One of my favorite activities as a church planter is dreaming. In this line of work dreaming is not a waste of time, a luxury, or a simple creative exercise. God honoring, Holy Spirit inspired dreaming is, in fact, absolutely essential. Without just sitting around staring off into space dreaming Deep Water would have never been started, most of the the creative and different things we do wouldn't exist and we would run the risk or being "just another" instead of what God has called us to be. And without dreaming I wouldn't be about to sink some serious cash and manpower (personpower?) into what I have begun to affectionately refer to as "the Beer tent".
That said, one of the things I often dream about but don't ever seem to come to any real clarity on is staffing. I often wonder, as we grow and develop what would be the most logical "next hire".
Should we go the more traditional route of a secretary / administrative assistant type set up. Then we need to get an office space, and equipment, and is there really that much admin to do anyway?
Would it be in kids ministry to increase our appeal to young families and to allow greater opportunity for that ministry to thrive despite facility limitations. Of course our vision doesn't really call for anything beyond sunday morning programming though.
Is it worship. Someone who could grab creative ball and run with it and make Sunday mornings everything they possibly can be, someone to front the band and train the tech crew and pump up the video end of things. Of course I love that stuff and am experienced at it and if it's gonna line up with my message I have to be fairly involved anyway.
I could just hire someone I really like, who I think gets the vision and mission of Deep Water and has a well rounded skill set and figure out job description as we go.
Or maybe it's something else, everything else. Small groups, leadership development, connection, compassion, ministry training, administration.
It's not a decision we need to make today, but hopefully soon and when the time comes God will make the path clear. I have no idea who it would be - but man it's fun to dream.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Who's Next...
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5 comments:
Cool. I always like the philosophy of Collins in Good to Great: Get the right people on the bus, then figure out what seat they go in.
I like Collins theory as well although I'm guessing it's more practical when you have a staff bus as opposed to a staff scooter : )
That said I think I'd start with who should be on the bus and then work towards "who do we have the best seat for".
If it wasn't for Greg (love that guy!) this'd be an easy decision. First priority, a book keeper.
It is tough as well because you can also get into the whole, staff to keep up with the growth or staff for growth as well which is always a tricky issue as well.
Also with the first hire (assuming it is full time) I think you need to go with more of a genearlist then a technician, someone that can do 2 or 3 or 20 different things as well. It is hard to justify someone that focuses only on one area for the first hire.
For me I would prioritize the positions in order of what I would like to fill and if the right person does not come a long for position #1 and a right person comes for position #2 you go for it (Get the right person on the bus).
When we moved to Indiana, we really wanted to go to the "Crux" (similar to Deep H2o). The preaching and worship were very good, but they had almost zip for kids. That was the deal breaker.
I think I would go after a thoroughbred leader who could recruit and train a volunteer corps of ministry leaders. I'd probably be tempted to also find a worship/media/video/tech/web freak and offer them nothing but vision and an air mattress for at least a year.
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