw for us is our best-of-breed check-in system that provides security for children and real time attendance tracking. This gives the staff a jump on following up on who did not attend a service to make sure they know they were missed. That is somewhat the irony – a church should track attendance not necessarily to know who attended, but who was missing; somewhat counter-intuitive. This personal care and interaction makes a big mega-church seem smaller through better customer service and follow-up.

3Q = Are there any downsides to using church management software?

1. The biggest issue in using a robust church management system is the amount of information that can be tracked is new for some churches. But without that data, the information is not present and, thus, is not beneficial.
2. We also see a problem in the discipline of churches in keeping their data relevant and complete.

Irrespective of the specific church management system used, a church needs to have a data strategy that helps determine what the minimum amount of information that will be capture and then how it will be maintained.

4Q = Are there any types of churches who do not work well with a church management system?

All churches need some sort of church management system, even if it is manual. In the United States, every church is required to report to the congregation their individual giving for IRS purposes. Computer systems are made to provide such reporting with ease.

5Q = What does the future hold for Fellowship One?

Fellowship One will continue to improve in both its depth and breadth of functionality.

1. We will soon release the ability for a church to write its own reports. This is a request from a lot of our customers and will help them get information the way they want it when they want it.
2. We are also rolling out a complete data warehouse and analytics tool for our flagship customers. This will allow church staff to slice and dice information for decision-support purposes over a set of aggregated time-based data. This will allow churches to make better decisions from real operating data. We think this is a first for the church industry.
3. Finally, we will be releasing a new “Groups” module that will be the foundation for much of the system going forward. This will improve our ability to support small groups, yet also be foundational for website communications, social networking, and curriculum-based learning.

6Q = What are some well-known churches that use Fellowship One?

1. Community Bible Church (San Antonio, TX)
2. Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX)
3. Granger Community Church (Granger, IN)
4. Holy Trinity Brompton (London, England)
5. Lakewood Church (Houston, TX)
6. Mariners Church (Irvine, CA)
7. New Birth Missionary Baptist (Decatur, GA)
8. New Life Church (Colorado Springs, CO)
9. NewSpring Church (Anderson, SC)
10. Prestonwood Baptist Church (Plano, TX)
11. Victory Christian Center (Oklahoma City, OK)
12. Victory Christian Center (Tulsa, OK)

7Q = What is the Dynamic Church Conference?

The Dynamic Church Conference is our annual user and developer conference where our community of users comes together for education, training and networking with other users.

Last May, we had approximately 371 church staffers come to Frisco, Texas, to learn how to use Fellowship One to its fullest. Besides just Fellowship One training, we try to expand their thinking with speakers who address where they think the church industry is going and how technology will play a role in the future of church.

8Q = In addition to Fellowship One, are there any other resources that you would recommend for churches who want to be better organized and more efficient?

There are so many good resources out there now that a church staffer can almost get overwhelmed with new ideas. I am a real proponent of a church looking at its own congregation data to help determine how best to improve. Too often, a church is trying what works at other churches instead of examining the facts about themselves. This “cookie cutter approach” fails many times and then the staff gets disheartened.

By looking at the “real” data, churches can better gauge how to serve the people within the congregation, such as asking questions like who is the typical customer, what stage of Christian walk are they in, what “services” do they need (family, marriage, health and healing, stewardship, etc.) and how is the church fulfilling those needs? If the church tries to “copy” what worked somewhere else, they may execute the plan well yet miss the mark entirely because the congregational needs are different.

9Q = I believe studying data can give us valuable insights into trends, problems, and success secrets. In all of your years of helping churches process data, are there any insights and ministry lessons that you have learned?

I definitely agree with your supposition concerning data. Two of the biggest issues in churches today are:

1. A lack of an overall data strategy (what information to collect when and how to keep it complete and relevant)
2. A lack of repeatable business processes that result in metrics to determine whether progress is being made

Pertaining to the first point, we see so many churches that have many duplicate or incomplete individual records within their database. Thus, when aggregated for reporting purposes, the numbers are really meaningless. It is the old computer adage: garbage in, garbage out. Sadly, many of the churches do not realize that the quality of their data is poor. Defining a strong data strategy and then having the discipline to follow through on execution would go a long way in providing better information.

To the second point, Dr. Peter Drucker, a business guru and management consultant, is attributed with saying that “you cannot improve anything that you do not measure.” Churches are notorious at tracking attendance and offerings and that’s about it. To improve results, more data points within processes need to be tracked and reported so on-going improvement can be achieved. Repeatable business processes that result in metrics will allow churches to better know whether the results of their investments in certain ministries are actually paying off for the congregant.

10Q = What is the best advice you have for church leaders?

The best advice I have for church leaders is to make change happen. Progress requires change and change requires leadership.

Too often, the administrative personnel (administrative assistants and operations) who run churches are comfortable with status quo. The only way churches are going to improve their ability to support the Christian walk of their congregation and thus grow in quality and quantity is to provide better service in meeting the “life” and “spiritual” needs of the people in the community. This has not been the mindset of the church historically, but in my opinion should be more so going forward.

To be successful, this change must be managed; driven even or the efforts will falter. Many times when we fail at change, we go back doing the same things we always have; however, expecting different results. Some people give that as the definition of insanity.

Be sure to check out Church Relevance’s “10Q” category to read previous 10Q interviews.