Dave Jacobs

This is an excerpt from my latest book: Naked Man Running: 100 IDEAS that work in a small church. More excerpts coming! Get all 100 ideas here.

Catagory: People Problems, Chapter 97: How to discern if you need leaders or helpers

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I think it was John Maxwell that said, “Everything rises or falls on leadership.” The group I was a part of (The Vineyard), drilled into us the need to ‘raise up leaders.’ Some experts have even told pastors that your church will only grow as large as your base of leaders. I’m not sure that’s always true, but it might be close enough.

Often pastors want to talk to me about leadership development. And if they don’t bring up the subject, eventually I will ask them, “What are you doing to raise up new leaders?” But first I want to know how many active adults (adults, not adults and children) they have in their church, why? Because…

The smaller the church, the less the pastor needs leaders and the more the pastor needs helpers.

Now let there be no mistake about it, leaders will come from your team of helpers. Of those who are helping you, someone will stand out and catch your attention. Chances are, this could be a future leader.

The smaller your church, the more likely it will be that you have more, sometimes way more, helpers than you have leaders. You see, if you are searching for leaders, you are probably looking for a degree of maturity and commitment to Jesus and the church. You may, or may not have such a person. But if you are looking for helpers, the bar is a little lower, and you will have more to choose from. Besides, it’s better to wait until you have the right kind of person to call a leader, than it is to put someone in leadership prematurely and later regret it.

Once you call someone a ‘leader’ everything changes. Calling someone a leader changes their relationship with you and your relationship with them. Calling someone a leader changes the way your church thinks of the person. And, sorry to say this, sometimes people change, and not always for the better, once you start calling them a leader. For example, they might think this (calling them a leader) means more than you intended it to mean. I suggest that you hold off calling anyone a leader until you’ve had enough time to know if they are ‘leading’ in the way you want a leader to lead.

Do you need leaders or do you only need helpers?

Here are some steps you might find helpful:

1. If you think you need a leader, what is it specifically that they need to lead?
2. What concrete reasons do you have for thinking they would be a good leader of (fill in the blank)?
3. Do you need to call them a leader or could you call them something else?

Who are your helpers?

1. Who among your helpers stands out the most?
2. Who among your helpers comes in at second place?
3. Pray over these people and ask the Father to show you if he regards them as potential leaders.
4. Begin to pour your time into them.
5. At some point, but only if you think you have a future leader on your hands, let them know that you think they have potential.

Almost all leaders started out as helpers. Know who your helpers are, and you will eventually know who some of your future leaders will be.

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99 more ideas are waiting for you here.

This is an excerpt from my latest book: Naked Man Running: 100 IDEAS that work in a small church. More excerpts coming! Get all 100 ideas here.

Catagory: People Problems, Chapter 92: How to deal with bullies in the church

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In Junior High I was one of those skinny kids (you’d never believe it if you saw me now) who wasn’t into sports, was self-conscious, and lived in fear of being beaten up by a bully. I was very aware of who the bullies were and where they hung out. My life-preserving strategy was simple, avoid the bullies, and you won’t get beaten up. Apparently it worked because I made it through Junior High without ever getting pounded.

Pastor Jim (not his real name) had a problem on his hands, and he wanted to process it with me during one of our coaching calls. Bubba (not his real name but I thought that was a good name for a bully) had been a church board member, had taken a year off according to the church by-laws, and now was letting everyone know that when his break was over he intended to return to his position on the board, pending nomination and approval by the congregation.

“So what’s the problem?” I asked.

“None of my current board members want him back.”

“Why?”

“He’s really difficult to work with. Bubba is a big guy, boisterous, and he uses his size and words to intimidate others. People in the church are uncomfortable around him, and some have even shared that they are afraid of him. But he’s been in the church for a long time, and he has a lot of influence, even if it’s bad influence.

“Sounds like you have a bully on your hands.”

“I think you’re right.”

Church bullies come in all shapes and sizes. They might not look exactly like Bubba, but they are just as much a bully. Church bullies intimidate and threaten, overtly or covertly, consciously or unconsciously. They might use their influence or money or ministry position to pressure you and others to do what they want. Some have been known to actually threaten the pastor.

“We voted you in and we can vote you out. I was here before you came and I will be here after you’re gone.”

The only way to deal with a bully is to walk right up to them and smack them good and hard in the nose.

No…not really, I’m kidding…kind of.

Church bullies won’t stop until someone stops them. You get what you tolerate. Do you have a church bully who needs to hear, “STOP IT”?

Confronting a bully is scary and risky. It can be dangerous, but not as dangerous as letting the bully continue to bully. It’s not uncommon for me to find a pastor who is intimidated by one or two people in their church and those one or two make life miserable for the pastor and can put a damper on the over all ministry of the church.

Do you have a bully on your hands? If so, might I suggest a few steps, none of which involves slugging them in the nose?

1. Devote some time in prayer to make sure that you are really dealing with a bully and not something else. If timing isn’t everything, it’s close enough. Is the Father releasing you to confront the person now or later?

2. Find a couple wise, mature, trusted people in your church who have the same concerns about this person that you have, who will accompany you to a meeting with this person.

3. Send a well-crafted letter to this person stating that you and a couple of others would like to meet with them to discuss some concerns you have about their behavior. I like the ‘letter first’ approach because it gives the person some time to think about things and because nobody likes being surprised.

4. At the meeting get right to the point. Don’t bother buttering them up and then dropping the bomb. Give specific examples of the behavior that is unacceptable and why it’s unacceptable. Communicate to them that you are for them and would love to meet with them on a regular basis to help them grow in these areas. But be firm and clear that their behavior will no longer be tolerated.

This is scary. This is risky. They might blow out of the church and take their money and their friends with them. They might lead a campaign to get you fired. You might get fired. But there are many churches across this nation of ours that are being influenced by bullies rather than godly, humble leaders.

Someone, sometime, has to stand up to them face to face and say, “STOP IT!”

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99 more ideas are waiting for you here.

This is an excerpt from my latest book: Naked Man Running: 100 IDEAS that work in a small church. More excerpts coming! Get all 100 ideas here.

Catagory: People Problems, Chapter 88: How to deal with gossip

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I’m into my eleventh year of coaching pastors. That’s a long time to be listening to, encouraging, and resourcing pastors and church leaders. But I’m telling you, if I had twenty bucks for every time I’ve spoken to a pastor who is dealing with someone in their church that is a gossip, I’d be a rich man. Well, maybe not rich, but I would have a significant amount of discretionary fun-money in my wallet. My point is, if you have a church, you will have gossip. Everybody has to deal with it at some time. You might be dealing with it right now. Gossip (and it’s cousin Slander) are two of the most dangerous sicknesses to infect a church.

Let me share with you seven steps to deal with gossip in your church.

1. Compile a list of all the verses in the Bible where the words ‘gossip’ and ‘slander’ appear.
2. Come up with a working definition of gossip and slander.
3. Review the verses on your list and the definitions you came up with. Using a scale of one to ten (one being lowest) score the degree of problem you have in your church or with a specific individual.
4. Clearly identify the guilty party(s).
5. If you were to confront this person, what response might you expect from them?
6. What risks are you taking by confronting them and what risks are you taking by not confronting them?
7. Are you willing to get bloody over this? You probably will. Gossips and Slanderers usually don’t repent, stop, or leave the church without putting up a fight. If the one doing the gossip has a great deal of influence in the church, you could get in trouble at best, and lose your job at worst.

You might be surprised to hear me say this, but my experience in working with pastors is that they fail to deal with gossip early on, and this results in the problem growing and growing until they have a much more serious situation on their hands than when gossip originally raised its ugly head.

If you decide to confront the person don’t forget to:

1. Pray before you go.
2. Take someone with you.
3. Don’t sugarcoat the seriousness of the situation to the person.
4. Don’t be afraid to tell the person to stop it or they will have to leave.
5. Don’t forget to duck.

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99 more ideas are waiting for you here.

This is an excerpt from my latest book: Naked Man Running: 100 IDEAS that work in a small church. More excerpts coming! Get all 100 ideas here.

Catagory: Outreach, Chapter 75: How to motivate your people to share their faith

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If you’re a pastor, it’s probably been a while since you’ve been a visitor in someone else’s church. I mean a visitor in the sense of one looking for a new church home. After Ellen and I moved to Southern Oregon, it took us a couple of months to decide on a church to join. Moving put us in that unfamiliar place of looking for a church. Just think, for twenty-eight years I’d never gone church shopping. Ellen and I have always started our own churches and had people visit us, not the other way around. It’s a very interesting experience, i.e., looking at a church through the eyes of a visitor.

They say that first-time visitors decide if they are going to return to your church a second time within the first seven minutes they walk through your doors. Even if this were nothing more than a ‘church’ urban legend, I would probably agree…give or take a few minutes.

The point is, you will become blind to how your church looks to first-timers in direct proportion to how old your church is and how long you have been there. The longer you’ve been ‘open for business’, the less likely it is that you can tell what comes off as strange, confusing, or weird to those who are visiting. To remedy this, you might need to plant a spy. There are two ways you might do this.

First, find someone in your church you feel can be truly objective and understands what it is you are trying to accomplish. The following Sunday, have them come a few minutes late and take notes of everything that stands out to them that might be a turn-off to a guest. Their challenge is to see your service through the eyes of a guest, whether they are a Christian guest looking for a new church home, or an unbeliever checking your church out for whatever reason.

Or…

Second, and this is probably the best way to get some truly unbiased feedback, pay some unchurched non-believer to help you out. Have them visit your church, fill out a questionnaire, and meet with you afterward for a debriefing. Pay them $25 – $50. It will be worth it.

If we want to attract the unchurched, we must learn to see our meetings through their eyes. An attempt needs to be made to remove any obstacles that might keep them from returning, within reason of course. One of the best ways of identifying and removing said obstacles is to plant a spy.

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99 more ideas are waiting for you here.