It’s now a day after Catalyst and I’m sitting in my Wayne and Elaine’s living room in Gainesville just taking it easy. I think everyone else is napping, we are all exhausted from the last 2 days. It was an intense time, with great music and even better teaching.
I’m still processing everything but there is an over-riding theme that I got out of it, from several of the speakers. To be a good leader and an effective leader and a leader that can effectively build a team, whether it’s staff or volunteers, you need to put the relationships first.
Do you get this? Relationships are far more important than many other things. It’s more important than skill or resources or anything else. What does this mean, in real terms? How do you make it practical?
Put people first. Take care of your people. Take an interest in their life, or as someone this week said, make what’s important to them important to you. So, if someone just had a baby, that is clearly the focus of their life and the most important thing in their world, so take an interest in that. Whatever it is, make an effort to find out what’s important and take an interest. Take some time to get to know your volunteers and your staff.
This point was made by more than one of the speakers and it hit close to home for me too. For quite awhile now, I have said that it’s all about the relationship. When I do consulting for a church or business, I work hard to build that relationship. Also, I was recently charged by my church leadership to be the go-to guy for all things tech in the church, including building teams of volunteers for various things, and in this initial discussion, we talked about things that I could do to make the current team members feel valued and appreciated.
It’s important. Value your people, appreciate them.
By the way, please pray for my team for tomorrow morning, we are running very thin. Mary and I fly home later tomorrow and there are several others gone this weekend too. I have been scrambling this week to line things up. I don’t have any depth in my team yet, the majority of us serve every week, so when someone is gone, there’s a hole. It happens that this weekend, 3 out of 5 of us are gone, plus the 2 main worship leaders. So pray for those that are left, I will be.
We’ll be going to Browns Bridge Community Church tomorrow, which is a satellite campus of Northpoint. Not only did we hear Andy Stanley speak twice in the last 2 days, he will be live at Browns Bridge tomorrow.
Thanks for the 411 on the meeting. I do see God moving on leaders to be more “relational” especially for the new comers to the church. When they feel genuine concern / relevance from the people at a new church – they want to return.
Great post, Jim! You got me where I’m at.