The Fellowship Forum

The CCDA conference in Miami has concluded, and David Warren was able to share some of his reflections on the conference.  His class with Michelle on finances was well received.  David reviewed the Credit (reduction) Snowball [from Dave Ramsey] that they showed off at the conference.  Also the budgeting as a first step and the developing of emergency savings. Dave also reviewed the envelope and ledger systems for doing finances. David and Michelle will either represent this material at a Forum or at a ODM Staff meeting soon.

David’s class on the unresolved conflict downward spiral was done with Penny Salzaar (rather than Jude who was unable to be there).  These are items the staff of ODM have been talking about for sometime.  There is a very painful downward path of unresolved conflict.  Many times the problems have relationship to communication failures, unclearity, lack of focus or definition.  Talked about developing reconciliation with love and honesty.  David defined the word: troth. Leading with a Limp by Dan Alnender.

Rumor is that next CCDA will be in Cincinati.  Maybe Chicago after that, and maybe in next five years back in Denver.  One evening after the session they had a time for younger leaders (25yr to 40yr olds).  They are matching 20 of these younger leaders with mentors from their board.  The evangelical north american church is seeing growth among ethnic minorities. Several of the talks emphasized personal spirituality and maintaing their relationships with God.  Wayne Gordon challenged everyone to spend one-hour with God everyday.  Many people thought it was the best talk.  Brian McL. did not do a great job (from the estimation of our staff who attended).  John Perkins talked about gentrification and suburban is becoming more urban.  Perkins, Sider, Gordon, and Pizone wrote at book about urban, suburban connections.  The conference was good.  Anyone else have any comments on the conference?  Post them below…

Click here to see the presentation: volunteers

Today we were lead by Gary Mullins.

Gary attened Al Newells High Impact Volunteer Management seminary with some Here’s Life Inner City Folks in North Carolina.

Sacred Keys:  2 Timothy 2:2 – Be careful who you bring in.  His model: Recruiting, Screening, Equiping, Leading ( and contining to develop volunteer leaders ).  If you calculate (80-your age)x52, that shows they number of weeks you have left to live. 

BUGGSSPRAY = Biblical (Colossians 2:6-8), Urgency, Gospel, Grace, Simple, Spirit, Prayer.

Management Models: two axis graph, one with Volunteer Benefits (good feelings, etc) vs. Chruch Benefits. So the High Impact would maximize both the volunteer benefits with the church benefits. 

8 High Impact Principles
1. A volunteer is a “Child of God”
2. Human Stewardship
3. Transformed value (translating the cause)
4. Serving as a privilege
5. Capable
6. Essential
7. Fewer more productive
8. Purposeful growth

Motivating, Retention, and Effectiveness: Casting the Vision, Translating the Cause, Leading and Coaching.
Recruiting:  Communicating a Truthful, Compelling, Ministry Message to Discover Prospects. Proverbs 26:10 - Be careful who you hire.
7 C’s of Selecting:  Calling, Character, Chemistry, Competency, Commitment, Condition, Consistancy.

Training is more than orientation.  Training provides the necessary resources and communicat, develop, and transfer the attitude competencies and knowledge needed for the volunteer to do their ministry.

Developing Leadership and Leading:  Teamwork, leadership, recognition, goal setting, demonstrating value.

How do we translate the cause better?  Communication is key.  With new staff and volunteers we need to have a longer period of apprenticeship or mentorship with a more senior person to ask questions, better understand organizational values.  The feeling right now is that people just get dumped into volunteer situations.  Giving people the big picture and seeing how their activities will connect with the entire organization and how it will impact the Kingdom and their life with Christ.    Young Life volunteer opt was used as a good example.  They have pre-volunteer training and they work with people to see if they are really called to help out.  Maybe we need to have a tiered system for volunteers that has different processes for one time volunteers and those who will be with us longer.  How can we develop the right systems for bringing in volunteers and giving them what they deserve interms of input, direction, translating the vision, etc.

What systems to we need to put into place?  How will our context impact the “ideal” process? We have a number of people who want to volunteer, but we don’t know where to use them and how.  Jessica has started to be a central volunteer coordinator for ODM. So ODM ministry members need to be commited to getting Jessica the information about volunteer needs and also need to funel requests into Jessica.  Need to come together to develop a system that will work for the whole ministry. 

What’s our next step:
1.  Either appreciatation or communicating the mission.
1a. For a preschool volunteer who works with Kindergardners would get appreciation from seeing the results of her labor with current kindergardners
2.  Volunteer job descriptions.  Matt Smith offered up some examples that he’s using here (odm-youth-volunteer-description-01) and here (odm-youth-volunteer-description-02).
2a. Develop a TRYAD ministry volunteer job description.
3.  Start using 7 C’s selecting 
3a.  Maybe taping a paper with the 7 C’s to the front of applications as they are evaluated.

Hey Team, I’ve been getting these email newsletters about raising support for some time.  They are all archived on the organizations website, and you might find some of the topic inspiring, interesting, or otherwise noteworthy.  Enjoy:

http://www.thebodybuilders.net/srs/archives.html

How to make meetings more effective:

Five things to stop:
1. Stop having meetings that are only for information transfer. Write an email.
2. Stop inviting people that don’t need to attend meetings. If your not sure if someone should attend, they probably don’t need to.
3. Stop meeting when your agenda is complete even if you have more time reserved for it. Conclude the meeting and dismiss people offically. If some socializing persists, it is clear to others that they can politely get back to other tasks.
4. Stop waiting for everyone to show up. Meeting organizers should start meetings at the scheduled times. Gathering people’s attention and reviewing the agenda for a meeting takes a few minutes anyways. If the first agenda topic requires someone’s attendance who is not yet present, skip to the second topic.
5. Stop avoiding have a meeting when you really need one. If a group of people need to work together to solve a problem or improve a system, then call the meeting together. Stop working out bits and pieces in hallway conversations and put the topic on table.

Five things to start:
1. Prepare an agenda and distribute it 24 hours before a meeting. This allows meeting participants to show up for a meeting prepared to interact on the topics. Even if topics only require some mental or emotional preparation, we all perform better when we have time to think about topics before they are discussed. It also give people permission to exceed your expectation by showing up prepared to work at a meeting.
2. Take meeting minutes and distribute them after the meeting. Meeting minutes should not include every word spoken, but rather should include the important descisions, the relavent points that led to those descisions, and should create and update action items that participants agree to (see next point).
3. Record new action items and update status on outstanding action items. Action Items are those commitments to accomplish tasks that meeting members make during a meeting. They should be recorded in the meeting minutes and should be followed up on in future meetings. Accomplishing tasks is motivating to everyone. Committing to tasks that later drop through the cracks is stressful and demoralizing. Help your meeting participants succeed by keeping action items on the radar so that they can complete those things they want to do.
4. Evaluate your meeting objective and process. If you aren’t clear about the purpose of the meeting your attending, chances are neither is anyone else. There are no extra points for attending a pointless meeting, so make your time count. As you sit in your meeting evaluate your meeting contribution. Are you helping the discussion productively evaluate options and drive toward a decision? Are you adding to what is being built? Are you helping the meeting facilitator stay on topic and stick with concrete tasks that are acheivable?
5. Spend the appropriate time preparing for the meeting material. Time is the only commodity we all have to spend that we can’t buy more of. Make the most of it. If a conversation would be more constructive with background material or data, make sure to have it present. If an agenda item will require details from policy statements, bylaws, or purpose statements then have them on hand. Don’t waste 20 minutes of a meeting speculating on something that could have been easily confirmed or denied in 5 minutes of preparation. A good rule of thumb: duration of meeting (hrs) x participants (#) x 0.1 [So 1.5 hrs meeting x 5 participants x .1 = .75 hrs of prep (45 minutes)].

So there are some thought about meetings. What do you think?