Starting right isn’t everything. But the way you start dramatically influences the trajectory of the rest of your life. This is also true in ministry. That’s why Craig Jutila and Joe McGinnis have teamed up to do a new project together. Craig and Joe are two Children’s and Family Ministry veterans, who between the two of them have over 40 years of ministry experience. Craig served as the Children’s Pastor at Saddleback Community Church located in Southern California and now runs an organization called Empowering Kids Joe currently serves as the Children’s Pastor at Northview Church located just outside of Indianapolis and is the author of “The Family Roadmap – A Step by Step Guide for planning the Purpose and Direction of your Family” I recently had the opportunity to catch up with Joe and talk about the new project.
Paul:
Tell us a little about the new project:
Joe:
“Year Won – How to win your first year of ministry,” and “Year Too – Making your second year really good too” (working title) are designed to be a leadership resource to start people out right in ministry, particularly Children’s and Family Ministry. They are workbooks that are full of great coaching and content that you can go through on your own, at your own pace. Or better yet, you can take your whole team through it together! The great thing is that there are team building and development activities as well access to all kinds of built in on-line support and teaching videos. It’s all the coaching you’d ever want your first couple years of ministry.
Paul:
Where did this idea come from?
Joe:
Craig and I were sitting around Starbucks one day talking about lessons learned in ministry and all of the stuff we know now (most of which was learned the hard way), that we wish we knew then. And we came up with this ginormous list! We started breaking it down and it fell nicely into 12 main categories. Stuff like Team Building, Starting off Right, How to keep going when ministry gets tough, Creativity, Navigating Church Politics, Formulating a Purpose, Vision and Direction, What do you do when you’re not administrative and you’ve got all of these kids, volunteers, budgets, parents, curriculum, and environments you’ve got to lead, and so on. And, well that ended up becoming the framework for the project.
Paul:
So walk me through one of those categories and how you guys are going to tackle it.
Joe:
Each topic will be broken down into “8 Actions.” Let me go ahead and walk you through the Team Building section.
Team Building:
Action #1 Choose your Team – How to choose the right team
Action #2 Develop your Team – How to develop, train, and coach
Action #3 Serve your Team – Servant Leadership
Action #4 Lead your Team – Management vs Leadership
Action #5 Engage your Team – Navigating relational tensions on a team
Action #6 Free your Team – Allowing your team to influence and own the vision
Action #7 Balance your Team – Transitioning team members in and out
Action #8 Show your Team – Modeling leadership, priorities, and attitudes
Each of these will be full of ideas and activities that you can actually do with your teams.
Paul:
So when can people expect to get their hands on this resource?
Joe:
It is scheduled to release in the Fall of 2011 and will be available through Empowering Kids.
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