Summer is almost over and for churches across the country, this means it’s time to kick things into gear! Fall is a natural time for a reboot within your church as over the summer people have been busy with traveling and summer activities. They may have missed services or felt out of touch with their church community and disengaged from their spiritual development. As fall rolls around, your leaders are ready to fall back into a routine. The last two blogs we discussed relational and spiritual reboots, but what does a leadership reboot look like?
Engaging Your Leaders
- Do you have enough leaders to launch small groups, classes, youth ministries, etc.?
- Has your volunteer pool dropped over the summer?
- How are you encouraging your leaders to re-engage?
Create a Leadership Community
You may already have a gathering of leaders that meet regularly or you may have a group you have worked with in the past that has taken a break over summer. Right now is a great time to regroup and bring them together to cast vision for the fall. During these meetings, a great way to inspire and engage leaders is to carefully prepare and plan for a Leadership Community. There are three elements of an impactful Leadership Community that can be explained using the acrostic VHS:
VISION: Gather all your leaders together and share the larger vision and goals of your church for the near future. Lead off this portion of the Leadership Community with a time of worship to connect with God and set the tone – listening to God. Remind everyone the work that needs to be done and why it matters.
HUDDLE: Provide a meal and enjoy each other. Break down into smaller ministry teams to allow people to connect, care for each other, and pray together. This allows personal relationships to flourish.
SKILL: Spend time training your leaders in a new skill that will relate to everyone regardless of their context, like asking powerful questions. It does not need to be in depth or last too long. Make it doable and meaningful.
Engage Your Staff
It is important to have a clear plan for the fall. Everyone on staff needs to understand the vision, know what will be the focus and the goal of the upcoming season and what their role will be in completing the goal(s). Use this opportunity to make certain everyone is pulling in the same direction. For example, it’s a good idea to meet with the entire staff at least once a quarter and to use this time to identify an area of focus with a goal behind each area, allowing that trickle down into the rest of the church.
Coaching Tip:
Challenge those leaders you coach to start and build gradually. One simple goal at the beginning will prove the value of a singular focus once real progress has been made. Once you have a successful experience, build on that and add a second goal, and a third when you are really building momentum, and perhaps a fourth after that. Beyond 3-4 goals, you risk becoming too scattered as a team and losing momentum.
A few points to keep in mind:
- Take into consideration the ramp-up time for your staff staff to recruit, train and mobilize volunteers.
- Establish coaching rhythms with staff (groups and individuals).
- Incorporate regular opportunities to celebrate “wins”.
Practical Questions a leader could ask to reboot their team members:
- When was the last time you met with your leaders to celebrate progress toward their goals?
- What are the urgent areas that you need to address leading up to the fall within your leadership?
- What is the best way to empower your specific leaders?
- What can you do between now and the fall so that you launch strong?
- Who are the most critical people you need to empower before the fall?
- Who are the leaders you need to care for the most? (Who is out of the loop or struggling?
- How can you celebrate the work that has been done and launch the leaders for the fall?
See our Leadership Coaching Resources to develop the leaders around you below:
Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash
