Brian Dodridge

Manziel or Manning Leadership In Church?

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto®

Recently, our church has been in an unprecedented place. We have opportunities we’ve never had before. They’re God-given, but they’re also work – and in this particular instance, God didn’t really give us a heads-up so we could fully implement the work into our usual strategic plan. We’ve had to adapt, and use a different playbook than we’re used to. We’ve had to become like Johnny Manziel.

If you’re not familiar with Johnny Manziel (aka Johnny Football), he was a talented, get-it-done quarterback, known for his unorthodox playing style (and for winning the Heisman Trophy). Although he was undersized, he used his speed well, and was able to score touchdowns by breaking tradition with orthodox quarterbacking plays.

His playing didn’t always look pretty, but he got the touchdown.

Sometimes, your church staff will have to operate this way. You may have to break policies, or bypass typical channels of communication – for the sake of providing more people an opportunity to hear about Jesus.

This playing style isn’t as familiar for our church staff. Historically, our leadership has striven to see what’s coming next, and get prepared through prayer and intense planning. We set our direction, and then guide our volunteers, staff, and budget to achieve that direction. Our planning and mindset is more like quarterback Peyton Manning’s style. We want everyone to know their role in the game – and if by chance God calls us to change direction, we’ll call an audible, “Omaha!”

But this Summer, we’ve had to adjust our methodology. We’ve needed to embrace the atypical position we are in – because it has been obvious, it’s God-given. As a leader, I’ve needed to give permission for our staff to “Manziel it” for a season.

I admit, I’m not wired like Johnny Football. I’m wired more like Peyton Manning. I strive to do my best work in advance, by planning out a path of action, and even making some contingency plans. I do think God is honored by advanced work – but I also think He is honored when we change the way we play, in obedience to Him. When God’s Spirit moves, you follow… regardless of whether it was in your church’s playbook, or not.

It’s often when we’re out of our comfort zone that God is able to show us how powerful He is. As a leader, you need to be comfortable with this idea. For our staff, Manzieling it isn’t sustainable – but with God’s favor, for a season we’ve been asked score our touchdowns in a different way than we’re used to.

There’s a time for your church be like Peyton Manning, and there’s also a time to be like Johnny Manziel. Different styles and strategies, but the same ultimate goal. In the case of your church, and my own, the ultimate goal is that God would accomplish His work, regardless of our timing, planning, or abilities… and that each of our wins are His wins, Kingdom wins.

Remedying Bad Meetings

There’s a lot of leadership talk about minimizing meetings. People “loathe” them and church staffs are not immune to this sentiment. I contend those who loathe them are used to bad meetings, but meetings can be good. If maximized, they can produce far greater results than an email or individual “offline” meetings ever can.

But, it’s got to be a good meeting.

I’m pro-meeting. Well, I’m pro-good meeting. If your staff culture already has a meeting avoidance attitude, you’ll have to earn your right with good meetings. Here are some tips:

1. Use meetings for strategic discussions and email for operational items

Many operational items can be accomplished through email. So use that tool. But my experience says strategic discussions happen best in group settings. Collaborative thinking is a key ingredient to well thought out strategy.

2. Allow for margin between meetings

Some days I stack meeting upon meeting, which is poor time management and it means I’m not at my best for my next meeting. Space between meetings allows you to recalibrate, review your upcoming agenda, record output from previous meeting (a key follow-up for meetings you lead) and even check a few emails to make sure you can stay focused in your next meeting.

3. Respect the beginning time and ending time

I’ve blogged on this more than once. Speed of the leader, speed of the team. You owe it the meeting’s content and the people you’re involving to watch this time issue closely. You not only need to be mindful of promptness yourself, but hold those accountable who don’t respect it.

4. Include prayer

Sometimes prayer at the beginning is what is needed. Other times prayer at the end. But don’t hesitate to schedule prayer time during the meeting. Corporate prayer is a powerful thing. And when you’ve created space for it, it shows how much you value it.

5. Be prepared

When someone comes to a meeting you’re leading, a goal worth having is them thinking, “Wow, they were prepared.” That means documents were ready, you had given thought to the topic, and you have an objective for the meeting. If you don’t prove the meeting is important you, they won’t find it important either.

6. Make sure everyone knows their role

Are they there to receive assignments? Give input? A voter in a consensus decision? I feel much better about attending a meeting when I know what’s expected of me. If I know what’s expected, I can be prepared and also not be let down when I find out they have a role for me in the meeting other than what I was expecting.

7. Know when to cancel a meeting

Many meetings will be on a routine schedule, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be cancelled. When the agenda doesn’t call for an in-person meeting, cancel it.

8. Use the meeting to make your staff better

Consciously plan meeting content to develop those attending. This has been modeled well for me in the past and in many of my meetings, I plan portions of the meeting for teaching opportunities. We’re not doing “trust falls” every meeting, but I hope most of my meetings provide those in attendance to be a little more effective in their roles.

Creating A Church Personnel Budget

Whether the personnel portion of your church’s budget is $50,000, $500,000 or 5,000,000, it should have at its core, some common elements.

If you’re involved in putting together your church’s personnel budget, here are key components and tactical steps you need to include (you can see it graphically here).

Step 1

Know and show your personnel budget number for the current year (ex. $200,000).

Step 2

Make any changes you’ve made to the budgeted amount throughout the current year (ex. you made a new hire and paid them $5,000 more than you had budgeted for the position. And you increased custodial hours from PT to FT, adding $14,000). You’ve then added $19,000 mid-year dollars to your personnel budget.

Step 3

This gives you your Revised budget number (in this example, $219,000).

Step 4

Estimate your insurance costs for the new year. An insurance broker can often anticipate increased costs based on what they’re seeing in the market. They can provide you the percentage increase for your plan before actual increases are determined (an estimate is usually available in late summer). For the sake of example, let’s show your needed reserve for insurance to be $6,000. (Obviously, if you’re church does not offer heath insurance, you can skip this step.)

Step 5

Determine your anticipated merit raise figure. While I don’t affirm the idea of a pre-determined % increase for everyone, and instead, prefer a merit increase that ties into a performance management system, you can still have a percentage as the average increase.

So let’s assume that on average, you want to be able to provide a 3% merit increase. You’ll do the math to add 3% to the base salary portion of your personnel budget (remember to add in the impact of merit on retirement benefits if you provide for them).

Step 6

Show any anticipated next year personnel hires. Or if you’re reducing your staff, you’d show that reduced number.

Step 7

Add these steps together. This will give you your next year’s personnel budget figure, you’d begin with your “revised current year budget,” add “health insurance,” add merit raise dollar figure, and add any new hires (or reduce any eliminations) to get to your total proposed next year’s personnel budget.

Here’s an example of how to show these steps in a personnel budget document.

The personnel part of a church budget is typically a large percentage of a church’s budget. So you’ll need to justify it by having a well thought out procedure and explanation.

Having this prepared budget will help you as you take the budget to your church’s decision makers. For other suggestions for presenting an overall compelling church budget, see this previous post.

Happy budgeting.

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Manziel or Manning Leadership In Church?

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto®

Remedying Bad Meetings

Creating A Church Personnel Budget

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