Christ Fellowship Staff Meeting with Chris Hodges

Chris Hodges (Church of the Highlands)

Staff Meeting - Christ Fellowship 2/24/16

NOTES:

One of the best decisions you'll ever make is to figure out who to do life with, not what to do.

Every person on my team needs to know someone who knows their job as well or better than they do.

If you don't know why it's working when it's working you won't know how to fix it when it's broke.

4 REASONS WHY THINGS WORK IN ORGANIZATION:

1. Having the right people - don't do your job, build teams - if I catch you doing ministry I'll fire you.
2. Right Systems - SYSTEM: what you have created to deliver your vision (must be measurable) The E-myth -- Main Idea:  the product doesn't make a system great.  greatest system wins. You can have Jesus and have a failing church.
3. Right Culture - Culture Trumps EVERYTHING. 
4. Right Anointing:  God showed up and helped you be better than you. Anointing doesn't make you better than anyone but you.  "I'm not better than you, I'm better than me" as a result of God's work in my life. 

The best gift you give me is not what your good at, it's your devotion to God.  I need you better than you is available to you.

It does not matter who you are, you are personally responsible to be available for God's anointing. 

Exodus 29

V36 - 

1. The crown of Holiness over your mind.  Most important battleground is ones minds.  'Strike the shepherd, scatter the sheep'. 

Are you putting 'Holy to the Lord' on your mind everyday as the scripture says?

Do something about the junk that you are allowing into your life.

How much of the secular am I going to allow in my life?  

The CROWN of holiness requires an examination.

1. The breast-piece of decision over your heart. Everyone of you have names written over your heart.  We all have bad names. The names will guide how you make decisions. 

You can not be any better than you if you don't deal with the names written over your heart.

1. Undergarment of Rest if your Soul (Tunic) - Ezk. 44:18 - We don't sweat, we keep our soul at rest.  Rest is not a lack of activity, it's a condition of your soul.

You must have the practice of sabbath in your life. 

Not doing nothing, it's ceasing from labor so.

You sabbath at the beginning of the week, not the end of the week.  The rest is not to replenish, but to pre-charge.  It's at the beginning of the week.

1. Garment of Praise in our Spirit.- (Robe of blue cloth) - Everyday you must do this intentionally.  Do people say their life is in a better place as a result of interacting with me?

Gratitude is the key word to keep praise in the spirit.

1. Oil of Unity over my head - Taking the anointing oil and pour on the head - stay loyal, in unity, no gossip, no rants on Twitter, etc...

Grateful for the body of Christ. Be positive. It just not needed to be so negative.  "I'm grieved about the way the world talks about itself." 

All those things are things you can cultivate and increase the level of anointing in your mind.

WCA Training Henry Cloud

Henry Cloud
The Power of the Other
(Coming out in May 2016)


Henry is a psychologist, whose first job was in a leadership consulting firm.
People have power, God designed it that way.  Other people influence us for better or worse.

SEALS:  You don't rise to the challenge, you fall to your level of training.

Willpower is often not as strong as the power of the other.
How does something invisibility and immaterial literally affect the physical performance? -- like a yell of encouragement. 

Another example, babies without love will not develop a certain bit of circuitry.

How does the immaterial affect the material, and how does it affect the leader?



When you experience a scare, your brain short circuits and you have to re-start your mind in order to re-engage. Your brain also is the foundation for leadership.  When your capacity is exceeded, your leadership brain shuts down and your unable to process.  After a while, you get used to the shock of a situation, and you can process through the situation.  We call this leadership development.  Or growth.

SO why does this happen?  Because an invisible God created a material universe and invaded it with life.

Every performer in every field all have 'others' that they make time to learn and grow from. 

How many of you have somewhere you can go to just be yourself?
How many of you have a relationship where someone is just building into you?
How many of you have had revolutionary event that affected you in the last year?

• 80% of people have no where to go, no one to talk to, and revolutionary events that have occurred in the past year.

In leadership, we end up being the 'other' for others and not having any 'other' ourselves.  There is a chip inside a cell phone that causes it to search for a network at all times.  Without a connection, the battery drains, no new content is available. 

What 'no's' have been internalized?  Whose in your head? Capacity is grown or shrunk through the relationships and 'others' we have in our lives as they are internalized over time.

Every knee shall bow -- Henry did an illustration where he asked people to raise their hands and hold them up as long as they could hold their breath. Everyone will run out of air sometime.

Henry gives a great illustration about someone getting mugged.  Someone with a mask, a knife, comes up to you, stabs you, takes your money, and leaves you bleeding.  We call that a mugging.  They take you to a hospital, where a guy with a mask and a knife, takes all your money and we say thank you Doctor.  We have 'friends' and we have 'friends'.

WCA Training Bill Hybels - Closing Session

Bill Hybels

Closing Session

Filling your Venue

"Your venue will only be as filled as your host site pastor wants it to be"

God has a hard time transforming an empty seat.

10 Practical Ideas on How to Fill Your Venue for GLS:

1. Explain that every single person is a leader.  Stand in front of people, and tell them how they lead.  Almost every single person is a leader in some arena. Would you like to be a better leader?
2. Simply Ask Earnestly for people to come.  
3. Ask for a favor from your congregation.  You ask me to do X, but now I want to ask you to come to the summit.
4. You know someone whose life has been rocked by GLS, ask someone to share their story. 
5. Summer Camp treatment -- possibility of an accelerated spiritual gift experience.  Why wouldn't you want to do the same thing for yourself? Show world class GLS life change videos
6. Show a summit clip of a teacher.
7. Summit Sunday - Devoted a full Sunday to an entire talk
8. Church to underwrite a percentage of the cost if you sign up on a particular weekend
9. Pray for both the summit and for those who have not yet signed up to attend
10. Challenge your student pastor / college pastor to engage young people to attend.

At the end of the day, why do we do it?

• Because when a leader get better, everybody wins.

Christ Fellowship Visit - Chris Hodges Q & A

Q & A Notes with Chris Hodges:

Very strict with his schedule, even into the personal items.

Chris gains freedom from schedule rather than being confined by it.

"Find your most important activity and give your most important thing to do"

How do you handle staff that aren't producing?

• most lack of production is a result of unclear expectations
• People think they are doing better than they are

Distinction between leadership team and executive pastor 

• produce written reports: what are you working on, what's working, what's not, etc.
• Monthly written reports

Greatest Gift Chris gives the church is CLARITY.

How do you measure the health of a campus?

Campus success distinctives ALL Campus pastors should know this

• Want people to know God (Sunday)
• Want people to find Freedom (# Groups and people in them)
• Discovering Purpose (Class Steps) 94% of those who start, finish. 
• Make a Difference (Dream Team - Volunteers)

This is representative of the churches Growth Track.  Use Street Language...found lost people, and allowed them to define it.

To Chris -- these 4 items have never changed, as they are based in the great commission.  The system changes to what is working.

23% of income is spent on salaries, because they empower people.

What changed in you when you took your first sabbatical?

• Rest better if your able to clump it all together
• Noticed that he felt tired...has used adrenaline before that
• Leading on Empty (Wayne Corredero)

What are some of the things you are doing to ensure DNA carrying?

• Know the measurable, know the condition of your flock 
• 'You gotta think steps not events'
• NOT ABOUT PULLING OFF ANOTHER EVENT.
• Stop counting nickels and noses, rather than STEPS
• The win is not about the weekend.

What can I be doing or thinking in preparation for the launch of a campus?

• Build a prayer base to pave the way
• Build Teams
• Work very hard on Marketing...internal marketing isn't used enough in church
• As the brand grows, the expectation grows.  You can't produce an inferior produce on a campus.

Would like to have 5 seat turns before building a permanent facility.  1 year out start small groups, 4 months prior to prepare, 750k launch budget, recapped in a few months.

Highlands asks new leaders to go and do more campus' -- asking them  to join the campus permanent...continue to ask people to move into a mentor role, and let a younger do the work.  'Keep it Young'

Questions pastors never ask that they should -- Shocked at how much we pray. 

• every staff member at prayer on Saturday
• 21 days of prayer twice a year
• One of the areas of small groups
• Once a month they do a prayer walk through highest crime areas in the city
• Every service has prayer teams
• Every staff member has 20 people assigned to them to pray for them
• Saturday Morning Prayer -- Every weekend

10 minute message, 5 min of live band worship, 30 minutes on their own, 15 minutes corporate prayer - never go over -- It's all about praying for SUNDAY.

Spend 64% of income was budget.  Keeps ceilings on staff and building teams.  Jim Collins - hire 5, work them like 10, pay them like 8.

If you have an issue its a leadership issue.

The devil always attacks when you take territory. 

If people aren't being known, you can't keep them.

WCA Training Bill Hybels

Bill Hybels
Pastor of Willow Creek Community Church

What's the best subject or question you've been asked this week?

• How to do leadership development? That somehow it's expensive and vague, but it's really not that complicated.  

How do you build a model to transcend traditional growth hinderence?

• You are responsible for re-imagining the leadership structure and organizational structure.
• 2 Tim 2 principle, combed the congregation to find people that could be trained and empowered to make a difference long term.
• Made an interesting assumption here, that you hire staff to find small group leaders.  There is no other purpose for position.  Consistent with the confused calling of many who seek ministry rather than empowerment.

• Mid - Size could be grouped by affinity.  Goal is to generate natural friendships.
• Wildly effective is curriculum coming out of Sunday morning message in South/Central America
• Willow found 90 section leaders, trained them, and meet and train weekly.
• ROLE: Fill their section, Connect people in their section, disciple everyone who wants to be, and help people use their spiritual gifts...fill, connect, disciple, mobilize. 

Bill on Leadership Development:

• Romans 8 gift of leadership
• Inborn natural development of emerging leaders
• If you don't find a way to do it, you'll simply be miserable for not making developments. 
• Leadership Development can be as simple as making a book assigned reading project

Reasons to do it:

• 1) Good Leadership Book 2) Affirm quality ideas 3) Talent observation

• Take a summit talk, watch the talk, discuss with purpose
• DVD is dying on a shelf in your office, but for free you can do fantastic talent observation, growth, and quality ideas

Are there values (good or bad) at longer tenures as a Pastor?

• Congregations get immune to change when they think the pastor is always going to leave
• You cannot change a value in a congregation inside of 5-7 years
• Generally Longer are better than shorter...unless the longer tenure leads to sleeper leadership

Succession:

• Don't worry about it until mid to late 50s
• Discussion needs to happen for the welfare of the church
• Three Big Ideas: Internal search phase, external search phase, 18 month transition era.
• Most important for who is making the call for who the successor will be.

• Be sure to have a clear relationship of the old pastor to the new pastor, especially if he stays in the area
• Not only do you have to define the departing pastor role, but each family member will need to have a discussion as well. 

Bill on the Same Sex Marriage / Attraction Issue:

• This is not going away in our lifetime.
• No gay chooses to be gay, they discover they are gay
• Once they discover they are gay, they did everything they could to turn back, to make a choice not to be gay.
• When they discovered they couldn't changed, they fell into depression or contemplated suicide. 
• If they had a faith background, they find a body of believers, but are tormented because they don't want to come out as gay, but they don't want to live with it either.
• Bill Recommends:: Justin Lee - Gay Christian Network - TORN Book
• Two Camps in Gay Christian Community
• SIDE A: look at 6 texts in scripture believing that the Holy Spirit has given them the right to date and be married
• SIDE B: look at 6 texts in scripture believing that the Holy Spirit be pure and chased. No dating or marry the same gender.

Jesus says 'this is how to treat everyone'. -- just treat them the way you wish to be treated. ACTION: Spend time discovering how I want to be treated.

WCA Training Danielle Strickland

Danielle Strickland

Salvation Army Background

Author of A Beautiful Mess

Thesis:  We have an addiction to order.

God is defiantly a God of order, but the question is what kind of order.

Chaos - foundational in the scriptures to all of the order we perceive in scripture. 

Acts 10:9-17a (Peter's Vision about Clean and Unclean)

When God is going to bring about a movement - it always starts with Chaos.

Peter is disturbed.  Literally saying no to God.  We often resist chaos, because we don't know what to do with it and risk losing control. 

First thing God does in creation order - after chaos - is bring light.

• We don't know how to deal with chaos, but we sit and do nothing.
• What's so interesting about this story is that the 'light' in this story comes from a Roman soldier, a very unlikely source.
• If I would have had the entire light it took to climb the mountain (Mt. Sinai), I would have never ascended because once the light was up, you could see all the items there are to fear.

Second thing God does in creation order - is bring expanse.

• Religion has the capacity to make our lives smaller
• Leaders have small lives. The order obsession shrinks our lives. 
• Are you larger, is your reach and depth expanding?
• Do you have friends that people find uncomfortable?

Third thing God does in creation order - is create land.

• Land is a foundation. 
• www.Infinitumlife.com (Be like Jesus) Based on Surrender, generosity, mission
• The enemy is always attacking your gifting. 
• it's not about my organizational affiliation or how good they are at things, but the missional focus God has called me to.

Fourth thing God does in creation order - is create seasons.

• seasons are always beyond our control.
• What season do you dread?
• What season have you learned the most from?
• What season are you in?

Fifth thing God does in creation order - is fish and birds.

• Creates life.  Fish - most simple life form
• Birds are most complex.
• God creates most simple and complex thing on the same day.  God is simple, yet complex.
• Can you sum up the OT - Jesus sure...LOVE.
• What you find it difficult to embrace the simplicity of what it means to follow Jesus?
• Why do you think that is?
• Is possible to take apart a brothel system with a 72 year old lady?

Sixth thing God does in creation order - is humanity.

• the Gospel story starts in Gen 1, not Gen. 3
• We don't view people who are different as having much value.

Seventh thing God does in creation order - is rest.

• in defiance of slavery - because slaves were not able to live that way.
• Sabbath is literally established in defiance of slavery.