Wheels Off Work in the Summer
7 questions I’m asking this summer
We are in the dog days of summer at LIFT Church. Summers in Ontario are hot, humid, and in many ways sleepy. Canadian culture shuts down for July and August as people take advantage of the very brief season of nice weather before the days are short and the weather is awful.
I was visiting Western University a couple of weekends ago, and it was a ghost town. Despite being one of the largest universities in Canada, there was hardly a soul on campus. Nevertheless, some of our team had a lovely and very productive conversation with a Buddhist who was interested in Christianity.
Despite the overall slower pace, summer is probably our busiest season as a leadership team. At the end of August, we run our major team training weekend for all of our missionaries and members to be inspired, equipped and encouraged for the season of fall ministry.
We also tend to do a lot of “wheels-off” work on our structures and leadership systems. I thought it might be interesting to share what we are working on behind the scenes and how we use the quiet season to prepare for maximal effectiveness heading into our more important ministry season, from an evangelism standpoint, in September.
Culture:
Have we observed cultural trends, and are we adapting what we are thinking about to best intersect with those trends?
I’ve personally spent a fair bit of the summer trying to wrap my head around what is happening culturally. I don’t yet have anything brilliant to share, but reflecting on the state of our ministry context and adapting to those changes is an important part of the process.
Are we preparing anything new, or are we running the same old playbook?
The cadence of resetting over the summer allows us to naturally jettison old ideas that are no longer working while brainstorming new ideas to engage on mission.
I’m a bit of a believer that we should be regularly making changes, tweaks and running experiments while we live on mission. I have a few experiments that I’m hoping to run in the fall to see if we can learn… stay tuned, maybe I’ll share our findings here.
Leadership:
Do we have the right people in the right seats?
To borrow the famous Jim Collins metaphor from Good to Great, we often evaluate our various leadership role assignments over the summer to make sure we have the right people in the right seats. We try not to make too many changes mid-season so we can focus on outreach.
Did we take time to rest appropriately so that we can push hard?
To make the most of the coming harvest season, it will take a lot of hard work. Long days, late nights, consecutive ministry days and lots of relational output.
We encourage our leaders to make sure they’ve taken a proper rest in these months so that we can have the energy to invest.
Groups (Simple Churches):
Are all of our Simple Churches positioned for impact?
Are the leaders energized with a spread of new leaders stepping up?
Is there a concrete plan for integrating non-believers?
A huge amount of the focus is on making sure our Simple Churches are set up for success. A big part of this is our summer training program for missionaries, who will take on new roles in the fall. The second part of this is making sure we have the best setup in terms of existing leaders, up-and-coming leaders, new believers, and non-believers.
We’re often trying to balance strength of the group versus maximal leadership development opportunities and entry points for non-believers.
This year, we’ve been encouraging strength as opposed to breadth. Some years we’ve tended to favour more groups, even if some are a bit under-resourced. This year, we’ve been encouraging our leaders to organize so they can a bit stronger than usual, even if it means fewer points of entry for people.
Church Culture:
Have we adapted for the new context of our church?
A church is not a static entity - praise God! Because the church is growing, multiplying new churches, launching new families and discipling new believers, there are always some changes.
There are lots of beautiful changes such as new children, new believers or new campuses. There are also difficult challenges such as running into bureaucratic challenges with venues, relational friction or personal difficulties.
Taking stock of the lay of the land is part of our summer rhythm to make sure that we can focus on reaching effectively in the fall. We don’t want to be distracted dealing with in-house issues when there is a world that the Lord has given us a mission to reach!
Where have we grown weary of fighting the fight or allowed cracks in the culture, convictions or character to set in?
Perhaps this last one is the one that often takes my attention; I often see my role as “chief encouragement officer”. As I go around, I try to remind people of why we do what we do, and more importantly, why it matters in light of eternity. It’s very easy for passion to give way to routine, which can give way to malaise, which is deadly.
So, we return again to the scriptures and ask for a Holy Spirit renewal to enable us to continue to be faithful to that which we have been called: to make disciples of all nations.