Last week was a big week at Westside. We were packing people in hallways because of the crowd.
Yesterday we had an email delivered at about 2:00pm with this message: STAFF MEETING PART 2; body: 2:30pm (No Worries).
That was probably not the best choice of words considering as of that meeting we are now launching 2 Saturday night services beginning Jan. 31. So “no worries.” Obviously, I’m be facetious. Two and a half weeks to get children programs, worship teams, production teams, greeters and ushers together. This is a big hurdle that we are going to have to jump over.
This will be a litmus test of our leadership.
In order to make this transition effective, I believe there are several things we need to keep in mind:
- Communicate the vision for “why” we are doing this. The why is more important than the what. When a leader communicates the what before the why the buy in becomes less. It is important that our congregation buys into the vision, because they will be the ones making the schedule changes to move to a different experience time to open up seats and to provide the ministry in the these new gatherings.
- Next, we need to communicate the “how.” We must come up with a strategy, thinking about all the details. Since this means restructuring teams, we need to optimize our teams’ talent and time so we can execute at a Sunday level.
- We need to remember that we lead by example. This is probably just as important, if not more important than communicating the vision behind the “why.” We lead by example. People won’t follow someone who says one thing and does another. A visionary who doesn’t model what he asks is like a person driving on a flat tire. He’s going to get no where fast.
- We Pray, and ask others to pray with us.“Unless the Lord builds a house,
the work of the builders is wasted. Unless the Lord protects a city, guarding it with sentries will do no good.” Psalm 127:1
So we will see what lies ahead. There will be some crazy days, late nights, busy weekends, but most important new names in an important Book. I like that thought.
But I believe it will happen. We’ll see how together we are as a church and how well our leaders can cast a vision that people can buy into and