All posts in Catalyst One Day

Catalyst One Day Chicago Notebook

by Tim Schraeder on 11/17/2011 in Catalyst One Day with 1 Comment

Today I had the chance to hang out with great friends from the Willow Creek Association and my partner in crime Justin Wise at the Catalyst One Day Conference in Chicago.

Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel shared some valuable insights on leadership, self-awareness, organizational culture, and more. They also had the rare opportunity to interview Bill Hybels, the senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church.

For those of you who were there or for those who weren’t there, I took some notes here on my blog and also packaged them in a convenient PDF format.

Download my Catalyst One Day Conference Notebook here. [right click and select 'Save As']

Feel free to print these, share them, use them as a resource for your personal reflection or for group discussion as your team. There’s definitely some valuable content in here worth revisiting and reflecting on.

Enjoy!

Also, check out my Conference Notebook from the Catalyst Conference.

Creating a Culture of Self-Awareness :: Craig Groeschel, Catalyst One Day

by Tim Schraeder on 11/17/2011 in Catalyst One Day with No comments
  • How many of you have a significant problem with self-deception?
  • Those who don’t know don’t know they don’t know.
  • You can go through you entire life only seeing from one perspective.
  • As leaders it’s difficult for us to get an objective view of our leadership.
  • The higher you rise in an organization, the more difficult it is to get objective truth about yourself.
  • The problems you don’t know about are the problems you can’t fix.
  • In the church world, there are problems we don’t know about that unchurched people recognize… whether its in our culture or environments.
  • You have a lot problems that need fixing but you don’t even know about them.
  • You have a lot of problems as a leader and you’ve got to make an effort to find out what you need to fix.
Three Principles of Self-Deception
1 – We as leaders have a limitless capacity for self-deception.
  • Example: King David and Bathsheba.
  • Healthy can mean the absence of problems.
  • When there are no problems at all, healthy can be a way of saying, “we aren’t doing anything right now.”
  • It’s not OK when people outside of our church doors are going to Hell.
2 – The longer we believe lies, the harder it is to hear truth.
  • Psalm 36:2 – For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin.
  • There are a lot of us in Christian leadership that are so flattered with our ministry that we fail to recognize significant sin in our own lives.
  • Previous generations did us a disservice by telling us that we are good at everything.
  • When you are teachable, there is greatness in you.
3 – The leader’s lack of self-awareness is the leader’s greatest barrier.
  • It’s our greatest barrier to forward movement in the Kingdom.
  • The self-deceived leader can always find someone or something else to blame.
  • Don’t you ever say that people won’t… take ownership.
  • Own your own limitations.
  • If you delegate tasks, you create followers.
  • If you delegate authority, you create leaders.
  • If you just tell people what to do you won’t attract, build or release leaders.
  • Your self-deception is the barrier to what God wants to do in your church.
  • Know where you need God in every area of your life.
Uncovering the Truth About You
1 – Pray
  • Search me O God and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. – Psalm 139:23-24
  • We cannot overcome a challenge we cannot identify.
  • If there was something that was limiting your effectiveness, you would want to know about it.
  • PRAY.
2 – Listen
  • He who listens to life-giving rebuke will be at home among the wise. He who ignores discipline despises himself, but whoever heeds correction gains understanding.  - Proverbs 15:31-32
  • Listen to the Spirit of God and listen to people.
  • The more convinced you are that you are right about something, the more likely you are wrong.
  • Whatever you do, build a team that craves and gives helpful feedback.
  • Can you give and receive correction?
  • Implement annual 360 evaluations for every team member.
  • Everyone around you gets the opportunity to critique your leadership anonymously.
  • What has God been trying to show you? Write those things down.
3 – Change
  • Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. – James 1:12
  • Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. – John 8:32
  • The problems you have in your organization aren’t someone else’s problems, they are your problems. It’s a leadership issue.
  • Some of you are too proud, deceiving yourselves, and ignoring your sin by ignoring your problems.
  • Are you having an affair with your phone?
  • Are you a workaholic?
  • Is your body in trouble?
  • Is your marriage or family suffering?
  • God wants you to do more than survive.
  • You can’t lead people to life and life more abundantly if you aren’t experiencing abundant life yourself.
  • Pornography is a big deal.
  • It’s time to get help.
  • It’s time to get honest.
  • It’s time to come clean.
  • Confess to God for forgiveness.
  • Confess to people for healing.
  • There is a world that needs Jesus.
  • So do you.
  • The more we rely on God for His forgiveness and power the more we can lead other people to experience it for themselves.

Creating a Come & See Culture – 3 Essential Ingredients :: Andy Stanley, Catalyst One Day

by Tim Schraeder on 11/17/2011 in Catalyst One Day with 2 Comments
  • The way that you evaluate your ministry environments establishes the culture for the rest of your church.
  • Your church is a conglomeration of ministry environments.
  • Parking lot, hallways, children’s rooms, check-in process, greeting, worship experience, etc are all ministry environments.
  • Every environments communicates a message.
  • The message of your environment speaks so loudly that it can sometimes overcome the message that’s being communicated from the pulpit.
  • The Gospel is offensive but other things in our church shouldn’t be.
  • The responsibility of the pastor/speaker is to be offensive.
  • Every ministry environment needs to define the win.
  • Make sure there is a filter for everyone to use to evaluate the experiences that happens in the environments that your church creates.
  • It won’t look the same for every church.
  • At the macro level answer this question, “What does is it mean to have a great ministry environment?”
  • When everyone evaluates through the same grid, you accidentally create a culture of evaluation where everyone is evaluating through the same lens.
  • If you don’t tell people how to measure success in their ministry environment, they will default to numbers.
  • We can end up rewarding things that don’t match our values if we don’t have a standard.
  • The word North Point uses to evaluate is the word irresistible.
  • They want to create irresistible environments… so people say, “Wow! I’ve got to come back and bring a friend.”
  • What does an irresistible environment look like?
1 – An appealing setting.
  • Setting is the physical environment.
  • All ministry takes place in a physical environment.
  • Settings create first impressions.
  • First impressions matter.
  • An appealing setting speaks to people.
  • Settings for 20-30 year olds are HUGE. They are sensitive to physical environments. Starbucks gets it, restaurants get it, churches don’t.
  • An uncomfortable or distracting setting can derail ministry before it begins.
  • Physical environments impact people.
  • Every physical environment communicates something.
    • Cleanliness communicates, “we were expecting you.”
    • Organization communicates, “we are serious about what you are doing here.”
    • Check out the book The eMyth.
    • What people see says something to them.
    • A business that looks orderly communicates that people know what they are doing.
    • Safety matter
  • Design, decor, and attention to detail communicare what and who you value most.
  • Design, decor, and attention to detail communicate whether or not you were expecting new people.
    • The sermon begins in the parking lot.
  • Periodically, we all need fresh eyes on our ministry environments.
Questions:
1. Are our ministry settings appealing to your target audience?
2. Does the design, decor, and attention to detail of your environments reflect what and who is most important to you?
3. What’s starting to look tired?
2 – An Engaging Presentation
  • Engaging presentations are central to the success of our mission.
    • Presenting the Gospel is a primary responsibility of the church.
    • “Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” is the unique responsibility of the church (Matthew 28:20)
  • To engage is to secure one’s attention.
  • Generally speaking, it’s the presentation that makes information interesting.
    • Great presenters know how to make information people already know interesting.
    • An audience’s attention span is determined by the quality of the presentation.
  • Engaging presentations require engaging presentations or an engaging means of presentation.
    • The the presenters present, let the content creators create.
    • Create a system that gives you the flexibility to surface your best presenters and content creators.
    • What we are presenting is too important to fool around with.
    • We need engaging presenters.
Questions:
 1. Is your culture characterized by a relentless commitment to engaging presentations at every level of the organization?
2. Does your system allow you to put your best presenters in your most strategic presentation environments?
3. Are your presenters evaluated and coached?
4. Does your system create opportunities for your best content creators to partner with your presenters?
3 – Helpful Content
  • Helpful =  Useful.
    • Truth isn’t enough.
    • Matthew 7 – “everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice…”
  • Helpful content is content that directly addresses the issues of thinking and living.
  • Content should be age and stage-of-life specific.
    • Information that does not address a felt need is perceived as irrelevant.
      • All Scripture is equally inspired but is not equally applicable. – Reggie Joiner
    • Information that isn’t perceived as useful is perceived as irrelevant.
    • Irrelevant doesn’t stick.
Questions:
1. Is your content helpful?
2. Do your content creators and communicators understand that the goals are renewed minds and changed
behaviors?
3. Is your content age and stage-of-life specific?
Conclusion
Of every environment, program, and production, ask:
1. Was the context appealing?
2. Was the presentation engaging?
3. Was the content helpful?

Craig Groeschel Interviewing Bill Hybels :: Catalyst One Day

by Tim Schraeder on 11/17/2011 in Catalyst One Day with No comments

What would you say to a new leader?

  • Do you really know what it is that you are setting out to build?
  • Is it build out theologically?
  • Is it robust enough to match the New Testament vision of what a church should be?
How would you define what you are trying to build?
  • Who are  you trying to reach?
  • Once someone is reached, what are your intentions with them?
  • The “who we are trying to reach question” has evolved in my mind over the decades.
  • We used to say late 20, early 30s non-churched people.
  • The assumption was middle class, white, college educated… someone like ourselves.
  • Over the decades that has changed.
  • Now they think about the “theology of the footprint.”
  • God planed us in a community, so we acknowledge there is a footprint around us.
  • Willow Creek defines that as a 30 minute footprint… everyone in their 30 minute footprint.
  • They believe they have the responsibility to communicate the Gospel to everyone within a 30 minute footprint.
  • They also try to define what needs they are called to meet.
  • When it comes to the demographics, we don’t want want to neglect anybody because they are different.
  • We don’t write-off certain people groups or people who are different than them.
In 36 years of ministry, Willow Creek has maintained high integrity and been without scandal or accusations. What should we know? What was behind that?
  • “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it…”
  • I have not been temptation free.
  • I have made many mistakes in my ministry.
  • I’ve made decision that have hurt people.
  • I haven’t gotten it all right.
  • We have had a culture of accountability around Willow.
  • When organizations grow larger, accountability seems to wane.
  • Willow has maintained the opposite.
  • As they were taken from a local to a global ministry, they have felt they have something more to protect.
  • They pay more attention to governance, not less.
  • Bill has 81 executive limitations.
How do you develop accountability?
  • In a conventional Elder situation, you will get to moments where there’s a need for a judgment call where it’s not clear if it’s an Elder decision or a leadership decision.
  • Through policy governance, we try to make it blindingly clear who’s responsible for making key decisions.
In the past you’ve said, “the  way I was doing the work of God was destroying the work of God in me.” What advice would you give or what have you learned?
  • Are we merely trying to survive something?
  • Do you want to be someone who is breathless and exhausted most of the time?
  • Or do you want to be someone who takes discipleship holistically…a body, marriage, life, children, finances, friendships, etc that all honor God.
  • Who’s job is it for you to thrive before God?
  • It is YOUR job.
  • If you are exhausted and cranky most of the time, it’s your job to fix it.
  • If you are consistently irritable, over-eating or over-spending… if there are patterns repeated in your life, someone needs to take responsibility.
  • Something is driving something. You’ve got to look under the hood.
  • Christian counseling can help immensely.
  • Ministers need counselors.
  • There’s a reason why you are the way that you are.
  • The Discipline of Replenishment – what is your strategy for replenishment.
  • You need a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly strategy for replenishment.
  • How do you stay replenished most of the time.
  • When you are finally at the place of total depletion that’s when you freshly realize it’s your job to fix it.
  • Put your replenishment strategy together when you are quasi-normal.
What are you most excited about in the next generation? What are you concerned about?
  • It’s innate in them to be missional.
  • We used to have to do whole series to get an average Christian to think about the poor or to become active in some way to overcome some injustice.
  • It used to be hard work to convert people to a conscious of combating injustice.
  • They’ve got mission all over them.
  • They feel it… it’s in them.
  • I celebrate that more than you know.
  • That’s a huge change from the day I was first starting out.
  • What I get a little concerned about is the theology of a lot of young pastors.
  • There’s such odd varieties of theologies out there these days… everyone that has a blog can have one.
  • There’s a piecemeal, call-it-what-you-will, name-it-what-you-want theology that is not coherent and is not consistent with the New Testament.
  • There is a need for theological rigor, inspection and reflection.
  • What’s your message?
  • What 5 words get to the core of the Christian message you are trying to communicate?
    • Love – God is recklessly in love with us.
    • Evil – there is evil loose in the world and inside of all of us.
    • Remedy – CHRIST!
    • Choice – we have a choice to make.
    • Restoration
  • I have no use for the cheap theology that says we are here just to save people.
  • We are restored and are called to join God in His work of restoring the world
  • I’m concerned about the level of clarity that young leaders have with their message.
  • We need to get words on the table to decide what language we are going to use.
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