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UPCOMING EVENTS


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volume 9 number 2 autumn 2005 :: the vineyar usa

MANAGING TIME, MANAGING CHANGE

XII I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI THE EFFECTIVE PASTOR


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ge 2 from the editor

Churches go through different seasons of life, just

as pastors do. Sometimes such change in seasonsis expected; often it is not. How to deal with that

changeon both micro and macro levelsis a

massive challenge facing all leaders.

Few people have gone through as much

significantand publicchange as Rick Warren.

A few years ago he was known mostly to his

(sizeable) congregation at Saddleback Church,

and to (thousands of) pastors he had trained in

his Purpose-Driven Church conferences. But with

the attention brought about by his best-selling

book, The Purpose-Driven Life, Rick found himself

navigating change on a level few encounter. He

spoke with Cutting Edge(One of my favorite

magazinesIve read every single issue since itscome out, he told us) at length about these and

other challenges facing the church today.

We also spoke with a number of other insightful

leaders about change management. Vineyard

megachurch pastors Tri Robinson and Rich Nathan

talk about it from the vantage point of church

growth, while Steve Nicholson discusses the same

issues in relation to church planters. The man Fast

Companymagazine calls one of the worlds mostinfluential thinkers on productivity, author and

consultant David Allen talks to us about manag-

ing our time amidst increasing commitments;

and we also replay one of John Wimbers classic

talks about moving a church through the cycles

of change. This issue also includes an update

on a (happily) ongoing change in the Vineyard,

as wellmore than 85 new churches have been

planted over the past two years.

Including all of this insight meant we had to

manage a slight change in the size of this issue

of Cutting Edge, as well! We hope you enjoy this

special, double issue.

Jeff Baey, Edto

P.S. Watch for our next issue, in which Matt

Redman and others talk to us about worship,

church planting, and the future of the church.

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I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII I II III


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VI VII VIII IX X XI XII I II III IV V VI VII VIII

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ge 4 a secon reformation?

>Rick Warren needs little introduction these

days. His book, The Purpose-Driven Life,

has sold over 25 million copies, making

it the best-selling (nonfiction) hardback book in

American history. In 2004 he was named by Timemagazine as one of Americas most important

people, and he has received coverage in

Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and

Christianity Today(which calls Warren the most

influential pastor in America). In recent months

Rick has been seen on CNNs Larry King Live,

spoken to Harvards Kennedy School of

Government, and been a featured speaker to

American cultural leaders who gather annually

at the Aspen Institute.

Warren started Saddleback Church with his wife

Kay in 1980; the church now has an average

weekend attendance of 22,000 and has planted

34 daughter churches. Many church leaders know

of Warren through his book The Purpose-DrivenChurch(the best book on entrepreneurship

according toForbesmagazine) and his Purpose-

Driven Church seminars, which have trained over

400,000 pastors in 162 countries in the principles

of church health.

Something many people dont know, however, is

the significant shift in focus Ricks ministry has

taken over the past three years. In response to

key events in his personal life, Rick is now spend-

ing the majority of his time, energy, and money

in Africa and other parts of the developing world,

focusing in particular on AIDS, hunger, disease,

and literacy. Over 5,000 members of Saddleback

Church have now traveled overseas, and hun-

dreds of Saddelbacks 2,600 housegroups have

adopted villages around the world to learn about

and help with problems such as disease and illit-

eracy. Saddleback Church has, in essence, been

an experimental incubator for a Global PEACE

Plan which is being launched among thousands of

churches across America this autumn.

While originally planning to talk to Cutting Edge

by phone, it turned out that Rick would be travel-

ing through Cambridge, England to speak at sever

al events held at Cambridge University. He arrived

straight from Rwanda, having been traveling for

the entire previous month. But as he sat down

with Jeff Bailey at a caf just yards from the old

Senate House and Kings College Chapel, Warren

was energetic and engaged, speaking about the

significant changes that have come about over

these past few years, and the surprising focus his

ministry is taking in the days ahead.

Youve ot a eat stoy about Saddebacks

coecto wt te Veyad te eay days

Yes, it is a great story. Back in the late 70s, I was

graduating from a little Baptist school in Riverside

California, and I felt like God was calling me to

plant a church. So I went into Anaheim Hills, which

was a new community just springing up, and

rented Canyon Hills High School, reserving it to

start services there. I had it locked up for about 3

months, and then a week before I was to start ser-

vices, I was praying up on the hill nearby, and the

Lord said, If you dont go to seminary now, youre

A SECONd REFORMATION?Rick Warrens Vision for an Activist Church that Takes on the Biggest Problems in the World

Jeff Bailey interviews Rick Warren


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ge 6 a secon reformation?

never going to go. So Kay and I left for seminary,

and I canceled the contract on Canyon Hills High

School. The very next week, Vineyard moved in.

So John Wimber and I used to talk about that a

lot, how in the plan of God He wanted thatchurch

there, not the one I was supposed to plant. Then,

later, when I was getting my doctorate at Fuller

Seminary, John was one of the professors and

taught one of my classes.

We you ea peope tak about tat ea

we Saddeback ad te Veyad wee just

ett o, t souds ke tey wee petty

eady days.

Oh, it was revival. Although, of course, revival is

a kind of ecstasyand you cant stay in ecstasy

permanently. At some point revival has to turn

into a movement if its going to last. Ive talked to

Pete Drucker, my mentor, about this a lot. He talks

about how eventually you have to institutionalize

certain elements. I used tell him, I dont want to

start an institutionI want to stay a movement.

And he would say, Yes, but movements die. The

things that last are institutions. Now, of course,

institutions then need to be renewed. Ive been

asked a lot about successorship. People ask,

Whos your successor? But I believe that a suc-

cessor is not a personality; its asystem that you

leave. Who followed Luther? Nobody. He left a

system called the Lutheran church. Who followed

Calvin? Nobody. But Calvin left a systemthe

Presbyterian church. The same thing with Wesley.

Now, those church systems need renewal again

today; there needs to be restructuring. But I have

often wondered, How long can you go before you

need renewal and restructuring?

Wat do you tk?

Well, I think that there are four kinds of renewal.

Saddleback has now trained over 400,000 pastors

in 162 countries over the last twenty-plus years.

So, I have talked to a lot of pastors, and renewal

alwaysstarts at the personal level. It happens in

your own heart. You can call it being filled with the

Spirit, baptized with the Spirit, making Jesus Lord,

the deeper life, renewal, I dont care. The bottom

line is that Jesus becomes the real deal; your heart

warms up to the Lord. Once you have the personal

renewal, then comes what I call communal renew-

al. That happens at the fellowship level of the

church. There are a couple of ways you can know

when you have had renewal or revival at a congre-

gational leveland one is that the singing gets

better! Another thing is that people hang around

longer. They like to be together. But those two are

not enough; you cant just have personal renewal

and communal renewal. Historically, in Baptist and

Methodist traditions for instance, those things

would happen through the annual revival. You

bring an outside speaker in, he speaks for two

weeks, everybody confesses their sins, gets right

with each other, and then things are good again.

You see these churches grow to 200-250 people,and then they bump back down, over and over.

They never get above that and its because they

never get to the other two levels of renewal.

A third kind of renewal is at the level of purpose,

or mission. Thats what The Purpose-Driven

Churchwas all about. We are here for a purpose;

we are not just here for fellowship. Fellowship is

a legitimate purpose, but its just one of the five:

worship, fellowship, discipleship, evangelism

and ministry. These five purposes are modeled

in Acts 2, they are prayed for by Jesus in John 17,

they are explained by Paul in Ephesians 4, butthe best expression is the Great Commandment

and the Great Commission two from the Great

Commandment, three from the Great Commission.

Our phrase is A great commitment to the great

commandment and the great commission will grow

a great church. So when you get to that third level

of purpose renewal, or mission, things really start

taking off. All of a sudden weve got a mission big-

ger than yourselves.

Inevitably, when a church starts growing in this

way, you come to structural renewal, which is that

as you grow, your structure needs to change. Ahuman being needs to get a new bone structure

about every seven years; thats why bone marrow

is constantly sloughing off. The problem is that a

lot of churches and a lot of pastors want to start at

the wrong endthey want tostartwith structure.

They want to come into a church that is dying or

dead, maybe an old denominational church, and

the first thing they want to do is to change the

structure. I say, Whoafirst lets start with you.

Lets get your life revived and your life renewed.

Then well work on relational renewal, then on pur

pose renewal, and thenwell get to the structure.

Movemets ke te Veyad ae av to ask

questos about mov to moe sttutoa

capactes; ad yet t wats to od oto ts

caactestcs as a movemet, too. Tak of

sttutos o stuctues ca eve fee ke

a kd of betaya of tat detty as a move-

met. Wat does t ook ke to move fom a

movemet to a sttuto wsey?

I think you can take institutional elements into

your movement without becoming institutional-

ized. There is a big difference. You dont want to

become institutionalized. One of the things that

made Vineyard take off was the decentralization

of it. It was the spontaneous expansion of the

church. There were a lot of new church plants.

Of course, there was transfer growth, toothat

always happens when you have a strong charis-

matic leader; folks say, That guys got a vision, Im

going with him. But once that leader is no longer

around, what holds that group together? Vision

and values, nothing else. Actually, I remember talk

ing with John a long time ago. He brought a bunch

of the guys together to try and add some structure

and there was general rebellion! I would say that

what you want is a confederation. A confedera-

tion is different from a federation. It is made up of

totally autonomous groups thatfunction together.

Wat sots of ts do you fucto toete fo?

The only purpose of a larger group, as I see it, is

three things. The first is identity. What do we stand

for? What is unique about us? What is the aspect

of the Gospel that we need to hold up, that we

feel the rest of the Church is ignoring? What part

are we supposed to speak up for? It can be a wor-

ship, signs and wonders, evangelism, postmodern

ministry, or whatever. God has different segments

of the Body speaking up about different areas that

we need.

Think about what has happened in the past:

every para-church organization in the last fifty

years got started because the Church was ignor-

ing an important part of ministry. The Church

was ignoring students, so God raised up Campus

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a secon reformation?

image graciously supplied by Johhn McCollum John McCollum / elem

Crusade, Young Life and Youth for Christ. It was

ignoring men and women in the military, so he

raised up the Navigators. Now the thing about

para-church organizations is that they have the

right to specializebut the Church does not have

that right. The Church has to do it all. Because the

Church is the Body of Christ, it has to do worship,

fellowship, discipleship, ministry and evangelism.

And we have to give them equal emphasis. I

started saying fifteen years ago that the primary

issue of the twenty-first century would be church

health, not churchgrowth. I still believe that. You

dont have to focus on growth; we have never done

that at Saddleback. Weve focused on health. Ifmy kids are healthy, they will grow. I dont have to

command my kids to grow. All living things grow.

If my children dont grow, something is terribly

wrong. The answer is balance. Just as our bodies

are made up of nine different systemsyou have

a skeletal system, respiratory system, central ner-

vous system, digestive system, and so onwhen

all of those systems are in balance, thats called

health. If any of them get out of balance, thats

called dis-ease or disease. The doctors job is to

bring it back to health.

In the Body of Christ, we are a body, not a busi-ness. Im totally against the corporate model of

organization. We are an organism, not an organi-

zation. We are a family, and families arent based

on policies, but on relationships, and the greater

the relationship, the greater the trust. When I first

got married to Kay, we had all these rules about

how you fold the towels, how you squeeze the

toothpaste. Ive been married thirty years now, and

we dont have all those rules now. The only rule is

Always tell the truth. The greater the relation-

ship, the fewer rules you need.

So, as I look at Vineyard and I look at a movementthat God has blessed, I would say that you try

to create elements that preserve the vision and

values without creating the rules. The moment

you get into rules, you become a bureaucracy, and

thats the kiss of death. You start perpetuating the

survival of the organization itself. In a confedera-

tion, which is loosely knit with lots of different

elements, the primary purpose for associating

together is training, not control. Control kills an

organization, and when you start trying to qualify

and quantify and credential, you get into all kinds

of controls. I would encourage all the leaders to

go back and read Roland Allens book from over

100 years ago, The Spontaneous Expansion of the

Church.That has been one of the fundamental

texts of my life. It helped me found Saddleback.

it was ceta fo Wmbe too.

Really? I didnt know that. It certainly had a pro-

found effect on me, back in the early 70s. Going

back to this thing about music, its interesting that

wherever God seems to be working, there comes

a plethora of new music. In the heady days of the

80s, almost all of the good music was coming out

of the Vineyard. Before that it was all coming out

of Calvary Chapel. Now it seems a lot of new music

coming out of Hillsong, or Soul Survivor, or places

like that.

Do you tk te mpetus fo te ew musc

moves o because tee s somet ew

god wats to do? i ote wods, maybe te

aot fo wosp tat oce exsted abates

because god s wat to b a ceta

dyamsm to newaspects of be te cuc?

I think thats right. I think you have to say, Whatwas God doing then that was so unique, that he

still wants to do now? Actually, back in the early

days of the Vineyard I dont think it was so much

the emphasis on signs and wonders per se that

was so important as it was the openness to what-

ever the Spirit wants to do! That kind of openness

is even more important. Andif Im open to what

the Spirit wants to do, He might want to empha-

size something else in the twenty-first century!

That whole issue is a real key to me.

And, of course, being concerned with evangelism

as I am, I note that one of the primary principlesof signs and wonders is that they attract people to

the Gospel. When you see God moving in an obvi-

ous power encounter, people watching say, Yay,

God! That is still true all around the world. I dont

know if its true so much in post-Christian areas

like England and Europe and even in America.

There I dont see people seeking the miraculous

so much as they are asking, Are Christians going

to care about the things we expect them to care

about: justice, poverty, illness, the worksof Jesus.

One of the things we talk about at Saddleback is

this: A lot of people want to study the steps of

Jesus. I say lets study thestops of Jesus. What

did Jesus stop to do? What kinds of things did He

allow to interrupt His agenda? We need to have a

kind of openness to Lord, what do you want to

do next?

For example, we changed in significant ways

through the years at Saddleback. We have learned

an enormous amount about small groups from the

Chinese. They have taught us more than anybody

else. A real danger for places like Saddleback or

Willow Creek or Vineyard or Calvary Chapel is a

Not Invented Here mentalitythe presumption

that, if it didnt come out of here, it isnt any good.

That is something I fight constantly. I want to learn

from anybody. There has to be a willingness to say,

God loves to bless people I dont understand, tha

I dont even agree with, and maybe I need to learn

from them. Its just being humble. Its like eating

fish; you take the meat and throw away the bones.

I tell that to pastors who come to our conferences:

You arent going to agree with everything we do.

Idont agree with everything we do! Wherever I

find people who are reaching people and growing

people and helping people get into ministry, help-ing people get into mission, living for the glory of

God, I say Amen, now teach me how to do it, too.

Youve beu to sft muc of you focus to

teatoa msty ecet yeas. how dd

tat come about?

Thats true. The first ten years of Saddleback in

the 80s, I did almost no outside speaking. In the

90s things became more national, and we trained

about a quarter of a million pastors in America.

The church was still growingit tripled in size in

the 90s. But now in the 21stcentury, almost all my

time is spent in developing countries. God really

changed my heart about two years ago through

some personal things I went through.

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Much like we all go through tough

transitional times on an individual basis,

churches experience periods of transition,

as well. For many people in the church, change is

overwhelming and uncomfortable. Knowing how

to navigate a church through various transitions is

paramount for pastors, especially if they want to

maintain growth and health.

Cutting Edgeasked a couple of pastorsRich

Nathan, senior pastor of the Columbus Vineyard

in Ohio, and Tri Robinson, senior pastor of the

Vineyard Boise in Idahowho have planted

churches and grown them to significant size,

about their secrets when it comes to making

successful transitions.

We you ecoze a b cae eeds to be

made you cuc, wat acto steps do you

be to take?

Rich: I love living in reality, therefore I try at all

costs to get the facts. I read and listen to suc-

cessful practitioners outside my church. I never

listen to theoreticians, or those who dont love

the church. I also listen to the counsel of key staff

and lay leaders. But for me, I generally cant move

forward without a deep personal conviction that

the Lord is calling for this change. I need to expe-

rience something of the cloud and the pillar of

fire. This, of course, is not necessary for all deci-

sions or for all changes. But big changes, such as

the decision to build a new sanctuary, or rework

the churchs DNA, or a major theological shift (all

of them exceedingly rare) require a deep sense of

divine leading.

After our leadership team determines that a

change needs to occur, I have found the approach

in the book Leading Changeby John Kotter (from

the Harvard Business School) to be extremely

helpful. Kotter describes how to build a guiding

coalition, how to develop a strategy, how to com-

municate the vision, how to empower for broad-

based action, how to generate short-term wins,

consolidate gains, and anchor new approaches in

the culture. I spend a lot of time thinking through

how to build a case for the change and the way

that Im going to communicate this case to various

groups of people.

Tri:The problem for most pastors in dealing with

the need for transition is that they dont recognize

it. You have to train yourself to recognize it.

I remember watching the movie, The Right Stuff.

There was a scene that personifies what its like for

a pastor to lead his church through change. Chuck

Yeager goes up in his high speed test plane, but

he hasnt yet kicked in the afterburners. As hes

jetting along, suddenly everything starts shaking

and shattering and the instruments are flipping out

of control. It seems like everything is falling apart.

But actually, he is moving toward mach 1.

There is this invisible barrier that you cant see as

you approach the speed of sound. You cant see it,

but the symptoms are there. In the scene, Yeager

had a choice to make: throttle back and not go

through it or power forward and blast through it.

He decides to push through it and when he throt-

tles forward, the ground crew hears this explosion.

They thought he blew up, but what they actually

heard was the sound barrier breaking for the first

time. And then they show Yeager, who is now flying

smoothly toward mach 2.

When you feel the thing shaking and it seems like

it would be a lot easier to throttle back as a leader,

this can be a sign that you are about to break

through the barrier.

For me, the most important thing is recognizing

what that stress is. Its always something like,

Nobody knows my name any more or This

church is getting way too big. Many pastors dont

understand it, so they dont break through. They

dont want to make waves. The most difficult part

of change is identifying that youre actually up

against a barrier. And most of the time, the

changes are generally structural changes.

In order for pastors to throttle through it, youve

got to make shifts in the culture, such as how you

spend your time, or who you invest in. You have to

create better management systems to handle the

problems. Those are all cultural shifts and struc-

tural changes that we all experience.

Wat as bee te most dffcut tasto you

ave ad to avate te fe of you cuc?

how dd you et tou t?

Rich:One of the most significant changes for our

congregation was being adopted into the Vineyard

We were an independent non-denominational

church loosely affiliated with a small coalition

of other churches. We held a series of congrega-

tional meetings for nearly two years as we walked

through the change. We also had many of our

leaders attend John Wimber conferences over

the course of two years. And most helpfully, we

invited Lance Pittluck to come in to introduce our

congregation to the theology and practices of the

kingdom.

Tri:I just went through a difficult change, where I

had to create a whole new management team to

respond to problems that quickly flared up in the

church in order to prevent it from getting out of

control. I first of all analyzed it by myself and tried

to get a rational look at it, otherwise youre just

listening to complaints and hearing people say

hurtful things as opposed to understanding the

real issue. You have to get above that and get a

bigger view.

You have to go to the Lord in prayer and say,

Lord, what is the bigger issue and whats holding

it back? Many times, its a management issue.

Oftentimes, you arent able to change quickly

enoughand thats the problem.

In developing this management team, I got a

diverse group of people who think differently,

NAVIGATING CHANGEIN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCHHow Two Vineyard Pastors Have Taken their Congregations Through Change By Jason Chatraw

>

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especially about solving problems. In the bookGood to Great, one of the important points of the

book I think is so crucial to pastoral leadership is

that you have to embrace conflict and chaos as

your friend. People dont like change because it

changes relationship structures on your team, and

thats never fun. It always takes confrontation, but

you have to think outside the box.

how do you se te vso fo a b cae

you cuc wt te eades? how does

t dffe we you se t to te est of te

coeato?

Rich:As a general rule, I try to leak big changes

to influencers (in other words, I send up trial bal-

loons to sharpen my thinking and to field test my

message). I deeply appreciate Malcolm Gladwells

book, The Tipping Point,concerning how massive

change takes place in various social settings. I

also hold a series of meetings for leaders in which

very frank discussion and a robust exchange of

ideas can occur. For large changes, I personally

lead those leaders meetings. It is important that

leaders hear directly from the senior pastor what

we are doing and why we are doing it. Concerning

people in the congregation, I believe in over-com-municating change using a variety of communica-

tion devices including Sunday morning messages,

emails, coffees, vision meetings, brochures, bulle-

tin inserts, and celebration meetings. I also like to

give congregation members an opportunity to ask

questions to trusted and trained leadership team

members who understand how to communicate

the vision.

Tri:I talk with my advisors and elders first

about the problem that the change is addressing.

Sometimes, Im not quite sure what to do, so we

discuss it first. And then, I resolve the vision withinmyself. Once we formulate a plan, I take it to my

first line of pastors and leaders and then I go to the

rest of the staff before I go to the congregation.

When I go to the people, I always present the

problem. I say, Heres the situation. Its usually

a good problem, but its still a problem. And then

I say, This is what were doing about it. I dont

ask for their advice. Ive already figured out what

were going to do and just explain how were going

to get it done. People appreciate strong leadershipin that way.

how do you fee about cae eea? Do

you ke t? Does t pa you to make caes?

Rich:Some people are wired to like change for

changes sake. They just get tired of the same old

thing. Thats not me. I love change. I think most

large church pastors do. But I love change for a

purpose; change that will link more disconnected

people with Christ; change that will result in more

people understanding Gods Word or discovering

Gods calling for their lives. Im not particularly

interested in change in order to be novel or cutting

edge (no offense to this wonderful periodical!).

Tri:I know change is a necessary thing for a leader,

and I also know its necessary to help a church

grow and move ahead. Part of it is funfiguring

out a more effective way to do things. But I also

hate part of it. Sometimes, Ill call other pastors

who have gone through it before me and find out

how they made it. I always try to ask lots of practi-

cal questions about budget, schedules, service

times, facilities, staff, etc.

Wat advce woud you ve to cuc pates

wo ae tastoa pases ad eed to

make b caes te cuces?

Rich:Use the Lord told me rarely. You have only

so many bullets in that gun and you dont want to

waste them. Nothing will shred your credibility or

deplete your equity more than being consistently

wrong when you speak in the Lords name.

Get lots of advice; talk with others. Remember

we have the mind of Christ. This is a plural,

community verse. In other words, we need other

peoples input.

Also, remember that peoples willingness to follow

a leader is based upon the three Cs of leadership:

character, competence, and care. People will follow

someone who has a reputation for honesty and

transparency in decision-making. That is charac-

ter. People also want to know that your decisions

generally turn out well. That is competence. And

people will follow someone who has personally

ministered to them or their family. That is care.

When all three are working together: character,competence, and care, change is pretty easy to

bring about in a church.

Tri:Dont be above asking people for help who

have been where you are. Dont be afraid of

changeand lead through it with confidence.

END

ADDiTiOnAl rESOUrCES

Revolutionary Leadership: Howthe Synergy of Vision, Culture,

and Structure Can Transform Your

Church

by Tri Robinson

Good to Great

by Jim Collins

The Tipping Point: How Little

Things Can Make a Big Differenceby Malcolm Gladwell

Leading Change

by John Kotter

00:14:54:04

navigating transitional aters


13/44

Tri Robinson is the pastor of the Vineyard Boise in Idaho, a growing church

with over 3,000 regular Sunday attendees. The following is an excerpt that

talks about change from Tri Robinsons book, Revolutionary Leadership.

TRANSITIONING TO A CULTURE OF LOVE


e 12 transitioning to a culture of love

0:14:54:04

As our church began to grow, many exciting

things began to emerge out of the church

culture, such as a homeless ministry. But

I also began to notice that our culture was not

entirely healthy. (While we had bumper stickers

that stated, Come as you are! Youll be loved!

But, somehow, it didnt always seem like we were

reaching out in love to each other as well as new-

comers. So, I challenged our people to remove

those stickers until they actually lived those

words.) I began to feel ineffective as a leader,

which emerged out of what I saw as a deficit in our

ability to fulfill our God-given vision. That vision

for us is developing authentic followers of Christ.

The burning question in my heart was this: Are

peoples lives really being transformed? I wasnt

sure that I was seeing the fruit of this and it dis-

turbed me.

If you want to build a community of love, you

really have to be a community of trust. People

who truly love each other are people who trust

each other, who are faithful, who understand the

vision and purpose, working together with one

heart and one mind.

One of the things Ive observed in churches is

that so many of them experience leadership

explosions. Every time there is a blow up or

hiccup in the leadership team, it sets the church

back, sometimes a year or two. The church never

has the opportunity to build momentum and move

into a place of great productivity and fruitfulness.

From the very beginning of our church, I recog-

nized the need to build leaders from the ground

up, to home grow our people so that they not

only trusted and understood me, but also trusted

>


14/44

and understood my passion for building a church

that disciples people into Christian maturity.

Early in our church planting adventure, I discov-

ered another mistake many pastors make. In their

rush to assemble a leadership team, they select

elders too early. One Christian leader suggested

to me in the beginning stages of our church that

I wait to appoint elders in our church for at least

seven years. He said I would not even know who

was going to stick around until I gave the church

some time to develop. I took that advice and

began building councils, but not eldership boards.

There was accountability, but in the first phases

they were transitory leaders.

As I looked to the Bible for a model that would

work in building our church, I found it in Luke 6.

Up to that point in Jesus ministry, He had been

doing the entire ministry Himself. He had done

all the teaching, performed all the healings and

miracles. He had yet to select His 12 disciples. But

He was preparing His followers for what was next,

and this particular passage deals with the day that

Jesus finally selected them. (Luke 6:12-19)

Two facets surrounding this passage jumped out at

me. First, I noticed there were four reasons people

gathered around Jesus. They came because they

wanted to be taught and learn truth. They came

because they wanted to be healed from whatever

it was that was afflicting them emotional, physi-

cal or spiritual diseases. They came to be set

free from the bondage in their lives. They came

because they wanted to be close and touch Him

because power was coming from Him. Essentially,

these are the four reasons anybody comes to

church. They come to be taught, to be healed, to

be set free, and to be close to the Lord.

The second thing I noticed was that there were

three designations of groups of people. First, there

were the throngs (or multitudes or crowds). There

was the mass of people who were coming from

all over to see Jesus. But of that mass, there was

another group that was designated as the multi-

tude of disciples, possibly the 70 or the 120 that are

talked about later in the Gospels. I see a difference

in these people when compared to the throngs.

These people had already committed to following

Jesus. They did not show up just for this event;

they traveled with Him, following Him from town to

town. It was out of the multitudes of disciples that

Jesus chose 12 and named them disciples. And we

know of those twelve, there were three Peter,

James, and John who spent extra time with Jesus.

They were with Him at the transfiguration. They

were with him on a hillside over Jerusalem when

He was talking about the last days. They were the

ones He sent ahead to prepare for the Passover.

They ultimately became the high profile leaders of

the church of Jerusalem in its early stages.

Each person from all three of these groups came

for the same reasons at one point in their journey.

However, there had to be a transition between

a throng mentality and a multitude of disciples

mentality. And there was also a transition between

the multitudes of disciples to one of the 12 dis-

ciples. My heart has always been to make disciples

authentic, mature, spirit-filled, reproducible

Christians. So, I asked myself, what is the differ-

ence in these groups?

I realized that the throngs are consumers. They

come to get. They come because they have needs

and they want to get those needs met. They come

because they want to be healed, they want to be

delivered, they want to be close to God. They want

for themselves and they have great needs. All of us

who are authentic Christians were members of the

throngs at one point. We all had needs to be met,

because until we received, we really had nothing

to give. It can cause a church a lot of strife when

empty people are trying to give what they do not

possess. I wanted to set up a system by which I

could help people develop into mature Christians.

When people truly experience the love of God and

therefore have that love to give, then a true com-

munity of love, care, and outreach can exist. I knew

I couldnt do it by myself and Jesus didnt do it by

Himself either. He trained and deployed this group

of people to carry out the work of the Kingdom.

As a result of these principles from Luke 6,

I believed the Lord gave me a process and a

plan to usher people from the throng mentality

into discipleship.

The multitudes of disciples were the ones who

made the shift from a throng mentality to a dis-

cipleship mentality, which was this: I want to

be taught so I can teach. I want to be healed so I

could be an instrument to heal others. I want to be

set free so I might lend a hand to help others be

set free from their bondage and addiction. I want

to be close to the Lord so I can usher others into

the Lords presence. I want to get in order to give,

not just get to get. This is how I define someone

who has made this transition. I also recognized

that in order to have a multitude of disciples, you

have to have people in place who have already

made the choice to disciple others.

In my mind, the 12 disciples are these people who

are discipling. In the case of the local church, this

is the lay leadership of the church, people leading

the small groups, the nursery, the mens ministry,

etc. They are people who are stepping into this

second arena and saying, I get to give. Out of

this group of disciplers there are some that begin

to emerge as the three. The people who fit into

this category become the eldership, or leaders of

leaders, of the church.

In processing this information, we developed a

system at Vineyard Boise where people could

progress from crowd mentality into discipleship.

It also provided opportunity for the Lord to reveal

to us those who were leading so we could pull

them into the leadership arena. I had no interest

in guessing who my elders might be by measuring

whether they were charismatic people, or had a

good business background, or seemed to under-

stand organization. John Wimber always said, You

know your elders because they eld, meaning you

know who your elders are because they are doing

the work of the ministry more than the others.

END


transitioning to a culture of love

00:20:34:06


15/44

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getting lift off

Wat s te typca cuc pate wo

s maed ad as cde upepaed

fo tems of s tme?

I think the biggest thing, for almost all church

planters Ive met, is that they are not realistic

about how much time and energy has to go into

gathering. They do a little bit, they meet a few

people, and they think really aggressive work is

contacting ten people a week or soand thats not

enough. To give you an example of what I mean, I

recently met a guy in England who planted a new

church in a new area of London, England. This was

not a Vineyard. He had a small team. In 18 months

he built the church to over 150 people. And heres

how he did it: he walked and prayed through

every single street and over every single house in

that whole area that he was trying to reach, and

then he gave a really nice little invitation to the

church to every single house. That means that

over the course of 18 months he hand-delivered

over 200,000 invitations100,000 of which

he delivered himself. His team did the second

100,000. Now what that works out to, if you figure

going out every single day for eighteen months

with no breaks, no days off, no

holidaysis close to 500 invitations

every single day.

Now Im not saying thats the right

strategy for everybody; what I am

saying is that thats the right amount

of effort and focus on gathering

that has to happen in order to get a

church off the ground.

So ate s wee we eay

udeestmate te tme equed?

More than anything else, because

churches need to gather a good num-

ber of people quickly on the front

end. Your pioneers who come with

you only have a limited amount of

patience, and if you are not over the

hump by a certain amount of time,

they start bailing and then you have

to start all over again.

So tme s ot o you sde ts.

I tell planters that they need to think of the first

12 to 18 months as being absolutely nuts, so that

you can back off after that, and not be constantly

in danger of thinking Are we going to survive? I

think what I am saying is that you need to gather

in such a way that the survival of the church

question is settled within about 18 months.

You kow t te ad tee tat you ae

o to make t? Youve put te tme ad

eey , youve payed t tou, youve

caeed you passo fo ts t to

ate, ad eou peope ave bout

to t to make t o.

There is no question that it is really hard. Doing it

is going to be just grueling. But, heres the thing:

I dont think that its ultimately as difficult as a

five year span of never being sure you are going to

survive, going up, going down, never quite getting

there, always wondering, people getting demoral-

ized and leaving, never getting enough momen-

tum. I think its better to suffer for a very short

time on the front end, going full-out on gathering,

and then you can live a regular life after that. I

think that in some ways, the first 18 months you

have to decide you are not going to live a sustain-

able lifestyle. That its a sprint.

i ead a Veyad cuc pate say oce

tat ed tak to 100 peope a week. im ot

sue i evesee100 peope a week. how do

you ft ts to you stye, wo you ae, te

demoapcs aoud you?

No matter how you do it, who you are, or what

your style is, you have to understand from thebeginning that a church plant is in some ways

playing a numbers game, in that not everybody is

going to be called to your church. Not everybody

is going to fit with your church. Not everybody is

going to respond. So if you are going to get and

keep something survivable, which is probably

over 100 people, you really do have to think that

you are going to want to contactin one way or

anotherthousands, in order to get 100. Your per-

centages are not going to be high.

it seems ke fo most cuc pates, you o

to t tk, Ts s o to wok. Teeso Veyad ee, tees a eed fo oe, i

kow gods caed me to ts pace, weve ot

wat we eed to make ts appe. You ave

maybe a ove-fated sese of yousef ad

wat you ca accomps, ad you dot eay

ackowede tat may peope, maybe most

peope, ae ot o to be to wat you ae

do.

I think thats true. There arent that many churched

people these days who are ready to just jump into

a Vineyard church. Most of the people who wanted

to be in something like a Vineyard found it and

joined it a couple of decades ago! In the mean-

time, a lot of other churches have moved toward

the Vineyard in the way that they do things, so we

are not as unique as we were then. Thinking there

is going to be a flood of people from other church-

es is not realistic, nor desirable. That means that

you are looking to reach unchurched people. Some

of them might be Christians but have dropped

out of church attendance. Some might not be

Christians at all.

gve tat, ow woud you tk about you

tme at te dffeet staes of be b-voca-

toa ad te fu-tme wt te cuc?

I think that in the beginning, if you are bi-voca-

tional, you need to think of the way you live as the

same way people live who hold two secular jobs.

In a sense, both jobs are full-time in the way you

must work at them. Its not sustainable long-term,

but for a good purpose many people do it all the

time. If you go into it thinking, Ive got half a job

that brings in our income, and half

a job doing the church plant, I sus-

pect thats not going to be enough.

Does t wok to tk, i o at a

sowe pace because i ave ess

tme?

It has to be more compressed than

that, because of the expectations

that average people have about

churches. At least in North America,

most people will not think that a

church of 40 or even 50 is an accept-

able size of church in terms of what

it can offer and do, the security of

its future and so forth. Theyll put up

with a church that size if they think

its on the way up. But they wont

think of that size as acceptable. You

can find some small niche groups,

highly creative people who thrive on

churches that are small, for example. But thats

not mainstream people. So youve got to have

more than 100 people for the community to think,

This is a real church that is going to be around for

me to count on. The thing is, if you are not there

within three or four years of starting, they start

eptembe

r

00:26:52:01

>


17/44

e 16 getting lift off

panicking and thinking, This is never going to

get there. They start asking questions about the

leadership. They start looking around and jumping

off. They start thinking, Maybe this is the Titanic,

not the Queen Mary. At that point, you start going

backwards.

how te do you appoac tme ad ate

so tat you ae ot just ts maket peso,

so tat t s st sptuay dve? how do you

stay motvated by te Spt, ot by umbes

ad maket?

I think it starts from your planning right from the

get-go. You develop a strategy that is based on

what youve received from God in prayer and what

fits you as a person. But you pursue it with the

degree of aggressiveness and time-focus that Im

talking about.

Second, I think there has to be a realization that

marketing alone wont do it. There has to be sub-

stance to it. You can contact 200,000 people, but if

they dont find anything when they get there, if you

are not willing to spend time with them, if theres

no compelling vision, if the spiritual atmosphere is

not positive when they get there, its not going to

help. In a sense what you are doing really is not so

much marketing as looking for the people whose

hearts God has prepared, and who he is calling to

be a part of this community that you are building.

But you dont know who they are or where they

are, and what you are doing is presenting your

vision from God to as many people as you possibly

can, just so you can find out who those people are.

I think its significant, and not to be overlooked,

that the guy in London I talked about was not just

going door to door handing out invitations. He was

praying over every single house, and over every

single street, the whole time. So in a sense he is

not just handing out 200,000 invitations; he is

praying over 200,000 houses, which is an awful lot

of prayer.

Another thing that church planters often dont real-

ize when they start is how important the informal

part of their life is compared with the formal part.

The get-togethers over coffee, the movie nights,

the parties or neighborhood round-robin dinners

are all far, far more important in the early stages

than the formal meetings. One of the reasons that

is the case is because people are making their

decision on whether to join you and be part of this

community on a very personal basis do I want to

follow thisperson? That is going to be based on

how they relate to you in informal ways, so there

has to be lots of opportunity for those. You reach

out aggressively to everyone, and then as you find

the ones whose hearts you think might be ready,

you spend lots of informal time with them.

Tey wat to see wat you ae ke we o

oes ook.

Very seldom are they making decisions to join at

this point on the basis of your great preaching or

your fancy programs. Even great preachers dont

usually start there as planters. Your music isnt

slick. Its all just very personal.

What I say to church planters in the early stage,

when they ask about sermon preparation, is totry and get about 18 months of sermon outlines

done before you plant. Do all the prep work ahead

of time. Or use the outlines from other people

that you can adapt and make your own. In the

early years, you have to do a lot of preaching with

almost no effort, because you cant usually afford

to put the kind of time into your sermons while

you are in the gathering phase that you will later

on, unless you start with a really big team that

includes a lot of gatherers. You have to find short

cuts, in the short term.

As you are gathering people, you gather mate-rial for your sermons, and the content is more

connected to your heart. You make up for the

prep time lost with people-time gained. You lose

exegesis time but gain time in the lives of people,

and you gain passion for seeing this thing lift off

the ground.

So ow muc tme soud you sped semo

pep as a cuc pate?

Per week, in the first 18 months? About an hour

a week. Seriously. Of course, you cannot do that

unless you have done a chunk of it ahead of time,or you are using outlines from something like the

Vineyard Resource CD or other respected sources.

Wat about we you ae at 50 attedace?

You ave 50, ad you ae ty to et te ext

50, ad you ae at te stae wee wat you

Suday sevces ae ke mattes a ot.

Then you might move to a couple afternoons a

week doing sermon prep, but no more. Of course,

I always tell planters, Look, dont do all the

preaching yourself. If you are close to some other

Vineyard churches, you should make stronger use

of guest preachers. Invite people from some of

the other churches to come and preach for you.

They will bring the best things theyve ever done,

and itll free up your time. That way, when you are

preaching, you can be better, because youve two

or three weeks to work on it. The difficulty is that

it is too easy to spend too much time in the office

with the books, and not enough time gathering.

My expeece s tat tats bee te defaut

t wt tme. Amo a te ts you eed

to et doe o ve yousef to, te peac

cateoy fates to f te tme. You ca ed

up sped a ot of tme wt tat ad fee

ke you ae st wok.

You can spend a lot of time on that just because

it something you can control. The difficulty with

gathering is that you are going out there and

presenting yourself and your vision, but you dont

have much control over the outcome. You are get-

ting bigger percentages of No, I dont think so

than you are Yes, I think I want to be with you.

Its very tempting to polish your preaching instead

i stated to fd tat peope eceved my

peac bette we i was sped ess

tme o t. now i ty to medtate o a passae,

et t to me du te week, ad te et t

fy. i dot eve type out my otes. i just ceate

a oute.

Right. Now, I hasten to say that there does come

a point where you have to get good at preaching.

Its a significant issue! But I think that before you

worry too much about how good of a preacher you

are, youve got to get some people to preach to.

Wat about tme wt peope? Wo do you ve

you tme to te be?

You give the vast majority of your time to peoplewho are not in the church yet or who are just com-

ing into the church. I think newcomer follow-up

should be very personal on the front end, doing

it mostly yourself. The little bit that is left over

you give to your key leaders primarily, and those

leading teams. Your focus with them is on encour-

aging them, helping them stay together and stay

focused, and drawing them into the gathering

activity, and not too much else. This means that

one of the things you have to do on the front end

0:26:52:01


18/44

getting lift off

is to keep things simple. Do a few things well. Be

very careful about other activities and events that

will take time, energy and money but will not help

you gather, even things that you ultimately want to

do. You just have to say, Later.

Otewse you ae pos bass o te

Ttac?

Exactly. This is interesting: Its in your two year

plan, your strategic planning done before you even

start the church, that some of your key decisions

are made that are going to determine the answers

to the time question. Its also in the putting

together of your team. Of the church plants Ive

coached in the last five to ten years, the biggest

nonfunctional use of their time in almost every

case has been resolving conflicts with team mem-

bers who should never have come with them in the

first place. Almost every single church planter has

spent an enormous amount of time and energy on

one or two people who came from the beginning,

who they knew from the beginning somewhere

inside themselves should not have been part of

the plant.

A ot of tme s spet wt peope wo wat to

pocess wt you because tey ae dsuted

o dssatsfed. Tat takes tme ad emotoa

eey.

Right. So you have to be very careful in select-

ing your team on the front end. Generally what

happens if you take the wrong person is that

they make trouble for other people or with other

people, and then you are spending time dealing

with the other people too. It ripples out and eats

time like crazy. When it comes to putting your team

together on the front end, if you have any doubts

about somebody, dont take them. So many church

planters struggle with too much time and energy

going into something that doesnt even help them

accomplish the task.

You ae o to ave stue o matte wo

you ave o you team ayway.

Yes. Thats just part of being human. It does help if

you have a good plan on the front end, and you get

everybodys expectations clear at the beginning, so

they know what you are going to do and not do. It

does help to have a good coach who can tell you,

Dont do that, its going to be a mistake before

you do it! You do not want to spend a huge amount

of time resolving conflict. When you do have to do

so, you want to do it quickly and in a way that is

going to increasepeoples trust. If that means you

have to apologize quickly and say, Sorry; I messed

up, then do it. You cannot afford to spend weeks

and weeks and weeks resolving conflict. Conflicts

need to be resolved in a day or two.

how muc tme do you wat to sped wt

you eades?

I would say that you want to meet with them as a

group at least once a month for a couple of hours.

Then presuming that you have a dozen or less

leaders at the start, I would rotate it around so

that you meet with each one individually about

once every three months. Everyone is working in

the meantime. Anybody who has to be met with

every three days is too high-maintenance; you can-

not afford them as a leader. You need to have as

leaders people who will feel like a chance to meet

with you one-on-one once a quarter and be all

together once a month is plenty. When you meet

with them you give them direction for their life and

ministry assignments enough to keep them busy

for the next three months! You are not holding

their hand the whole time in between.

Wat about a moe team appoac? Does

tat cae te pctue tems of tme?

My feeling is that the once-a-month group meeting

isthe team meeting. At that meeting you discuss

whats going on, any problems, how are we doing?

Whats next? I dont know why youd need to meet

more often; anything you decide in that once a

month meeting ought to be big enough and chal-

lenging enough to keep everybody busy for the

next month.

Wat f you ae aso feds wt tese peope?

You can spend friendship time with them, if youve

got it. But Im talking about Heres what you haveto do. This is the work side of life. Though I would

add that one of the reasons that Im saying to keep

that kind of a pace for these meetings is to keep

the business meeting time low so you have more

time for informal meetings and parties and get-

togethers. You might actually see these leaders at

parties, events, retreats, etc. a lot, lot more than

the two formal contacts every three months that

Im describing. The point is that the official meet-

ings are kept real lean and mean so you have a lot

of room for the unofficial, social stuff.

You put t o te caeda? Tese aet fo-

ma lets just et toete ad a toete

ad tak about wats o o?

Right. As a small church, you want to have social,

informal stuff going on all the time. Youll have

small group meetings and social events and par-

ties. That needs to be happening multiple times a

month. So you are crossing paths with your lead-

ers at all sorts of other things. If your strategy is

to hand out invitations at the local baseball game,

youll be together at the front end and maybe at

the end to go out for ice cream and story-telling.

So relationships grow as you are working together

on somethinghanding out balloons at a down-

town festival, or whatever it is.

how does famy ft to a ts? how do you

do ts so tat you famy doest et te

sot ed of te stck?

I think that if you are church planting, you and

your spouse and older kids need to understand

up front that for a short period of time, you are

not going to live a normal life. You are going to

be living on a shoestring relationally. Again, thats

another good argument for going at it full tilt for 18

months and then being able to ease back, instead

of stringing it out for five years! I do think thatyou have to realize that this is not going to be a

no pressure on the family situation. It isgoing

to be pressurized, especially on the front end.

Everybodys going to have to invest, in the hopes

of getting the church to the place where the pres-

sure can be off. Once the church is established and

growing and youve got 300 or so people, you can

actually put together a schedule where you are no

working the majority of the nights, where youve

got your full days off, where vacations are set and

predictable. Then you become more like everyone

else who has a regular job. You are not bi-voca-

tional any more. However, you cant live like that a

the beginning, starting from scratch. You are going

to be working a lot of hours.

One thing that means is that planters might want

to think about when is a good time to do this, in

terms of family. I generally encourage people with

teenagers not to think about planting a church

00:37:21:09


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e 18 ett ft off

while their kids are in those years. Teenagers

are less flexible and more needy than just about

any other stage. They need, by and large, bigger

churches with youth groups rather than church

plants. They generally have a hard time changing

locations, changing schools, changing friends.

Unless you have a special situation and unless

your teenagers have truly agreed, I think thats a

span of years to stay put. In general, with children,

you want your family to be at a point in time where

they can maintain healthy relationships with not a

lot of energy. So its not that you cannot plant

with kids. But you just have to be aware of the

stress levels.

gve tat you ae do te ad pus fo 18

mots to two yeas, ow ca you stetc you

tme best, especay wt you kds?

If you have young kids who are not in school yet,

one of the best things you can do is to think in

terms of spending time with your family in the

mornings. Most people think of spending time with

family in the evenings, but you want to switch it

around. Mornings are better for kids anyway, and

most of the people you want to contact are work-

ing at that time anyway, or in classes. Thats a

good time to be available for your kids. So flip the

schedule around.

how may ts, te fst 18 mots,

woud you tk of be out of te ouse?

Five or six.

So f you ae b-vocatoa, wat do you do?

You o to wok a day, you ab a sadwc,

ad te you ae oe.

Well, I think its pretty impossible to do a full-time,

9-5 job and then do a church plant. I think you

need a job thats more part-time on the front end

if possible, 30-35 hours a week rather than 40+,

so that you have some hours to play with. Thatsanother good reason not to go into a church plant

with debt. Debt starts forcing you to work longer

hours, and then somethings got to give.

You ae o to wat to eveae you tme

towads be wt peope, wc w take

out eves ad maybe uces. So t coud

be a smpe as say o to beakfasts

wt peope.

Depending on your house and situation, you can

have a lot of the get-togethers at your house. For

the first six months with a first baby, they are

very mobile and you can be with them and still

be out and about. After that, you have to find

other options.

Oe of te ts i was fd was tat cuc

pat ad famy ca oveap. Ou bay

as a stoy ou fo kds o Satuday mo.

i woud take te kds, ad we i was tee i

was meet peope.

Yes. And it works even better when they get to

be school age, because then there are other adults

around the activities the kids are involved in

sports, music, dance, etc. So that part gets easier,

but juggling all their activities and your own needs

gets harder. I do think planters need to be realistic

and realize that just doing those things that one

can do with children in tow wont be enough, in

terms of gathering. The numbers of people you are

meeting are just not high enough.

Wat about we you ae wok fom ome

ad dot ave a cuc offce?

One of the biggest difficulties is the whole bound-

ary between when you are at home and available

and when you are at home and not available. I

think that in general it is better not to work fromhome except when you are having people over.

If you dont have an office, you find the nearest

coffee shop and bring your cell phone and laptop

and make that your office. You dont want to be

home with your kids and have to say, Im sorry, I

cant respond to you now, Im trying to work. That

doesnt work; its better to just not be there. That

way, when you are home, you are fully engaged

with the family.

Tats bee te best ad t fo us, av-

eveyt oed up toete, so ts ad

to dstus wats famy ad wats cuc.its ad fo te kds to fue out.

Little kids cant figure it out, and older kids dont

want to, so you really have to create those demar-

cations yourself. That way when they ask, Wheres

Dad tonight? or Wheres Mom tonight? the

answer can be, Out working, and everybody

understands what that means. And you were there

that morning with them, so its all right.

Wat ae some pactca toos of te tade you

ca ve us to maae ou tme we we dot

ave to cock , dot ave a boss to evauate

us. how do we keep fom pocastat ad

do te t ts?

Number one, understand what you really need

to do and make sure those things get done first.

Number two, anything you find yourself want-

ing to procrastinate about, do right away, first

thing. Procrastination takes up energy and time;

you are better off just getting it over with. Third,

never do anything alone if you can help it. Always

bring someone else along. That way you are doing

double-duty. You are training a leader, but you are

also meeting with this newcomer, talking with this

person who is thinking about giving their life to

Jesus, etc. Fourth, make long term plans and stick

to them. Make a plan for the month and a plan for

the week, so you know what you are going to do.

Having to decide every day, What am I going to

do today? is deadly. It should already be decided

When you wake up in the morning, you should

already know whats going to happen. On the

other hand, dont plan things too tightly, because

you want to have flexibility for the spontaneous

and the unplanned things.

When people from church call or contact you, you

want to respond quickly. A lot of times, people wil

call and say, I want to have a meeting with you.

The first thing you do is to try and have the meet-

ing right then. If someone calls me or talks to me

at church and says, Id like to talk to you some

time; can we have a meeting? my strategy is to

have it right then if at all possible. If you talk on

the phone right then, or you sit down after church,

nine times out of ten you handle the whole thing

in ten or fifteen minutes. It also gives people the

impression of responsiveness, which they like.

You are available to them right away. If you set up

meetings with them, no meeting lasts less than an

hour. They spend twenty minutes getting down tobusiness, twenty minutes doing business, and you

are going to spend the last twenty minutes trying

to get things wrapped up. Occasionally you know

its not going to be this way, but try. When I do

schedule meetings with people, I decide how long

I want them to be, and I schedule another meeting

afterwards, unless its a meeting I really want to

have open-ended. Schedule it, even if its a meet-

ing with yourself. Then you can say, Im sorry, I

have another meeting now.

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20/44

getting lift off

One of the things you have to keep in mind,

though, at the end of all this, is that the

business you are in ispeople. If people are

trying to get hold of you and they are finding that

its difficult or that they are not getting responded

to, their frustration level will rise veryquickly. So

if people call and leave a voice mail or write an

email, our rule around here is that they should be

responded to within 24 hours. At the very least,

they need to get a message that says, Im on

vacation, but I will respond to you by such-and-

such. Thats important.

If you give yourself focus, and you dont get too

wordy or perfectionist about it, youd be surprised

at what you can do. I came back from vacation

a couple of weeks ago and I had something like

150 emails waiting for me, not counting the junk.

I knew there were going to be a lot waiting, so the

day I came back I set aside a couple of hours for

emails. I had dealt with every single one of those

emails, one way or the other, by noon. So dont

procrastinate.

lets say you ae a sow eae ad a

pocastato, ave bee do a sow bud,

ave made some mstakes ove tme, ad you

ae ty to ave a famy ad fe tact at te

ed of te day. is tee ope?

Sure theres hope, just like there is for someone

who falls down and bruises himself. Is there hope

for walking? Sure. You get up, dust yourself off, fig-

ure out what you did wrong, and you go at it again.

END

00:43:46:05


21/44

AN INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR AND CONSULTANT DAVID ALLEN

I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII I II III THE ART OF GETTING THINGS dONE

0:43:46:05


22/44

We live in a world full of stress, commitments,

massive amounts of information, to-do lists

that are always growing, and emails multiplying in

our in-box. All of these things and more are true

among church leaders, especially those who

are engaged in new church start-ups.

In order to help us think through these

challanges, we talked with David Allen,

who Fast Companymagazine calls a personal

productivity guru and one of the worlds most

influential thinkers on productivity. He has

written the best-selling book Getting Things

Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

(Viking, 2001), as well as a more recent follow-up,

Ready For Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for

Work and Life(Viking, 2003). Articles about Allen

have appeared in Fortunemagazine, the Wall

Street Journal, Wiredmagazine, NPR, and the

BBC. Allen has coached top executives at

Microsoft, the World Bank, the U.S. Navy, and

scores of Fortune 500 companies. He now travels

throughout the world consulting, coaching, and

teaching public seminars on organizational work-

flow and personal productivity.

We spoke with him from his home in

Ojai, California.

00:45:16:05


23/44

e 22 te at of ett ts doe

Wat ae te key cocepts tat you

woud wat someoe wo s com to

you matea fo te fst tme to asp?

I think the key concept is capturing, clarifying and

managing the massive number of commitments a

person makes at multiple horizonswith them-

selves and everybody else. Most people simply

dont realize how many commitments they have

made, and the level of stress and distraction they

live with when they are not responsible to them.

Theyre trying to sit on top of this horse, but they

find themselves being driven by the horse instead

of guiding it.

So tey ave a sots of ts sp

aoud te eads as a esut of tese

vaous commtmets, ad eed a way of

captu tem.

Not only do you need to capture them, but you

also need to clarify what exactly they mean to you.

So, for example, you go outside and say, The yard

needs mowing. Now, a yard that needs mowing

lets you know very easily what you need to do.

But if you walk out and say, I think I might need

a gardener, now you have just stepped into a

whole different world. Now you actually have to

think. Now you have a project called research

gardeners to see if you actually want to get one,

and if so, how. Now, every time you walk out into

your yard, you feel a certain pressure. Thats the

difference between mow your yard and do I get

a gardener? Most people dont realize that this

involves knowledge-work, and it takes real effort.

Its the concrete moves of actually having to think.

You have to actually sit down and think about what

done means for this project, and you also have

to decide what doing looks like. Thats how you

get things done: you define what done means

and you decide what doing looks like. Neither

one of those conclusions show up already pre-

pared for you.

A ot of peope, im uess, ade tese

decsos by pus tem off to te sde ad

ty to oe tem.

Most people finally decide what doing looks like

and what done means in crisis. In fact, produc-

tive behaviors actually show up in crisis. In a crisis

you have focus, lack of distractions, youre highly

engaged toward the desired outcomethats

high performance behavior. The problem is that

its coming out of fight/flight, your forebrain has

shut down and youre not living with any kind of

relaxed intelligence. Now you are living your life in

a highly reactive, knee-jerking way. Most people,

for example, make decisions about what to do with

elder care for their parents when the heat forces

them to, not when they first become aware that

this is going to be an issue. So, the big paradigm

shift required is this: learning to make decisions

about capturing and clarifying stuff when it first

comes to your attention as opposed to when the

heat forces you to.

is oe of te ts uque about modety

tat weve made so may moe commtmets

ta eeatos past?

Most people reading Cutting Edgehave, in the last

72 hours, taken in more change-producing, project

creating and priority-shifting information than

their parents got in a month, some of them even

in a year. The truth is that when things change,

that impacts all of your projects and priorities.

Most people havent trained themselves to look

around and ask, Which priorities are now more

important, and which projects do I now need to

get rid of? If they dont do that, its a formula for

blow-up. People simply have a limited capacity

to manage a certain number of commitments. So

whats different about modernity is that, first, a lot

more input is coming at us that generates more

potential commitments and, second, a great deal

more of intense thinking is required to clarify how

we want to respond to those commitments.

A ot of tme maaemet systems say tat

te key s ett a bette b pctue, o ca-

fy you vaues, ad tat te appopate

esposes w foow.

You do need to do those things. But those are not

the only horizons. My purpose is to serve God

is not going to help you with deciding which of

the 2,000 emails youve got backed up should be

answered first. It will help a little bit. It will help

you define the vision you want to be fulfilling out

there, which will help you define some objectives

and goals you set to make sure you are express-

ing your work for God, which is going to help you

define the thirty to a hundred projects you actually

have in the real world to make that happen, and

thats going to help you a lot in finding the 160-

200 next action steps youve got for any of those

projects. But, by the way, hows your health? And

how are your family relationships? And, by the

way, how isthe yard? And, oh, by the way.So,

yes, knowing that you are serving God is at least

going to give you the motivation to sit down and

say, Gee, Im burning the toast and Im yelling at

my spouse, which doesnt seem like a Christian

thing to do, which may turn you back around to

say, How then do I deal with this practically?

with some internal standards about quality of life.

The most spiritual people I know are some of the

most grounded, practical, get-it-done people on

the planet.

Fo te peso wo s say, Wat youe

tak about s exacty wat i eed to do,

wat ae te basc toos e o se eeds to

stat wok wt?

You need an in-basket and a pen and paper, so

you can first of all capture all the stuff you commit

to when you make the commitments. You need

capture-buckets where you can capture these

commitments in retrievable ways. Thats because

the most irretrievable place for filing something is

in your brain. The mind retrieves things based on

how recent it was and how much emotional con-

tent you have tied to it, and thats a crappy way to

run a filing system. Your head is for having ideas,

not for holding them.

Everybody has felt themselves up against the wall

where they have so many things in their head

that they feel forced to sit down and make a list.

If they actually understood why that helps, theyd

never keep anything in their heads again! If you

use your brain for filing, you end up not finishing

things when you think of them. And the older you

get, the ideas you have for what to do with your

church arent going to come to you at church; they

are going to leak out at the beach, on the bus, and

in other strange places. You need to have tools to

capture ideas, commitments, things to do, things

you then need to think about and decide what

they mean.

You need to then train yourselfonce youve

learned to capture things in an in-basket or a

listto go down each one of these things and

decide much more discreetly what exactly each

one of those things means to you and what your

commitments are about them. Is this item a crazy

idea that you mightwant to do someday? Or is it

something you are committed to move on right

now? Is it trash? Is it reference material? This is

0:45:16:05

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the point where you sit down and get more

discreet about what things mean to you.

Ad you ave to set asde bocks of tme to

do tat.

For the typical professional these days, it takes

somewhere between 30 to 90 minutes a day just

to do that. It takes on average about half a minute

per item to decide and organize. Then, once youve

decided what to do with it, if you arent going to

act on it right then, you need to keep track of it

somewhere. If Ive decided I now need to make a

call about my new gardener, but not right now, I

need to have an organizing tool for keeping track

of things like calls that have to wait until I am near

a phone or have time.

The process of picking the thing up, deciding that

the next step is to make a phone call, and then

putting it into some list of phone calls to make

whether you type it into a category in Outlook, or

write it on a page in a planner, or throw it into a

file folder called Calls to Makethat takes about

half a minute per item, if you average it all out.

But some ways, you ae st tak about

somet dffeet ta te peso wo as

ted potz ts te Daytme.

Nearly every to-do list Ive ever seen is usuallynothing more than an incomplete list of still-

unclear stuff. Its either attracting or repulsing you

every time you look at it. The problem with most

to-do lists is that you did not finish the thinking

so every time you look at it, you are reminded

subliminally that youve got thinking to do that you

havent done yet. And all that does is stress you

out even more! And the list is incomplete to begin

with. So your head ends up being the only system

you trust, and now youve got this extra thing out

there that you trying to keep up but you are not

really keeping it up, so its out of date. And all its

doing is creating guilt and beating you up everytime you look at it.

Thats the problem. The problem is not the tool.

The problem is that people are populating these

tools with information thats incomplete, inconsis-

tent, and only half thought-through. Therefore its

not a system. A system is complete, current and

consistent. Every phone call you need to make in

your life needs to be listed someplace you can see

when you are at phone and have time. If you dont

have that, you dont have a system.

Most people dont worry about where they need

to be and when because they trust that they can

look at their calendar. The problem is that 95% of

their life is not calendared! If they understood the

principle they use with their calendar, theyd real-

ize they could get everything else out of their head

just like they got the stuff for their calendar out of

their head, and put that information in a place they

trust the same way they trust their calendar.

You metoed te book tat oe of te

ts youve doe wt some executves s

just take tem out ad buy tem a ood f

cabet.

Yes. One of the first people I coached 25 yearsago didnt even have a desk. He was one of these

people who had such a low egohe was a chiro-

practor running an alternative health clinicthat

he didnt want to have an office because he didnt

want people to think he had a Big Office. So he

didnt have anyplace to even plop a piece of paper

down. The first thing we did was buy him a desk,

put some stakes in the ground and give him a

place to sit down.

Do you fd tat we you cosut wt

peope, te suface eve ssues mea tat

you actuay ave to wok wt tem at deepeeves tems of wat tey wat to be about,

wat tey wat to be do?

Well, it all rolls downhill. Ultimately, if you dont

care about what you are doing or you dont know

why you are doing it, you will find every excuse in

the world to avoid doing these things. If actually

attempting to proactively manage your time and

commitments is going to force you to deal with

things that are closer to your soul, you may avoid

it like the plague as well. Getting organized would

force you to step up to that thing you need to do!

The truth is that I am very behavioral, as a consul-tant. I say, Hey, we dont have to deal with that if

you dont want to. We work with work flow.

Why a

05 fall effective pastor

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