12 Witnesses

Dean Kamen, creator of the Segway, has a new invention that is amazing. He developed it at the request of the US Government in order to help wounded Iraq Veterans who are coming home without arms. It is a prosthetic arm that has highly sensitive tactile ability.

Follow the link, watch the video. It is amazing.

I thought I’d pull out a few more pictures from our trip to Vietnam that were in the Photoblog, but didn’t make it to the main site. Just in case you didn’t make it over there when we were overseas.

First a message left on a swing at an orphanage in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Then another picture of the night train from Hanoi to Sapa, Vietnam. This one shows the contrast between the light in the train - the more blue, tungsten light - and the amber light that created an almost surreal atmosphere in the train yard.

Here’s the open market that Sapa is known for with all kinds of interesting things.

Here’s something interesting that you might find at the market: Marinating Chicken Feet. Yummy.

And finally, a stairway out of the market place to one of the main streets in Sapa.

Searching for staff is, obviously, crucial. After having been through the process 6 times, I have picked up a few things, and I am sure that most of you have as well.

The committee is so important. You don’t want anyone who is a “delegate” of a person or group of people in the church. Nothing will grind the committee to a halt and frustrate the church faster than someone serving a small interest. Rather, it is vital that everyone be willing to put the good of the church first. This will lead to unity, the necessity of which is absolute.

Next, the committee needs to have a clear job description from which to work, rather than a nebulous idea of what is to be expected. In some churches, the job description is given by the Personnel Committee, in some it is left to the Search Committee and in others it is determined by the church through a survey.

One other thought I’ll pass on is that the search committees I’ve worked with, and having served in six churches, you can imagine that I have worked with far more committees throughout the process, very few of them had their act together when it came to finding out about the candidate. Most of them asked leading questions like, “Do you believe that Youth Ministers should spend time in the schools?” Clearly, this is a conviction of the Committee and they want to know if you share it. However, they have asked in a way that virtually demands a “yes” answer, so no matter what they get, they won’t really find out if this conviction is a high priority for the candidate.

If they really want to know just how important this is, they will ask something like, “What are the practical ways you pursue integrating yourself in the lives of the students in your group?” If school visits come up, then you know it is a priority for them as well.

An even better way to ask the question is this, “Describe your typical week’s activities.” Or even, “Give us a ‘Reader’s Digest’ version of the last two weeks of your ministry where you are.” You are much more likely to find out where their heart is without leading them to your heart. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t suspect ministerial candidates of intentionally misrepresenting themselves. I just think that everyone is putting their best foot forward and when you let someone know that you want to hear about “x” then that is what they are going to talk about. The only problem is that you run the risk of not really finding out who they are.

Oh, and don’t forget the background checks. Absolutely essential nowadays. But be forgiving as you look at credit stuff. Unless they show that they are still in the throws of bad stewardship, then you shouldn’t hold mistakes made a long time ago with too much credence. After all, it takes a long time to get out of credit trouble, and in our culture, young people get into credit trouble soooo fast. Even Christians.

Finally, the committee should understand the position and the skills necessary. If they don’t, they should research it diligently and interviewing other staff about it is actually quite helpful. Case in point, a previous church’s Personnel Committee hired a secretary for the church when we were without a “Senior Pastor.” They didn’t ask me a word about the situation at all. Now, the position really needed someone with Office Software expertise, but they didn’t know that. They hired the best receptionist in their opinion, and I think they were accurate in determining that. She was a phenomenal receptionist, but she didn’t know squat about word processing, putting together a newsletter, using spreadsheets, etc. Meanwhile, they let a highly qualified lady go because, though she was a new Christian, she hadn’t quit smoking, yet. She has now, but she has also moved on to other things.

When the lady they hired came in, she didn’t know what to do, so I had to train her on everything, which took me away from my own job. She got better, but she is still way behind where the other lady was years ago. I found out later that the extent of their questioning her about computer skills was to ask here if she knew much about computers. Her answer was that she used them every day - which was true. She filled out certain forms in a data entry process every day. Obviously, that was not a sufficient evaluation of what was needed.

Translation: If you are hiring for a position, find out about that position from your other staff members, then learn how to accurately evaluate the skills involved.

What else would you add? What mistakes have you seen committees make? What tools have you seen be effective?

Where should the job description originate? How much involvement should the congregation have throughout the process? How often should the committee report to the church? How secretive should the committee be?

How much time should you aim for when starting a search process? Do you give the committee a budget? If so, how much? If not, how do you fund the search?

What is the best way to let your need be known? Do you advertise? If so, where?

Next week: The Resume

[edit]

Hey, Brenda Smith from the Kentucky Baptist Convention has posted some great resources that the KBC has provided.  I am reproducing the links that she gave here, just in case you aren’t getting the comments.

Pastor Search Committee Workbook

Staff Search Committee Workbook

Thanks, Brenda and the KBC for being Kingdom minded and sharing these resources!

[/edit]

In the previous installment of of church staffing I discussed, briefly, the difference between the desire of education versus experience. I asked more questions that inspired a few really good comments, but let me go ahead and give my full thoughts on the subject.

First of all, I admit that I took an incredibly complex subject and reduced it to “this or that” in hopes of generating some discussion, which it did. This blog existed for so long as a personal opinion piece that the community aspect has not rooted well. The longest discussions we had here, though they were mostly genteel, were also adversarial. Without controversial subjects, discussion here has struggled since I turned the blog from SBC politics. So… I have been pretty excited to get some fairly good responses on these last couple of posts on Church Staffing.

Still, I have some thoughts on it myself and would like to give those to you. I would love for you to respond, though these types of pieces don’t often generate as much response. Nevertheless, here goes…

The education v experience formula is not an issue of balance, or if it is balance it is not the kind of balance that one might find on a see-saw, with a fulcrum at one mostly central point and two things holding the tension from opposite ends. There are not two things here: Education and Experience.

When we speak of experience, what kind of experience is that? Mission field? Youth Ministry? Children’s Ministry? Senior Pastor? Lead Pastor? Volunteer?

Likewise, when we speak of education, what kind would that be? Bible College? Seminary? MDiv? ThM? PhD? DMin? Which Seminary? SBC better, or worse? What about self educated men? What about online education?

I have known people with formal educations that were not the brightest. They merely jumped through the hoops. On the other hand, Marty Duren is self educated. There is a difference between uneducated and self educated, you know. Having a degree is not always the test of mental capacity.

And then there’s experience. I postulate that my 10 years of experience as Associate Pastor of a County Seat FBC, was definitely prepared me for the position of Lead Pastor in many ways better than serving as the Senior Pastor of a 25 member church in a smaller town. Yet, in some ways, it surely would have taught me different things.

I think the particular job, church, town and vision for the future all create a mixture of need
that also needs a particular balance of backgrounds and much, much more. In short, the staff position is like a recipe that needs just the right balance of this, that and the other. The next question is, how do you determine that recipe?

That’s up next.

PS - Marty is about to wrap up his Bachelor’s Degree and I think it is onward and upward from there.  I feel sorry for all the twenty something kids that are getting the bell curve busted by him.

So I thought I’d show you a few pictures from Vietnam that I had never uploaded before. Weird thing is, they are some of my favorites.

If you like ‘em and want to see more, then check out the photoblog.

At the top of this building is the City View Cafe in one of the night time hotspots in Hanoi, Vietnam.

This is the view at night from the balcony of the City View Cafe atop that building.

Standing in the middle of a swarm of traffic in that intersection, I caught this young boy crossing the street.

Finally, this is the Night Train to Sapa that I mentioned before, but never did get a picture up capturing the amber awesomeness of this transportation staple in Vietnam.

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We had quite a bit of traffic on the first Church Staffing post this week and a few comments. In fact, that post is still dragging lurkers at a pretty decent clip, so it must have hit a nerve, or at least been moderately interesting.

So the last one was primarily about part and full time staff. How about another balancing act?

Which do you value more? Education or experience?

Do you qualify education? Seminary over Bible College? PhD v DMin v MDiv v MDivBL? Do you check grades?

Do you value one Seminary over another? Why?

How does experience factor in? It can’t mean nothing, so what does it mean? Does mega church intern beat small church Chief?

I know guys who, during Seminary, took tiny churches in the boondocks because they wanted the title “Senior Pastor” on their resume, while I volunteered as a Youth Worker and Sunday School teacher at a local church.  Know what?  It worked.  They got taken more seriously by a lot of search committees and went to larger churches than I did.  Which is fine, because I went where I needed to go and served that church for almost ten years.

I’ll also add this controversial thought:  Most PhD’s I know have been decent profs (not all), but I’ve rarely known a PhD that made good preachers or pastors. Settle down, I’m not saying all academics are too in their head to pastor, but anecdotally, I’ve seen academics thrive best in academia.

So, where’s the balance?

Here are a couple of links to free things on the internet that can help you.

You Send It - This is a site that will allow you to upload large files that you can’t send through email.  The free version will give you one file at a time at 100 MB.  If you pay, you can upload many files at a time and at larger capacities.

Stockvault - This is a website with free stock photos that you might use as power point sermon illustrations, etc.

Hope you like them.

As our church seeks to staff for the future, the issue of Full and Part Time Staffing has been a part of our discussion.

When trying to balance what the church can afford and what the church wants, where do you draw the line?

How do you balance your staffing?

How do you pay for it?

What are your thoughts?

This is a post of a few more artistic images that I took at Bonnie’s Graduation, but it is using the the NextGen Gallery plugin, with which I am experimenting. It is highly rated, but this is my first time using it, so I’ll have to write again later to let you know how it is.

Also, it came with slideshow and gallery link widgets to put in the sidebars, but I’ve opted not to include them in order to keep the load time down.

‘Nuff talk. Here’s the gallery:

[Show as slideshow]

[update]

Well, I couldn’t resist the slideshow widget, which is not a very big load and doesn’t slow the rest of the site down. I really like the plugin. It is highly configurable and works tons better than the gallery that comes with Wordpress 2.5. The slideshow will continue to pick up all photos I put up from now on. 5 Stars.

Just a couple of pictures celebrating my lovely bride’s Grajimication with a Master of Education Administration.

You can check out some other pictures at my Photoblog.