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What Lice Taught Me About Evangelism

Last school year, my wife called to tell me she was picking up my second grader from school because she had lice.

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto®

My only previous knowledge of lice came from elementary school where anyone who had lice was considered “not cool,” and we assumed they never washed their hair. Well, my daughter washes her hair regularly, and I tend to think she’s pretty cool.

With new knowledge on lice from the school nurse, the delousing began.

It was a huge task. We vacuumed, sprayed, and washed everywhere lice might live and bagged things up—and that was just our household items. Then, we had to clean out the lice from the actual carrier (daughter) and work hard to make sure the other three kids and my wife didn’t get lice. (I was fairly safe. See picture on website for reason).

Here’s what I learned about lice that helped me think about sharing Christ:

Lice don’t jump. You actually have to make contact. While the Spirit can, we can’t intuit Jesus to others from far away. We have to be close enough for contact. We have to do life with them and share Christ out of our common context. Like avoiding lice, we might be guilty of trying to steer away from those who are far from God in fear that we might catch their sinfulness (by the way, we’ve already caught sin, but we just have to accept the permanent antedate).
Lice are effective at invading everything. We cleaned all of our surfaces. Multiple times. Bagged fifty stuffed animals. For being small, lice are hard to ignore. In appropriate ways, we should inundate people’s lives with our love for Christ. A passing glance will likely not do. We have to be present in all areas. People should have to work hard to ignore our presence and the Holy Spirit’s working.
They don’t stop. They’re committed, those lice. It was multiple rounds of the delousing before they went away for good. A simple rebuff wasn’t going to deter them. What if we were as committed as lice? Only stopping our pursuit when the Holy Spirit convicted us?

Lice are highly contagious. I believe someone already took the clever title “Contagious Christianity,” but the author was right and we should be a part of the contagion.

Here’s to evangelism, lice-style.

The Humble Brag Among Ministers

It happens over lunches. It happens via social media. It happens at conferences and definitely at denominational conventions. It’s often back-handed or passive aggressive, but bottom line: it’s bragging.

And its most popular form is the humble brag.

The Urban Dictionary defines humble brag as “When you, usually consciously, try to get away with bragging about yourself [or church] by couching it in a phony show of humility.”

Whether you’re talking about your personal accomplishments, or your church’s attendance figures or square footage, it’s annoying and potentially sinful.

Can you imagine the Apostles coming back together after being out in different groups baptizing and saying things like, “Well, Peter and I baptized 21 people today”? Then Judas and Matthew one-up them by saying, “Well, we baptized 35.”

Actually, I can imagine this happening. But I also believe that if it did and Jesus heard it, then Jesus called them on it.

Those in positions of larger influence are often even more susceptible to humble brags. If you’re in a larger church than those you’re in a conversation with, not everyone needs to know. If you’ve found success in whatever you, resist the urge to utter humble brags. Simple, be humble.

Unless you’re answering a direct question, I can’t think of a reason to to announce the number of people in your congregation or any other measurement stick you may keep track of.

And even when asked a question, begin your response with sayings like:

• “God has allowed us to do some pretty cool things…”

• “On a typical weekend, we average (use a conservative #)…”

• “I don’t know what we had here last week, but there was this really cool God-thing that happened…”

You get the idea.

No matter the topic, your bragging is not of Christ. And doing it in the form of a humble brag doesn’t make it any less of a brag. Bragging often leads to cause the sin of jealousy to others. It can influence other ministers to pursue the things of this world, rather than God’s desires.

“May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

– Apostle Paul, the Bible, Galatians 6:14

On-boarding Staff Process

As a hiring manager or leader, there are two reasons you might need to review this post:

1.) You don’t hire new employees often, so you have no system and can’t easily remember all the steps that need to take place each time you do have an opportunity to hire someone.

2.) You’re hiring a lot of new employees, so you need a system and documentation to keep the on-boarding steps consistent.

The goal is to make sure everyone is doing their part to welcome and prepare for new employees. Being prepared on day one and having an orientation in place says a lot to the new employee about your church or organization.

On and Off-Boarding

On-boarding and Orientation Task sheets need to have the tasks a new employee will need in the first six months. On ones I’ve created I have headings of: Before they arrive; First day; Week one; First month; and 120 days. (At the bottom of this post I’ve listed examples of tasks to include on yours.)

The goals is for those we assign these tasks to is to complete the task in the time frame (“before they arrive, first day,” etc). You need to determine which key departments and/or persons need to receive the first e-mail, alerting the staff of a new employee’s anticipated arrival. Then, those people review it to see what they’re responsible for making happen.

This document can be online shared document o so the person responsible can easily see and then mark off what they’ve done. and can be as simple as the person in charge keeping a document and emailing out assignments.

I think it’s also helpful to show the new employee the actual on-boarding sheet. This way they can see what will be done for them, or downloaded to them, and they also can see who they’ll be interacting with for the task.

An on-boarding document can be very simple and only have a few tasks, or it can scale to a very complex matrix of all that a new employee will need to be exposed to as they begin at your church. Start simple, and as you discover more needed and repetitive tasks, add to it.

I’m also a fan of an off-boarding document. It serves the church and the person leaving. It can include things like “Remove them from website,” “return keys and church credit card,” “complete exit interview,” and of course, “host a party.”

A good on and off boarding system will allow your church to not miss any important details, be consistent from employee to employee, and help a supervisor to not have to start at ground zero each time (“what do I have to do with a new employee?”

Sample on-boarding tasks:

Communicate to church the new arrival
Order needed tools for them (business cards, computer, furniture, etc)
Prepare personnel paperwork for them to complete on day one
Make buildings keys
Provide key dates for them to be involved in for first 60 days
Add them to New Member Class invite
Set-up key meetings (1:1 with pastor, ministry leaders)
Take picture and write bio for website
Establish goals for day 60 and 120
Order church credit card
Provide them access and training for Church Management System
Provide tour of buildings

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