Archive for the ‘Staffing’ Category

The Prodigy Program At Elevation Church

One of the questions we get asked the most is, “What is your secret to your success?” The honest answer is there isn’t one. There isn’t a marketing machine or a boardroom full of church-growth experts. We are simply a church with a singular vision on reaching people far from God, a faith that is fully reliant on Him moving on our behalf, and an obedience to Jesus’ call on our lives.

We’ve learned a lot over the past seven years and we feel like we have plenty of experiences to share and teach other new young leaders. Not necessarily the best way or the only way, but the way we do ministry. That’s the heart behind the Prodigy Program. Check out this short video as Pastor Steven explains our new six-month, hands-on apprenticeship beginning in January 2013.

Click here to apply and find out more about the Prodigy Program.

Want to work at Elevation Church?

Guest Blogger: Wade Joye

Let me go ahead and say that I have the best job in the whole world. I really can’t believe I get to do this and that I have a front row seat for this move of God.

You could say the same thing soon. There are several job openings currently and we are looking for the best of the best. If that is you, we have positions ranging from being the Project Manager for the Executive Pastor to producing the worship experience at one of our campuses.

The current positions that are open are:

Communications Director

Producer

Project Manager – Creative Department

Project Manager – Executive Pastor

Student Small Group Coordinator

If you are interested, go here or email jobpostings@elevationchurch.org.

Hungry

(This may not be one of my most well-developed posts, but I was thinking through this concept, and thought I’d post it raw-as is.)

When selecting people to join your team, one of the primary characteristics you should look for is hunger.
More specifically: a hunger to see God do the extraordinary as demonstrated by humility, sacrifice, and perseverance.

None of our original core team members had the experience to do what I was asking them to do. But man, they were hungry.
And sometimes an ounce of hunger is better than a pound of experience.
Because a truly hungry leader will hunt for wisdom and experience until they find it. And they’ll learn it by living it out rather than philosophizing and theorizing about it.

On the flipside, I’ve found that experience minus hunger equals arrogance and cynicism.
Statements like:
“But we’ve always-”
“But we’ve never-” and
“Why should we bother to-”
are a sure sign that the hunger isn’t there anymore.
You can’t stay hungry when you’re full of yourself.

Jesus seemed to exemplify this in his senior management team selection process.
Peter wasn’t diplomatic-but he was hungry. (A little too hungry?)
Matthew’s profession wasn’t popular with the people, but he was hungry to make a difference.
Thomas wasn’t always sure-but he was hungry to search for truth.

Check the references. Value the experience. Probe for aptitude. And certainly validate the character.
But don’t forget about the secret ingredient called hunger.
It covers a multitude of incompetency.

It’s staff evaluation time

Guest Blog: Lori Black, Assistant to Pastor Steven Furtick

It’s end of year staff evaluation time here at Elevation. As a staff, we all have mixed emotions about our evaluations. In fact, I think we’d describe it as a love/hate relationship.
And here’s why- we hate them because it challenges us to take a long, hard look into our work performance, our ability to meet goals and deadlines, our personal character and our walk with God. It’s a grueling process that forces us to get really truthful with ourselves. And I’ll be honest; I’d really prefer not to dig in to all of that because sometimes it isn’t pretty.
But, we love staff evaluations because Pastor Steven is intensely committed to seeing us reach our full potential. We know at the end of the process we’ll be encouraged, motivated and directed on how to take our areas of ministry to the next level and the action steps needed to develop our disciplines and character.
I can’t tell you how valuable it’s been in my personal development. Pastor Steven establishes clear, consistent goals and expectations and that enables me to operate with clarity and confidence. I really believe the intensity of our staff evaluation process is a huge part of the continued improvement of our staff as well as unity. When Pastor invests so much thought, prayer and time into my personal growth, it makes me feel valued and I’m motivated to operate at a higher level. And since he places such a high priority on development, it creates a unified staff committed to helping each other reach their full potential.
So, bring it on. I’ll gladly endure the process and face some hard truths to allow God to take me to a new level in my ministry. And I’m thankful Pastor Steven has the vision to see my potential and call it out-it’s been life changing.

I need a Communications Director

Elevation Church is looking to hire the best Communications Director in the United States of America.

If you’re him/her, send an attention grabbing, experience loaded resume to our Creative Pastor, Larry Hubatka.
(He’ll reply if he thinks you’re the one. If he doesn’t think you’re the one, he won’t have time to respond-thanks for understanding.)

What do you do to take care of your staff?

Some folks wrote in wanting to know what we do at Elevation to take care of our staff. Particularly, I got the most questions about how we care for the “Pastoral Staff” (clarification: we actually don’t use this term, we refer to our lead staff as Directional Staff). So I’ll focus on them by listing a few things we do to try to bless and refresh our Directional Staff families. I thought it may be helpful for other churches to see. And I want Elevators to know how you’re indirectly caring for the men who lead the church and their families through your generosity. I know the last thing you want is for one of our leaders to burn out and become another sidelined statistic. It’s the last thing I want too. So we’re doing something about it.

-We provide one date night per month for Directional Staff and their wives. This includes a healthy gift card to a nice restaurant, childcare (which is arranged and paid for by the church-), and an iPod with a Slow Jam mix. (Kidding about the iPod.)
The wives of our Directional Staff carry a heavy burden. I want them to feel valued and appreciated. And I want to proactively provide an avenue for our marriages to stay on fire.

-We provide lunch for the families of Directional Staff every Sunday. It’s a long and grueling day, and since many of these couples rarely get to sit together in a worship experience, the least we can do is ensure that they don’t have to worry about what to cook when they get home.
(I must give a shout out to Stephanie, a volunteer who sees it as her ministry to coordinate most of this. She’s amazing!)

-This one’s new: We’re paying all expenses for each couple to attend a marriage conference in 2008. I don’t just want to preach about staying connected, I want to help that happen. An investment in the marriage of our leaders is an investment in the health of our church.

-An attorney in our church is providing estate planning for all Directional Staff families. I just did this with Holly last year, and the expense was pretty substantial. This Elevator wanted to make sure that the leaders of the church have their houses in order, at no expense.

-All staff are required (not advised) to take one Sunday off from their ministry areas per quarter (this is also a brand new rule). I think this helps refresh perspective and reenergize performance.

-We pay well. We bonus generously based on performance. We offer great benefits and retirement plan options. We resource well, via books, conference budgets, etc. We celebrate a lot, finding as many ways to reward the sacrifice of these leaders as possible.

I’m hard on my staff. I expect a lot of them. But I love them and invest in them with equal or even greater intensity.
When you are the founder of a 2 year old church, and you couldn’t afford to pay anyone anything as recently as 20 months ago, it’s deeply satisfying to finally have the resources to nurture vitality in the marriages and personal lives of the men who lead the church well.

(NOTE: Senior Pastors: Don’t let this post make you feel guilty…
Staff members: Don’t let this post make you bitter…
We’re all at different places in our ability to bless our people financially, and we certainly didn’t start this way at Elevation. In fact, most of the guys I’m taking good care of now nearly starved the first year of this church. It takes time. Besides, not all benefits have to be monetary. There are other ways-perhaps even more valuable-to invest in your staff than financially. For example, I used to lead my guys through books, even when I couldn’t afford to buy the books for them. My investment was my time and leadership. Do what you can with what you have. That’s the point. I’m sure other churches are able to provide for their staff in much deeper ways than us, but we’re doing our best. It’s not a competition. In fact, if there are unique ways that your church cares for the staff, would you email them to us? (We’d like to see them.)

Yes, it’s expensive to take care of your people in this way.
But it’s infinitely more expensive to deal with the fallout if these men fall apart privately while serving God publicly.
And the Bible says that they deserve it.
Truth be known, I can never pay these guys what they’re worth to me.
So I’ll keep trying to value them the very best I can with what we have. I believe this approach will bring honor to God and sustain long term health at Elevation Church.

PS. Ask my Directional Staff if you can see their rings.

You asked…

PART 1

Dottie B. wants to know:
How about something re: other pastors in your church? What makes them such a great team?

Dottie, I could type for days and still not scratch the surface of all the things I love about the team God has built here at Elevation. I won’t even try to be exhaustive. Let’s just hit a few highlights… in random order:

-I really like my team. They make me laugh. They think Brother Barry is funny. And Black Bond, too. That’s important to me. I don’t get the opportunity to just hang out much with these folks, and I’ve never understood the doing life together phraseology. But when we do get together, we appreciate one another’s uniqueness, and we have a pretty special chemistry.
You should actually check out some of the other staff blogs, featured on my sidebar. You’ll get a lot of insight into the amalgamation of silliness and seriousness that make our culture what it is.

-I think our team as a whole is much greater than the sum of our parts.
Some teams consist of All-Stars who are all super experienced and super talented… yet their collective performance is mediocre: phenomenal players who somehow coalesce to form an average team.
Although the guys and gals around here are talented…
I think we’re even better as a team than we are as individuals.

-We’re fiercely loyal. They’re loyal to me, and I’m loyal to them. Period. We’re almost psycho about it. We’ve talked before about getting Elevation tattoos together, and everyone was pretty much game. At least they lied to me and told me they were. (We haven’t really asked our wives yet.)
The predominate mentality of our staff isn’t: this job will make a great stepping stone to bigger and better things.
For the most part, we’re trying to approach every day like this is the biggest and best thing we could ever hope to be a part of.

I love my team. I think my primary strength as a leader is the ability to pull potential out of people that they didn’t know existed. I have no higher ambition in my life than to see everyone around me become more than they ever believed they could be.
My team makes me better too. They’re strong where I’m weak. They expose my assets and cover my liabilities.

The best part is, it’s not just our paid staff driving this ministry to new levels.
God has drawn some profoundly passionate people to Elevation to serve at a volunteer level. I’m so grateful for this army of sacrificial men and women who make it happen.

I consider it a higher honor than the presidency of the U.S. to be associated with my team.

Hope that helped Dottie!!!

Staff Up and Blog Roll

I’ve never used this blog for either of the following purposes. But there’s a first time for everything, and it’s for a good cause, and everybody else is doing it.
There. I feel duly justified.

First off:
We’re in the process of staffing up and adding some key personnel to the tremendous team at Elevation.
Check out the ultra exciting opportunities at our Access: Elevation blog, and if you’re interested, don’t dawdle.

Secondly, a few blogs that you need to know about:

Larry Hubatka
Larry is our resident foreign exchange student, and he’s also our newly hired Creative Pastor. He’s not really a foreign exchange student, but that’s what his wife called him the first time I met them. I liked them immediately.
Larry blogs regularly. And he’ll be blogging even more regularly now that I’ve exposed him to the world. Right Larry?

Wade Joye
Wade is our Worship Pastor at Elevation, and he does a darn fine job.
He uses his blog to post worship leader-ish stuff, like set lists, deep thoughts, and insights about Elevation.
He’s a good guy with cool hair. I’m so glad God brought Wade and Ferris to Elevation. Wade thought God was leading him to start a church in Columbia. I cast that demon out of him, got him saved, and now he’s in God’s city to stay.
Amen.

Clayton King
Clayton is a dear friend and in some ways I consider him an adjunct staff member at Elevation. He does a great job preaching for me a few times a year.
I worked with Clayton in his ministry, Crossroads Worldwide for a few years before starting Elevation. He’s a powerful evangelist, and I’ve been rebuking him for over a year for not having a blog. It appears he’s seen the light. I told Clayton that since I put severe pressure on him to start a blog and he did it, that makes me his Blogfather (it’s a play on The Godfather).

Now go… follow the links.
They will bring you great joy.

Backstage Interview Part 6

How do you know when to add staff and what positions to hire?