ShaneCraven.com

Integrating Your Team

Our church shifted to an integrated family ministry strategy and combined our preschool, elementary, teens, and college ministers into one cohesive leadership team.

1. Hold weekly meetings with an agenda and rotating participation: It is important for creating community.  If you meet rarely, you are communicating to the team that they don’t actually need each other’s input.
2. Have a standing agenda item for ideas and challenges:  Bring a new challenge to the team each week.
3. Obtain team leader buy-in:  In order to create a strong team, the leader must commit his or her time and resources to the projects that are most important to the team members.
4. Schedule one-on-one appointments: I have committed to thirty-minute weekly meetings with the people working directly for me.  This is a great way for a leader to communicate, “You and your ministry are too important to me to let a week go by where we didn’t get at least thirty minutes to connect.”
5. Communicate weekly to all staff members: I send a newsletter at the end of the week called “The Staff Loop.”  Its purpose is to encourage our staff members as well as keep the vision right in front of them.  I want them to know I’m accessible to them  and involved on many levels.

Parents don’t lie in bed at night wondering about the topic the pastor will speak about on Sunday.  They don’t even lie in bed at night thinking about God.  They lie in bed thinking mostly about their kids.  Our teenagers should be a part of our volunteer team. What would happen if we simply decided that our best resource for unleashing this generation and volunteerism is found in our teenagers.  Here’s a novel idea.  Let’s try saying to our students, “Here are the ropes.  Here is a class or here’s a small group, or a worship platform and some technical equipment.  Here are some things you can do to be a part of rescuing a generation, and we want you to plug in.  You are enough of an adult now that you need to begin developing your skills and you need to begin seeing what God wants to do in and through you.” I think that kind of mentality sets a teenager up in a way that nothing else does.  If students experience God at work in them, they’ll have a hard time getting over it. Engaging a teenager in ministry is the best way to ensure….a dynamic faith in God, a personal identity in Christ, and a responsive heart toward others.  Churches have the potential to turn a generation around by handing them the keys to ministry and saying, “Guess what?  Not only do we need your help, but God designed you and God created you for this very reason.  You were called to use your gifts just as much as the pastor was called to use his.  Each one of us has a personal responsibility to be the church, and if you recognize that, it will revolutionize your life.”