Is several small things better than one big thing?

I’ve been wondering about this with youth mission trips, ever since we took a group of 40 students from five churches to Ghost Ranch in 2014. As soon as that trip was over I proposed trying more than one trip but capping attendance on each one, because I had a hunch that smaller groups of youth cost less and can do more; it’s costly and difficult to transport more than 20 youth at a time, and the options for the work they can do seems to shrink as their numbers grow. Accommodating mission trip teams and finding meaningful things for them to do is work.

No doubt there is value in the large group experience. Youth interact with, build relationships with, and learn from a greater number of their peers. Plus, being a part of a great big group gives you a feeling that you’re part of something significant.

I’m increasingly curious about this. Is the value of a large group mission trip–say more than 20 people–enough to make the added cost and the loss of flexibility worth it?

Do I get to attend that meeting?

Will I be picked for that project?

Should I speak up here?

We know we’re growing up when these questions become:

Where is the meeting where the work I want to do is happening?

What is my project and who should I invite to collaborate?

What is the truth that is asking to be told here?

Maturity means progressively thinking less about things like standing and status and more about purpose and initiative.

I’ve assembled (and disassembled. And reassembled) a lot of children’s furniture in the last month. Enough assembly might make you think you’re building something. You’re not.

You didn’t design it. You didn’t build it. You didn’t even write the assembly instructions.

You’re the guy sweating over the instructions who keeps losing his grip on the included allen key and cursing the cheap plastic end caps for the bed slats that snap in half if you so much as look at them sideways.

No, assembly is not building.

Let’s build.

“Don’t create more work for people” is a useful motto when you work on a team. If you take care of your business and let your teammates take care of theirs, toes won’t get stepped on and you won’t get blamed when things outside your portfolio go wrong.

Maybe teams are more effective when their toes are a little banged up, though.

I find most new work to require–or, at least, to greatly benefit from–collaboration. Lone Rangers can handle an existing portfolio well enough, but when a new need or opportunity presents itself, the chances are greater that an effective solution will emerge from a team of folks working on it and not just one person.

Of course, if it doesn’t work, it’s harder to know who to blame.

Two things about this: if people collaborated, then at some level it worked, regardless of the outcome. Also, blame everyone, as long as by “blame” you mean assign responsibility for learning and growth.

Maybe we’re more valuable to one another when we stray from our silos and create more work for one another.

Step on my toes, please.

When you’ve been around the sun a couple of times with program work that repeats each year, you’ve already got your checklists and your calendars in place. The start of each new program iteration requires fine tuning, editing. Circumstances may dictate that you blow the whole thing up and start new, but even then you’ll still employ the arsenal of contacts and materials you’ve amassed, only in a different configuration.

But when it’s your first time around you have to get to build all those things from scratch. You design the calendar you want, recruit volunteers in your way, craft your curriculum. There’s a ton of creative freedom there.

Except it’s only new to you. Someone was doing this work before you (and well), and the infrastructure she built didn’t leave with her. Leave aside the burden of being compared to a predecessor; putting your own spin on work that others were doing before you means that people should be able to recognize what you’re doing as roughly the same thing as what was being done before. Year one feels like a terrible time to reboot.

For goodness’ sake don’t copy what you found in the files. Only don’t ignore it.

A man came to the church last Friday looking for a piece of cardboard to fashion a sign. I went to our mail room and removed the lid from a paper box and brought it to him. He pulled a bright red Sharpie from his pocket, but rather than uncap it and begin writing, he turned and handed it to me.

“I don’t spell so good,” he said. “You write it for me.” He dictated:

Please help. Vietnam vet. Looking for work. Anything helps. God bless.

The church fights to house men and women experiencing homelessness. It feeds and clothes them, listens to them with compassion and dignity, shelters them, and advocates for strategies and policies to house more people faster.

Also, on some days, the church makes signs.

Spend enough time in a church and you will hear and observe stark contradictions. In the span of three days last week people told me both that the church had let them down so that they would never return and that the church had sparked a conversion in their life.

The challenge for leaders in churches is to hear both of these accounts, and to hear them both critically. Things far outside the church’s control are operating in these moments, and if we take all the blame or all the praise we misunderstand who we are–what we are–and what our role is in peoples’ lives. The church hasn’t the power of itself to ruin or save peoples’ lives.

The church is neither all hero or all goat. At its best the church is an accompanist in moments like these, supporting a melody we’re not writing through major and minor chords, nudging it toward resolution, even transformation. 

Yesterday was the installation service at the church I serve. I’ve been there since February, but now I’m officially installed as the Associate Pastor for Youth. The service was an apt illustration of the ways in which a new pastoral relationship simultaneously represents discontinuity and continuity, both for the congregation and the pastor. 

Discontinuity: in the Presbyterian Church, installing a pastor is an act of the presbytery, which is represented by a commission of people from other churches. Continuity: it’s a worship service. In yesterday’s case, it was a regular Lord’s Day worship service with a liturgy and sermon that would have been the same if the installation hadn’t been happening.

Discontinuity: the pastor is charged to carry out his or her work well, most often by someone chosen by the pastor for that role (I scored big time here). Continuity: installations happen weeks, even months, after that work has begun. Also, the one doing the charging probably isn’t going to stop urging the pastor toward good work once the service ends. 

Discontinuity: everything centers for a short time on one particular pastor/congregation relationship, with constitutional questions for both, charges for both, and prayers for both. Continuity: the congregation has done this before and will again. So, too, the pastor. 

Discontinuity: the pastor’s brother in-law, a conservative evangelical Bible scholar with whom the pastor has had fewer than five civil conversations about religion or politics during their 20 year relationship, reads Scripture and asks one of the constitutional questions in a moment marking a massive personal transition. Continuity: dinner the night before; lunch after; swimming with the kids tomorrow. 

Discontinuity: a new chapter. A new pastor. A new congregation. Continuity: the same call, the same grace, the same God. 

Here’s the last piece of my professional development trifecta. In addition to cohorts and networks, I’m also into coaches these days. In my limited work with new worshiping communities I noticed that many of those leaders employ coaches to great effect, but I’ve also known heads of large church staffs to have them too. I don’t have a coach presently, but I’d gladly take one; the cohort I did involved coaching, and I found my coach so valuable that I routinely call him up for advice even today, four years on. 

We all have more to learn. A good coach aids learning not only by sharing their expertise, but also by paying attention to your tendencies and your instincts, asking probing questions about where those come from, and encouraging incremental changes. I’ve seen this reap measurable short term rewards with colleagues, and I don’t doubt that the long term payoff will be exponential. 

Don’t mistake a coach for a mentor. The mentor relationship is valuable in its own way, as a path to wisdom and insight accompanied by a seasoned pro. The coaching relationship implies more programmed work around explicit goals. Both are important. 

Do you have a coach? 

Yesterday I wrote of my love for networks. I’m also falling in love with cohorts.

Cohorts are the professional development tool du jour. Typically comprised of between eight and 12 people from a discipline or field of work, cohorts are structured around peer learning and utilize skilled facilitation. Cohort gatherings I have been part of make time for group study of a subject, review and feedback on cases and issues presented by participants, and even personal sharing. They can do whatever participants need them to do, in fact. 

Things a cohort needs to work: commitment to clearly communicated expectations for participation (for example: monthly meetings for a year; everybody presents a case; presentations are limited to 20 minutes), comfortable space for meeting, and a skilled facilitator. That’s it. 

Are you in a cohort? Better yet, are you leading one?

Why not?