My Sales Team at Dare 2 Share – August Review

I love my Sales Team (all 6 of them, 7 of them starting 9/21) and everything that they have accomplished recently.  They have been successful over the past few months in a very trying economic time and our Blaze conference tour is looking incredible right now!  I love the effort they have put into our success and the results they have been able to generate.  We typically take one of our 15-minute team check-ins at the beginning of a new month to acknowledge the hard work, celebrate what we accomplished for that previous month, and I award 2 “traveling” trophies to celebrate the Ministry Advocate that has earned the Registration Sales trophy and our Curriculum Sales trophy.  These trophies are “traveling” as they change hands at the end of each month if another Ministry Advocate was able to de-throne the previous month’s winner.  This is one of my favorite meetings of the month.

All of that being said, I had a team member approach me a few weeks ago and mentioned to me that I was doing a great job celebrating the top performers, as I should, but I was missing an opportunity I used to take advantage of in celebrating everyone on the team that hit their Call Activities as well as their Sales Numbers.  Example: last month 6 of 7 Ministry Advocates hit their Sales Numbers for the month but only the top performer was rewarded with our trophy for Registration Sales. 

Then this morning I was reading Sales Caffeine by Jeffrey Gitomer and his article was on rewarding those who have earned it.  It hit my right between the eyes that by rewarding my two top performers (sometimes the same person) I was doing a good thing, but by not acknowledging the individual team members that also did their job and hit their numbers, I wasn’t doing a great thing.  He also mentioned blogging about it so here I am typing away!

All of that being said, I am still going to reward my top performers for their successes each month, but I also want to encourage and reward anyone on my Sales Team that go the job done and hit their numbers as well.  Trust me, they will still be fighting for the trophies – they are sales people and they are passionate about what we represent!

August Sales Awards

Registration Sales Trophy – Joni Scudder, Ministry Advocate to Chicago
Curriculum Sales Trophy – John Musil, Ministry Advocate to Columbus

100+% to Sales Forecast – Joni Scudder, Ministry Advocate to Chicago; John Musil, Ministry Advocate to Columbus; Jamie Stanley, Ministry Advocate to Phoenix; Adam Cedillo, Ministry Advocate to Seattle; Chuck Acker, Ministry Advocate to St. Louis.

Exceeding Call Stats – Brian Conn, Ministry Advocate to Denver; Joni Scudder, Ministry Advocate to Chicago

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Congratulations Team on a great August!  I look forward to celebrating our efforts and success in September!

 

Top 10 reasons I hate working at Dare 2 Share

So you know things are bad when your boss is the one that asks you to post the top 10 reasons you hate working.  I hope everyone enjoys the humor in this.  Thanks for the idea Debb!

1. Every time you ask for a raise you get reminded that your treasures are in Heaven.  If they paid more now we’d get less in Heaven…I’m beginning to think Heaven is going to be good enough as it is.
2. You are guaranteed to spend the majority of your day in meetings.
3. When you complain about too many meetings, you are invited to a meeting to discuss ways to reduce the numbers of meetings you are in.
4. After so many meetings you can’t find time to get the work done that was discussed in all of those meetings.  The solution, have more meetings to discuss how you can get more done with less time to do things.
5. What do I care?  Greg’s already fired me 7 times in 2009 anyway!
6. #1 Favorite quote from superiors, “We realize that we are asking you to do twice as much as we told you we needed you to do when you were hired… No, we can’t hire additional staff to help you with that… No, there aren’t additional resources to get those things done…Yes, you have to get it all done in the same amount of time…I’m sorry,  I don’t understand what the problem is.”
7. #2 Favorite quote from superiors, “Where are you going this evening?  I didn’t know you’d already worked 16 hours today?”
8. Did I mention that I probably get asked into another meeting for posting this blog.  I anticipate being fired for the 8th time in 2009.
9. Time stood still when I was in grade school waiting for the final bell to ring.  At Dare 2 Share, the clock actually moves backwards.
10. All of your great ideas are credited to Zane.   Why do you deserve the credit anyway?  No one’s ever heard 8,000 teens scream for you when you walked into an arena.  I’m sorry, what was your name again anyway?

The Deep and Wide Leader

by Phil Bell of Life Church in Canton, MI.

It stands to reason that it’s not a good idea to buy hair products from someone with no hair. It stands to reason that you should not go to a dentist who has teeth like Austin Powers. It should stand to reason that our students will not likely pursue God passionately if it is not modeled for them. It should also stand to reason that students will not intensely pursue their friends for Jesus if they do not see key people in their lives doing the same. Therefore, If you and I want to see students become passionate about God (Deep) and passionate about reaching their friends for Him (Wide), we need to ask some honest questions of ourselves:

• How are we modelling this for them?
• What passion for Jesus do the students see in us?
• What do our lives display to make the gospel worth intensely following? 

Before I go further, let’s pause for a minute… I want to be clear that you and I ultimately are not the answer to what students need. Jesus is! But we are certainly a guide and shepherd to help them discover and embrace Him.  Therefore, do students see someone before them who can be trusted to lead the way? They need someone who will navigate an exciting path with and for them. Do they see passion and authenticity evident in our lives and will they follow us as we follow Jesus? 

I believe that when we read 1 Thessalonians Chapter 1, we are given a great picture of the power of example to the students around us:

You know how we lived among you for your sake. ⁶You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. ⁷And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. ⁸The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere.     – 1 Thessalonians 1:5b-8

In this chapter I am challenged by the idea that faith is caught more than it is taught as students become imitators of us and of the Lord. And the key is not to be their hero or best friend. The key is to be an authentic Christ follower who students want to become like. As you and I imitate Him, our lives become magnetic to them and they begin to discover and embrace Jesus. What’s more important is this: When these students themselves are living out the deep and wide principles, they too begin to impact their friends, families and communities in ways we would never had imagined. Their faith in God will be known everywhere… Can you begin to dream of what that could look like in some of your students lives in the next few years? 

So, what kind of imitators are your students becoming? Today, take a look at some areas of your leadership and consider what small and important things you can do to model authentic faith to your students. But most of all, take some time today to allow God to fill you up with His presence. What is God saying to you today about who He wants you to become? How will that impact your students? How will impact God’s Kingdom?

Phil Bell
Pastor of Student Ministries
Life Church
www.youthworktalk.com

Developing a Deep and Wide Ministry from Scratch

by Phil Bell of Life Church in Canton, MI.

I have been at my present church for nearly 3 years now and it has been a great journey to watch the church and youth ministry grow deep and wide. When I arrived, the church was a 3 year old plant with a very small youth ministry that consisted of a handful of middle school students meeting in a basement of a house and a few high school students meeting for lunch after church. (This was quite a new challenge from my previous well established churches). My position called for me to create and develop a healthy youth ministry program from scratch… In this situation, it’s been imperative to adopt a deep and wide philosophy for three main reasons:

1) The Deep and Wide Vision is Biblical. When we were starting from scratch it was essential to be able to get people on board with a vision that could be trusted (Biblical and not the latest fad). Students, parents and leaders needed to be able to clearly see the ‘why’ behind the ‘what we do’. So many people have been ‘clouded’ by many fads, ideas and ‘old school’ youth ministry philosophies from previous churches and ministries. It’s been valuable to bring people back to the ‘Biblical Basics’.

2) The Deep and Wide Process is Simple: In the past three years we have adopted a simple ‘process phrase’ that allows anyone to understand what we do and how we do it. Our student ministry process is for students is to “KNOW God passionately; GROW deeper in Him, and to GO into the world to share Him with others”. The environments we offer students focus on this simple process. Yes, we have events. Yes, we have missions’ trips etc. However, the nuts and bolts of what we offer to students is to KNOW, GROW and GO. We try to keep it simple! In the past I have seen a number of great ideas and philosophies that seem great, but they have been developed by larger ministries who are well resourced. It has not always been easy for the ‘average’ church to adopt. Deep and Wide keeps it Biblical and simple for anyone…

3) The Deep and Wide Philosophy Works! Just yesterday I was shocked and excited by a student who is looking at colleges and live and study locally because he is so passionate about our ministry and can’t stand the idea of leaving yet. This student has been with us since I arrived and has become an integral part of our student worship team. He is someone who has taken some huge steps in his faith; he serves every week, and is consistently bringing friends to our environments. It is students like this who have been a part of seeing our student ministry grow in depth and width. We have seen a great number of students commit their lives to Jesus for the first time and it is these same students who are growing, leading and driving much of what we do. Deep and Wide works!

Phil Bell
Pastor of Student Ministries
Life Church
www.youthworktalk.com

The Depth and Width of the Gospel

As I mentioned in a post I wrote a few weeks ago, the Deep & Wide blog is being opened up to Youth Leaders who have embraced the Deep & Wide Youth Ministry philosophy and are using it in their personally ministry settings.  This week I am pleased to post the first guest blog entry by John Byrne of Littleton, CO. 

Do you remember the first time you heard the gospel explained?  I don’t, but I do have a vague memory of my kindergarten teacher sharing the gospel with our class.  I put my faith in Jesus that day.  Even at the age of four I could understand the simple message of the gospel.  Thirty one years later I am still trying to understand all the intricacies and implications of that same message.  The foundation of the Christian faith is without question the gospel.  For far too long there has been a false understanding of what it means to be a deep ministry or a wide ministry.  Small churches accuse big churches of being a mile wide an inch deep, while large churches accuse smaller churches of being deep, but without any sense of urgency when it comes to reaching people for Jesus.  In reality these are both false characterizations.

The truth is this; the gospel will help churches go deep as well as wide.  In order to see how this works we must first understand the gospel in a new light.  The gospel is the story of Jesus, the cross, and the resurrection.  When I accepted the gospel message as being true at the age of four this is the sense in which I understood it.  While this is true the gospel is much more.  In essence the gospel is the story of God and man. It starts in Genesis with an intimate relationship between God and His creation and it continues through Revelation to eternity future with a new heaven and a new earth.  Everything between the two, points to the God-Man Jesus.  This truth has impacted my ministry in a very significant way, let me explain.

Early in my ministry I believed it was important to share the gospel on a regular basis.  I would do that as part of our program almost every week.  It was great, sort of…  The gospel was always added on.  Students knew it was added on to whatever I was doing.  In a small church (under 100) we saw students come to Christ on a regular basis and that was great.  I didn’t understand the depth of the gospel and I didn’t see how all of scripture points toward Jesus.  Often my messages would go something like this, “don’t do drugs or have sex outside of marriage…let me tell you how Jesus died on the cross for your sins…” 

My understanding of scripture has grown as has my understanding of the gospel.  What I have come to understand is that all scripture deals with mankind’s relationship to God and that relationship is ultimately based on a person’s acceptance of who Jesus is and what He did.  A students choice regarding drugs or sex should ultimately be based on whether or not they have decided to have a relationship with Jesus or not.  The same is true of whether they do drugs, talk back to their parents, or pirate music.  The gospel is so central to everything in life and in scripture that Paul takes the first three chapters of Romans just to lay out the basics of the gospel.  He does this because it is the foundation of everything he says in the rest of the book.

The concept of sharing the gospel then is not just about evangelism (going wide), it is about those who have already accepted the gift of salvation working out the gospel in their own life (going deep).  A Biblical understanding of our own sin and God’s love and provision for righteousness impacts how a follower of Jesus treats other people who sin in the same or different ways.  To say it differently our understanding of God’s love for us helps us love others.

The gospel is no longer added on, it is the essence of my teaching and preaching.  Whether I am teaching through the book of Haggai (as I am now) or one of the gospels I always begin and end with Jesus!  A truer and better understanding of the gospel helps a ministry grow deep in their relationship with Jesus.  Sharing the gospel also helps a ministry go wide and expand the kingdom of God.  Big church, small church, or medium sized church, it doesn’t matter, the gospel must be at the center of our understanding of who God is and our response to Him and what He has done.

John Byrne
Pastor of Student Ministries
The Rock of Southwest
www.pjs-web.net