I’m a senior pastor, and I’m passionate about “leadership” issues. But I almost missed one of the biggest of them all, all because it had to do with kids and teenagers.

While I have kids of my own, I thought kids in ministry were an issue that we programmed for.

It’s perspective many senior leaders fall into: hire or recruit some capable people to look after kids and teens so you can free up your time not to think about family.

I realize now that my old perspective was dead wrong. What’s more, it was incredibly unstrategic. And let’s add unspiritual into the mix too (I believe God has a heart for families).

My flawed perspective came into sharp focus several years ago. I had invited Reggie Joiner (who founded Orange) to speak at a conference I hosted. I wanted him to talk about leadership and give leadership talks. He agreed, on one condition: that he give one talk on the family.

I didn’t really want him to talk about family, not because I don’t like families (I love mine and many others), but because this was supposed to be about, well, leadership. I only agreed to let him do the talk because it was part of the deal.

So what happened?

I loved his leadership talks.

Almost everyone else couldn’t stop talking about his family talk.

It actually kind of frustrated me at the time. But I couldn’t deny it.

Talking about family lit up our families.

Talking about family lit up our families about their friends and neighbours and how to reach them.

I couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle.

Over the last few years I realized that Reggie is on to something big. He’s onto something that every senior leader ignores to his or her peril.

Family is an issue that demands the focus and attention of every senior leader (and their team) for at least these 5 reasons:

1. Unchurched people never lie awake at night thinking about your next sermon; but they do lie awake at night wondering if their kids are going to be okay. When you start the conversation with unchurched people around the cause of family, you have a conversation they’re already engaged in.  And you want to reach families, right? What if the conversation about family is the greatest evangelism opportunity you’ve got?

2. Family is a universal issue. Sure, not everybody has a family. There are singles, and engaged couples, widows and many who are single again. And not every family is two adults with two kids (not that that was ever the Biblical definition of family anyway.) But everybody comes from family. And many of us spend great chunks of time being impacted by our families, even as adults. While families come in all kinds of different forms, when you speak family, you speak a language everybody understands.

3. Family is one of three arenas for applying any sermon. Most of the people any senior leader speaks to on Sundays tries to apply the message in one of three areas of life: family, work and friendships. By far, family is the biggest application area because most people spend so much time with family. To ignore family when preaching a message is to essentially tell people “this has no application in one of the most essential areas of your life”.

4. Your leaders think family before they think leadership. Guess why many of the leaders who serve in your children’s ministry and student ministry serve? Because they want to be better parents and have a better family. Speak to their hearts as parents even before you speak to their hearts as leaders. They’ll thank you for it.

5. This generation of parents is producing the next generation of leaders. If you want to see healthy leaders emerge in the next generation – both in the marketplace and in the church – then nurture healthy families. It’s simple as that. As goes the family, so goes the next generation. Your investment in family is an investment in next generation leadership.

Ministering to families isn’t something that should happen down the hall on a Sunday – it’s something that should be happening in the heart and mind of every leader every day.

Because family is pretty much everyone. If you miss family, you miss almost everything.

My posts this week will be about family.  This week, over 5000 leaders from the US and around the world will gather in Atlanta for the 2013 Orange Conference. I’ll be speaking there and also hanging out with a team of 17 from our church (Connexus) as well.  Stay tuned for posts (and notes from my talks) on the blog this week.

What are you learning about moving the cause of family higher on your agenda?

What do you think you’re missing if you miss family?

I was at the Drive 13 Conference this week, North Point Church’s leadership conference in Atlanta.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been in a room with Andy only to think “I wish everyone could hear this.”

So if you missed the Drive Conference or were there but want a summary, here are my 21 top learnings from Drive.  Note that the talks I attended were mostly focused around weekend services (plus one on family ministry).

It’s rather telling that there are 21 insights listed and I actually left the conference a full day early (had to catch a flight). I still got this many take-aways. Wow!

Here are some nuggets I picked up. Andy’s comments are in bold. My take follows in normal font.

On the Weekend Experience

1. We don’t tailor content of our services for unchurched people, but we do tailor the experience. This is such a huge and important distinction. Opening up your service to the unchurched doesn’t mean dumbing it down.

2. Nothing should offend people in your weekend services except the Gospel. Often people get turned away not because of Christ, but because of people’s bad attitudes or strange preferences for certain kinds of music or culture.

3. A parking team is not about ‘parking’ guests, it’s about welcoming them. Even if you don’t have a “parking problem”, your welcome should start when your guests pull into the parking lot. Greet them personally and help them start their experience well.

4. Everyone has an approach to their weekend services. If there is a conflict between your goal and your approach, your approach always wins. Everyone has a template for their weekend services. If your template and approach aren’t getting you to your goal, change it.

5. If you start (a message or event) with common emotions and common experiences, not everybody agrees with your point, but everybody follows you there. Brilliant.

6. People learn best in emotionally charged environments. So engage their emotions early – with a fun opener (Andy referenced the 101st anniversary of the Oreo recently. They gave away a prize of Oreos and milk to an attender – cool). Or let music prepare people’s emotions.

7.  We leverage common experiences and emotions, not belief systems. When you’re reaching unchurched people, don’t start with disagreement (belief), start with agreement (common experiences and emotions) and then get to belief later.

8. The more time you can spend in planning a service or experience, the more personal it becomes. Planning is the friend of the Holy Spirit, not His enemy. Often “I’m relying on God” actually means “I didn’t prepare”.

9. Our goal is not to be creative, but to leverage creativity for the sake of the mission and vision. Bingo.

10. A clean environment communicates that we’re expecting you. I wish this was in the Bible. Then I could preach at people about it. But it’s not. So quoting Andy will do.

11. An orderly environment communicates you know what you’re doing. I wish this was in the Bible too. Clean and orderly communicates so much about you and so much about how you value the people you’re welcoming.

12. People stop attending church because they disengage, not because they disagree. HUGE insight. Very few people walk out your door because of disagreement. Many leave because of disengagement.

13. Attention span is determined by the quality of the presentation. With all the talk about diminishing  attention spans, this is a clear reminder than 5 minutes of boring is 5 minutes too much, and 1 hour of gripping feels like not nearly enough. Pastors, before you use it to justify a 60 minute message, just make sure you’re that gripping.

14. A goal is something you accomplish. A win is something you experience. So true!

15. Creativity works best in the context of predictability. Creativity has constraints, but like obedience to the law, eventually the constraints bring a new kind of freedom.

Other Gems

1. Public loyalty buys you private leverage. Criticize privately, praise publicly. Your boss and colleagues will respect you. Flip it and they’ll fire you or never trust you.

2. Your direction, not intention, determines your destination. This principle came up numerous times. It’s just true. Good intentions amount to little.

3. Evaluate everything you do against your mission. This was from a session I attended led by Diane Grant. Diane is Andy’s Executive Assistant but a super strong leader in her own right. She owns this principles.

4. Great opportunities are a chance for a vision to drift. Again from Diane Grant. Exactly. And an opportunity does not equal an obligation. Stay true to the mission.

5. The loudest critics in the church are people who have become missionally disengaged. Clay Scroggins, a campus pastor at North Point, shared this nugget. So true. Why listen to people who are missionally disengaged give you feedback on your mission?

6. Kids begging their parents to go to church beats parents begging their kids to go to church. Invest in your family ministry environments. Chad Ward, UpStreet director at one of the North Point campuses shared this. So true. Get the kids, and you’ve got the parents.

Hope this helps.

What other learnings from Drive or Andy would you share?

Which is of these challenges you most and what will you do about it?

This week I’m sharing leadership lessons I’ve picked up from North Point Community Church.

The Drive Conference is a leadership incubator and being a partner church of North Point has helped our team see and experience world class leadership development up close.

After yesterday’s post about what I learned from North Point on team alignment, I want to share another defining characteristic of North Point’s leadership: how to attract leaders who are better than you are.

North Point has done this so well. Andy Stanley is one of the best communicators and leaders in the world, but his bench goes deep – very deep.

For 11 years, he worked with Reggie Joiner, a world class leader in his own right who leads the now-global Orange movement designed to help churches and families partner together to influence the next generation. (Hint, if you haven’t registered for next month’s Orange Conference in Atlanta, do so now. It too is a world-class leadership incubator). While Reggie is one of the best examples of Andy’s ability to attract and work with exceptional leaders, he is not the only example.

At North Point (and at Orange) you run into dozens of people who could be running very large organizations of their own but who have chosen to work as a team together. In many respects, I feel the same way about our team at Connexus.

Everybody else could be working for someone else and be making a huge impact there. So how do you get them to work with you?

As Andy often says, he’s the leader because he was first. Andy honestly believes there are other leaders who are better than him in many roles at North Point.  It’s an incredibly humble stance, and it’s allowed Andy to assemble a top rate team.

In my almost 7 years around North Point culture, here’s what I’ve learned about attracting leaders who are better than you are:

1. Deal with your insecurities. Insecure leaders will always feel threatened by people they think are ‘better’ than they are. Get counselling. Get coaching. Do what you need to do. Realize you have greater value to any organization if you can assemble a great team than if you want to be the team. Don’t cap your organization’s growth or mission because you are insecure.

2. Give away responsibilities, not just tasks. When you trust your team, it ushers in the opportunity for greatness. If everything has to cross your desk, you will only ever lead a small organization (because your desk isn’t that big). Make fewer decisions every year. And get people who make better decisions than you do.

3. Share the spotlight. If you have to be front and center all the time, you have a problem. Pushing other people into the spotlight is the hallmark of great leadership. Study both Andy Stanley and Reggie Joiner on this by the way. They are both incredible at it.

4. Make it your job to help them succeed. What if you stopped trying to win and actually just spent your time trying to help other people succeed? If you do that, by the way, you might just end up being a little more successful too.

5. Create a culture of freedom. The reason many leaders are afraid to release leaders in freedom is because they haven’t done the tough work of aligning the organization. If you have a highly aligned team (here are five thing I’ve learned about team alignment from North Point), you can release them to do what they are called to do. High capacity leaders do not like to be controlled.

That’s what I’m learning about attracting leaders who are better than you.

What insights would you add? What are your struggles when it comes to attracting high capacity leaders?