Mistake #5: Not Sharing Vision Enough
By Stovall Weems
God given vision brings with it such momentum and energy. It’s exciting to share vision, but leaders have to make sure the vision stays in front of the people and reinforce it constantly.
While I’ve always made it a point to share vision with the church, staff and key leadership, I didn’t do it enough. In our earlier years, I would share vision with the church twice a year, and maybe double that with staff and key leadership. I thought that was plenty. Every time I did, there was great benefit from it. Staff got refreshed, and people in the church got excited, and wanted to be a part of what was going on. We had an increase in weekend participation, serving team signups, group participation and so much life would just burst forth as a result. It was great, and I thought I was doing a good job at communicating the vision.
But what I’ve learned is that as a leader, I can’t just communicate vision every four or five months, I have to keep the vision out there in front of the people at all times, especially to the staff and leadership team. I have to seize every single opportunity I can to reinforce it. Vision should not have to be brought back to memory, it should soak in and influence even the simplest of day to day decisions. When shared in a simple way, it will be easy for others to know it, own it and easily share it with other people as well. (Habakuk 2:2)
Just when you think people are getting sick of hearing about vision, they’re most likely just getting it for the first time.
Stovall
ARC All Access Conference
By Stovall Weems
I am really looking forward to the ARC All Access Conference next week. It’s going to be off the chain! This is always a great time to connect with and hear from several incredible, visionary pastors from all across the nation. I’m really pumped that we’ll also get to hear from our friend, Pastor Ed Young, Jr from Fellowship Church! Every year, All Access keeps getting better and better and with the plans in store for this year – it’s going to be incredible.The great thing about All Access is that whether you’re looking to plant a new church, or already pastor a church, or serve in any level of church leadership, All Access is there to equip and inspire you and take your leadership to the next level. This conference is all about empowering the local church, which is something that I personally am passionate about.
Major shout out to our friends, Pastors Matt & Martha Fry for hosting this year’s conference at C3 Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. Their team is doing an incredible job hosting the event and we can’t wait to see all of ya’ll and celebrate what God has done in your new facility!
Stovall
Mistake # 4: Avoiding the painful and difficult decision to dismiss staff
By Stovall Weems
(Part 3 of 3)
This is the last part of Mistake #4 – The most dangerous kind of person you could have on your staff is someone who is gifted and talented but has a different agenda. This is someone who acts like a team player and says all the right things, but behind closed doors they are undermining leadership, speaking against decisions and violating Biblical and staff values. They bring strife wherever they go and usually cannot work with a team of peers. The people they have underneath them they draw to themselves and develop an “us and them” mentality. They are a tremendous source of pain and fatigue to the rest of the team.
I’m not talking about having disagreements with each other. As a richly diverse staff, we have lots of healthy discussion, and share different points of view. This is a very regular and productive component of our lead staff meetings. I’m talking more about using disagreement as an instrument of division and undermining authority. It’s really more of a heart and behavior issue and is very serious.
When strife begins to enter a team things begin to go to another level in danger. The longer it is tolerated the more people will get hurt. The person who sows strife is blinded to the fact that they are hurting people. Many times they are deceived in thinking they are actually helping people, or even protecting them. For the sake of self-preservation and their own agenda they will defile and hurt anyone they can with their poison. (Hebrews 12:15) God hates strife, and He hates discord. (Proverbs 6:16-19) If this is present in the staff, it must be dealt with swiftly and decisively. I am very thankful that this has been very rare on our staff. However, if someone on our staff causes strife or discord, they are given one warning. Then, if it happens again they are immediately dismissed.
Thanks so much for all your great comments so far on this series. Next week I’ll continue with Mistake # 5.
Stovall
This Weekend at Celebration Church
By Stovall Weems
This is going to be an awesome weekend and I’m pumped up and ready for it!
It all kicks off this evening as I’ll be speaking to the ladies in our church at this month’s Celebration Women service. I have a special message about empowering women within the context of the local church. It’s going to be great and I encourage all you ladies to invite your friends and come out and join us. It starts at 7pm in the Midtown Annex. Also – if you haven’t registered for this year’s SHINE Women’s Conference yet, make sure you do so right away! My wife Kerri and her team have done a great job with all the plans for this year’s conference and it’s going to be incredible. You really don’t want to miss it.
This weekend we are kicking off our new series “With This Ring“ and I can’t wait to get this started. The facts on marriage and divorce are just staggering, but we’re going to cover God’s truth on marriage and commitment and learn how to build healthy, strong marriages. It’s truly going to be life-changing as we talk about the strength of the vow. No matter where you’re at – if you’re married, divorced, or preparing for marriage – trust me, there is going to be something in this series that will be an encouragement to you.
We also have the privilege of having Hillsong London’s worship team join us this weekend and they will be leading worship at all our Sunday services at the Midtown Campus and at our Sunday 6pm service at Orange Park. So don’t miss this powerful weekend as we launch our new series and experience powerful, life-changing worship.
See you this weekend!
Stovall
Mistake # 4, continued: Avoiding the painful and difficult decision to dismiss staff
By Stovall Weems
Today I’m continuing in my blog series on the Top 10 Mistakes I’ve made in the ministry. If you’ve missed any of the previous posts in this series, make sure you check them out because they build on each other and I qualify much of what I’m saying here about moving the church forward.
As I mentioned previously, I have found in the ten years of building our church, that there are going to be times when we must face the difficult decision to dismiss certain staff members. I really elaborated a lot on the “why” and “when” behind this in my last post. In the three situations where I have found it is necessary to dismiss staff, the second is when you have someone on the team who is quite simply, causing problems.
I’m not talking about a staff member that just makes mistakes. We all make mistakes and in a healthy work environment there’s mercy and grace to walk those through and learn from them. But once again, it’s important to not confuse love and kindness with purpose, fit and ability. What I’m referring to is a staff member who even after lots of coaching, vision, care, and clear direction is not only not improving but is actually causing problems. Maybe something has happened in their personal life, or they have allowed themselves to become offended. Maybe they have an authority issue, need attention, are insecure or are just prone to drama. These people many times are just complicated. It is interesting how sometimes people function great for a period of time in a certain role, but then really begin to have challenges. There are no warnings signs and then all of a sudden they hit a level or a season or a different role and some real unhealthy issues start to surface. They begin to be very problematic to the team and even hurt the people around them.
When you have someone on the team that is causing problems, they can quickly become a drain to the team instead of a lift. Avoiding the difficult decision to dismiss them will only begin to demoralize the rest of the team and will impact the overall effectiveness of the team as you will find everyone is spending energy and time trying to deal with them personally or handling the problems they are creating.
This type of dismissal can also be handled in a positive and productive way. The key again is having the proper systems in place to help, acting in love, and dealing with it early on and not avoid it.
Next week I will talk about the 3rd type of dismissal which is the most crucial of all, and how to deal with two deadly things to any staff or team; strife and discord.
Stovall
Easter Reflections
By Stovall Weems
This past weekend was really awesome as 13,151 people attended Celebration Church with 1,013 people standing to receive Christ and praying the prayer of salvation. One of the cool things was just the amazing attendance and response at our video campuses. It still amazes me how multi-sites with video messages are so effective.
Our Orange Park Campus had nearly 1,700 people in attendance with 194 people receiving Christ! Our other campuses had incredible #‘s of people responding to Christ as well with the message on video! What a great day we are living in. I am so thankful that we can leverage technology to expand the kingdom of God. We were able to reach thousands of more people this Easter because of it.
I also want to give a big thank you to all of our staff and volunteers who worked so hard this past weekend. You guys are just incredible. Kerri and I love you so much and are so appreciative of your service to Christ and His church. Great is your reward is heaven!
Stovall
The Beauty of the Message
By David Branker
What an incredible Easter weekend we experienced at Celebration Church. We witnessed more than 1,013 people making a public decision to follow Jesus Christ at our services. There is nothing more beautiful than that. I am reminded of:
Romans 10:15 And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
When the very feet of the preachers are called “beautiful,” it is not so much for the appearance of their toes. It is a description of the beauty of their message, especially when the message was received. Remember what it was like when you and I made the decision to give our lives over to Jesus Christ? The joy and the excitement that came with a fresh start, the sense of knowing that you can talk to God and He is close to you. Some of you may also recall the pressure and push back you experienced from friends and even from relatives.
Let’s remember to lift up all the new believers in prayer. Pray that they will press on and experience all that God has in store for them. Pray that they too will experience the joy of bringing the message of Jesus to those in their circle. That’s the beauty of the good news…
David
Easter Weekend
By Stovall Weems
Easter is upon us. Every year it never ceases to amaze me what God does on Easter weekend. Last year we saw around 2,000 decisions for Christ on Easter weekend alone. I constantly meet people in our church who tell me they gave their heart to Christ on Easter. I constantly hear stories from people who bring their friends or family members on Easter and they get saved. I know that this year God is going to do even more in terms of people getting saved and others coming back to God. It is going to be an awesome time of celebration of our risen Savior. Invite everyone you can. It will be an experience they will never forget!
Moving the Kingdom Forward
By Stovall Weems
Thanks so much for all your comments. I’d like to elaborate more on my last post and qualify a bit of what I mean by the church moving forward.
What I mean by the church moving forward is reaching more people for Christ and making more disciples. What I mean by moving forward is more people going to Heaven and less people going to Hell. We have to remember what’s at stake – it’s people’s souls. If someone on the team has become a limiter in that capacity, it’s not right before God for us to overlook that and avoid confronting the difficult decision of that person moving on to a non-staff capacity. I am not talking about not being loving, gracious, generous and merciful. We should be Christ-like in everything we do. We should not operate like corporate America when it comes to love and truth and being like Jesus. But if we avoid dealing with that decision, then we’ve put our own comfort, or that person’s feelings above a lost world and we’d have to answer to God for that. So in essence it is actually more important for the church to operate this way in comparison to a business because so much more is at stake. But remember, we are not dealing with chicken burgers or office products. We are dealing with Heaven and Hell. We need to get as many people out of Hell as possible and that will not happen without the right team.
Stovall
Mistake #4: Avoiding the painful and difficult decision to dismiss staff when necessary
By Stovall Weems
Part 1 of 3
Having a hired staff is a great privilege and joy. I love our staff. I think we have the best team in the world. We have fun. We work hard. We do life together. But there will be times when a decision to dismiss a staff member must be made. It is always difficult. It is always painful. In my Top 10 Mistakes List, this was definitely one of them. I would allow staff members to stay on board too long that really needed to move on. I kept hoping they would change, or that things would just work themselves out, but by not acting on this decision I prolonged the inevitable and instead it became a drain to the rest of the team and usually made matters worse for everyone involved. I just wanted everybody to stay on the bus, to be excited, and make the journey. Now I realize how crucial it is for not everybody to be on the bus, but the right people to be on the bus.
The church is funny when it comes to dismissing staff, somehow we begin to confuse love and kindness with purpose, fit and ability. Before you know it, things drift and instead of being about the great commission and following God, it is about personal feelings and trying to make people fulfilled and happy. Remember, if nearly all the plants in a garden are growing, vibrant, healthy and strong and just 1 or 2 plants are not, there is not a problem with the soil- there is a problem with the plant. The leader’s job is to make sure the soil of the leadership culture is fertile and healthy for growth. I think many times we are fighting against God trying to keep people around too long that God is trying to move on. (Luke 13:6-9)
Being on staff at Celebration is all about the three C’s – character, competence and chemistry. In the more recent years, our senior team has developed great processes for hiring and dismissing. Any decision to dismiss a staff member is handled properly and in a very productive manner and not avoided because of the temporary pain or conflict that could result from it. This keeps things from becoming more personal or emotional than they need to be.
In my experience, there are three different situations where staff should be dismissed. We will talk only about one in today’s post. The other two will be covered next week. So here’s the first:
- They are no longer contributing at the level they need to contribute to really help the church move forward.
In a church that is living and thriving, there will be lots of change and growth. But as the church grows, the staff must grow along with it. If the contributions of a staff member were great for a season, but they are no longer helping move the church forward, it’s probably time for them to move on. We first see if there is a better fit for that person at another position, but if not then it’s time for a change.
The person can still be mightily used of God. This just means that their season on staff here at Celebration Church has come to an end. We now have systems in place to help with this when necessary and some of these staff members are still members of the church and actively serve God and contribute to the kingdom in a mighty way. If handled properly and timely, this is a healthy decision to for everyone involved.
Stovall
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