sides
This is part of my notes from the Beautiful Day Conference.
Gary Gaddini is the lead pastor of Peninsula Covenant Church in Redwood, California. His grandfather was Al Capone’s driver. Just thought you’d like to know.
What is “the scorecard” for your church leadership? How does your church measure ‘wins?’ Changing your church culture starts with first changing how you define what is a win. Is it attendance? Giving? Is it life change stories?
The Chinese characters that are used to show “busy” = heart + to kill. Best way to kill your heart is to stay busy - keeping the ministry beast alive.
Leaders best leadership investment should be in the care of his/her soul, not feeding/running the ministry beast.
Matthew 5:13-16: “You are” salt & “You are” light is not singular, it’s plural. Jesus is speaking of a whole community being salt and light.
Externally focused church is about having outward focused programs. It’s about developing people, not perpetuating the building. We want fully formed followers of Jesus.
Biggest Complaints/Roadblocks in changing culture:
What about my needs?
What about our budget?
What about the Bible?
What about Sunday?
GE’s Take:
The ’scorecard’ question is a great place to start. How do we define a win? I think a better way to answer it is to look backwards over staff meetings and elder team meetings - what did you spend the most time in your meeting talking about? Where did you spend most of your leadership energy and focus? That’s where and how your church defines a win - no matter what you say.
For Pinecrest - I’ve actually watched the transition (and we’re in the middle of it). At first it was about offering and can we make payroll? Pay the rent? Then it shifted to number of people in the seats and offering. Now we’re talking more about Life Groups and life change stories as well as can we make budget. To be fair, we don’t spend a ton of time talking about the budget/giving. We’re starting to talk more about leaders and how do we develop followers of Jesus, what does that mean, what does that look like. Yes, we still talk about the giving/budget but it’s 15 minutes of a 2 hour meeting.
We’re getting there.
Tags: Beautiful Day Conference, Gary Gaddini
13 responses so far ↓
1 kurt // Jun 8, 2008 at 11:45 am
“What about my needs?
What about our budget?
What about the Bible?
What about Sunday?”
I get 1,2, and 4. How does the Bible fit into this grid?
2 Grant // Jun 10, 2008 at 9:49 am
The question back was basically - by focusing on compassion, meeting the needs of the community with no strings attached, aren’t we compromising scripture?
Aren’t we watering down the Bible?
Of course, they said no. In fact, we are becoming what Scripture said to become.
3 MarkE // Jun 11, 2008 at 12:07 am
Hey Grant:
Someone has to plant the church flowers, though to keep the institution going. The question is, can you follow Jesus into compassion to the poor in your community AND have someone plant the church flowers? One doesn’t preclude the other, does it?
No one would stop us on a spiritual formation journey if we just let them argue about which parking lot to pave.
4 Grant // Jun 11, 2008 at 8:39 am
Someone asked basically that same question - wasn’t about church flowers but it was about a woman’s quilt making ‘ministry.’
I loved his answer and it helped me a ton. Are the women taking other people on the journey with them? In this case, they were.
Making a quilt (planting flowers) doesn’t mean anything to me. It did to them and for them - it was part of their journey. A watering hole of sorts for them.
How could it serve others as well? In this case - they would auction their quilts off, give the money to making water wells in Africa.
So…long answer back…yes, planting church flowers COULD be part of someone else’s journey. They may need some help framing it that way.
5 MarkE // Jun 11, 2008 at 9:43 am
I wouldn’t see that ministry as planting church flowers at all. I was thinking more of the things that really aren’t kingdom work, but the institution needs to do to keep up its dues paying memberships. We both know what that would be as most churches are doing these things. So there is pressure for lots of fun things on the youth calendar as it keeps the parents happy. Seems you can do that, knowing it really is about the church flowers, while at the same time, doing kingdom work. Seems that no one would stand in the way of the kingdom work as long as the flowers get planted.
6 Beautiful Day Conference Session Notes | the G sides // Jun 11, 2008 at 10:41 am
[...] MarkE: I wouldn’t see that ministry as planting church flowers at all. I was thinking more of the things that… [...]
7 jlo // Jun 11, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Doesn’t a lot of it boil down to this:
“Then the word of the LORD came by Haggai the prophet, saying, 4 “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, and this temple[a]to lie in ruins?” 5 Now therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: “Consider your ways!”
Haggai 1:3
- People looking after their own interest instead of that of God.
8 MarkE // Jun 11, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Sounds like in this context, he was talking about the church leadership. I would think that paid ministers don’t have the luxury of just looking after God’s interest, any more than the layman. They have a job to keep and a family to feed. The people paying the minister want the flowers planted. The mortgage and payroll need to be met or the institution can’t survive - this may be independent of “God’s work.”
This all makes a case for house churches with no paid staff.
I guess my point is: Can’t the paid minister plant the necessary flowers (capitulate to the pressures that may have little to do with God’s work) AND carry out the work of the kingdom?
As long as the flowers are planted, who cares if you go under the bridge?
9 Grant // Jun 12, 2008 at 11:05 am
Here in Parker, it’s a bit different. We don’t have the same ‘pressures’ to plant flowers.
We don’t have as many sacred cows to be wary of - and that’s completely due to culture, not any great leadership on our part. It’s the West and so many things that are/were important in other places just aren’t here.
It has freed us up in some instances to adopt a school, partner with Parker Task Force, and other agencies (non-Christian) to help.
10 MarkE // Jun 12, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Great point as far as it goes. But why all the talk about attendance and budgets at your leadership meetings? I would guess it’s because of institutional pressures (like payroll!) that may be independent of God’s work.
I may be wrong, but I’d bet there was not much consideration of disbanding Grace Church when it was without a pastor and selling the property, or even not getting a paid pastor. Institutions perpetuate themselves. Nothing wrong with this, let’s just not confuse it with God’s work. God’s work gets done with or without the institution.
As I am fond of saying:
The wind blows, undeterred, searching for attentive and obediant hearts to establish beachheads for the kingdom.
The Spirit stays with the institution to the extent that the people who hang there those kind of people.
11 MarkE // Jun 12, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I’ll go climb back in my hole now.
12 daveb // Jun 14, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Why do we have to separate the “business” of the church from the “work” of the church? Can’t both of them be done for the right (and wrong) reasons? Don’t we run the risk of thinking one is “more important” than the other instead of focusing on the fruit of it all and the reason we are doing it in the first place?
I.E.: “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” 1 Cor 10:31 NLT.
13 MarkE // Jun 15, 2008 at 9:41 pm
[poking his head out of his hole...]
There’s the business of the church, the work of the church, and then other things that would not fall under either of these. It’s this later category that can be troubling.
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