Monday at North Point Church

Today our team divided up into breakout areas by interest group. I am so grateful that our church has the strength to be able to send several of our leaders in key areas to attend this event. In addition, several spouses made arrangements to attend “on their own dime,” and they were full participants in the entire event. We were better represented than any other church at this event! Our team attended the following breakout groups:

STUDENT MINISTRIES (grades 6-12) - Paul Steurnagel and Meredith Steurnagel
WORSHIP SERVICE - Roxey Collier, Mike Eason, Jay McKeown
CHURCH ADMINISTRATION - Robert Stutes, Donna Reyes, Walt Haralson
SMALL GROUPS - Kathy Eason, Amy Haralson, Philip Shackelford
CHILDREN’S MINISTRIES - Marcy Shackelford, Sandra McKeown, Betsy Stutes (this group further subdivided into elementary, preschool, and Kidstuf, which is a special event that involves both kids and their parents)

We will be discussing ways for us to share some of the principles we have learned with the rest of the church family.

My notes will, at this point, only cover the breakout session that I attended, on church administration - which is really designed to cover the principles that affect North Point Church during “the rest of the week” - Monday through Friday. I will only hit the highlights, because there was a lot!

One of the most powerful statements was this one - “Your organization is perfectly designed to deliver the results you are currently achieving.” Sometimes those inside the system have the hardest time seeing what is distinct about the culture of their church.

At North Point, they try hard to lean more “entrepreneurial” than “bureaucratic.” It is important to remember that having people of character and integrity is more important than having the most finely tuned system.

Here are the key principles they use during the week:

1. THINK WE…NOT ME. It is natural to think in terms of how a church’s actions affect me. To be healthy, we must focus on how it affects the whole organization.

2. POLARITY MANAGEMENT. Some problems are solvable. Others may have no definitive answer, but simply remain polarities to keep in appropriate balance. (Example: Should we add more staff or add new programs/ministries?)

3. CHOOSE TRUST OVER SUSPICION. In our culture, we will err on the side of trust. In working together as a team, we must give each other trust - AND we must also give each other trustworthiness.

4. PICK UP THE PHONE. Sometimes we over-react to an issue by setting up a new policy or sending out a bulletin or memo to a large group of people, when we might could have simply picked up the phone to talk to the people involved.

5. MANAGE SYSTEMS…NOT PEOPLE. We tend to blame people to explain problems. The behaviors may be caused by underlying systems that are largely invisible.

Well we will come back full of ideas and chattering galore….so please bear with us. We will be prayerfully looking at appropriate ways to glean that which God would have us to learn from this experience!

Our team is back in Bellville tonight, with the exception of Betsy and me. We took one additional night - and we will be back late tomorrow night. Thank you for your prayers during this time away. It has been busy - with many early hours and late hours - but it has been very fruitful!