Achieve Clarity in Your Ministry

Brian Mosley: Hi, I'm Brian Mosley, our team here at RightNow Media loves serving the church. We believe the mission of the church matters and that unity in the church matters. Whether you're watching this message alone or with your leadership team, we hope that it's an encouragement to you. In this session, Nona Jones gives us a practical look at how church leaders can effectively lead.

(lively music)

Nona Jones: As I was praying about this gathering, and I was asking God to just show me in the spirit what this moment would represent, he gave me the vision of a saw. And he gave me the vision of a saw with a very dull blade, which represents leadership that is just overwhelmed and frustrated. And I think that the message I wanna share today is really intended to sharpen your saw of leadership.

As I consider what churches are struggling with the most, when I think about what churches of all sizes are really wrestling with, I consider that the number one struggle that churches of all sizes are experiencing is a struggle against confusion. And we know that God is not the author of confusion, but I'm gonna tell y'all something, Satan loves when he can spark and stoke confusion within a ministry. Because confusion is actually the number one opponent of progress.

And so today, my hope is just to give you some insights and some thoughts that will help you lead with clarity. And for those of you who take notes, I'm going to teach from the subject, the criticality of clarity. The criticality of clarity.

Now, to give you a little bit of background, so I really appreciate the introductory video, I spent about, I don't know, 17, 18 years in executive leadership in corporate America. What that means is I have experience building and leading teams from scratch. I have scaled organizations nationally and globally. I have led teams including distributed global teams where people were predominantly remote. I have also facilitated private public partnerships to the tunes of tens of millions of dollars. But as I've done all of that, I have done it while concurrently serving in local pastoral leadership with my husband. And so my husband and I have the great privilege of stewarding the hearts and minds of a local congregation in Gainesville, Florida.

And because I have lived my life at the intersection of ministry and marketplace, what has happened is I have had pastors invite me into thought partnership with them about some of the organizational development challenges that they're facing. And I'll never forget one year, this was about, I don't know, five, six years ago, a pastor friend texted me and he said, "Nona, I need to hop on the phone with you because I need you to help me work through an issue. I have to terminate one of my leaders." I know nobody in this room has ever had to terminate a leader before, so this is probably gonna be super abstract for you.

But he said, "Nona, I need you to help me think through how to terminate a leader." And so we get on this zoom call, and I ask him to explain the situation to me. Like, okay, so why is it that you need to terminate this person? And so he begins to tell me that he hired this leader and he had such high hopes for this person, but after being in their role for about seven or eight months, they were not performing according to what he expected. As a matter of fact, the language that he used was he said, "Nona, I will never understand how someone can have the audacity to collect a paycheck while doing nothing." That's what he said.

And so I asked him a few clarifying questions, I said, okay, help me understand what is the process that you used to clarify your expectations for their role? And he kind of looked back at me like a deer in the headlights, and he said, "What do you mean?" I said, well, what exactly did you do to ensure that they were clear about what success for their role looks like to you? And he said, "Well, when I hired them I gave them a job description." And I said, okay, well, how often are you meeting with them? And he said, "About once a month for an hour." I said, okay, last question, pretend that I'm this person, I want you to explain for me what success looks like for their role both quantitatively and qualitatively. In other words, I need you to explain to me how you will measure my success in the role.

The pastor looked at me and said, "Well, Nona, I hired them to tell me that."

And I realized in that moment that that pastor had actually made one of the cardinal mistakes of leadership. That pastor assumed that you could solve a problem by hiring someone and delegating it to them in its entirety. That pastor assumed that if I just hire the right person, they will figure it out. Does anybody in this room know what I'm talking about? Anybody ever hired somebody and then you find yourself disillusioned because what you thought they would do, they didn't do.

So what I realized in that moment is that the problem actually wasn't the person not performing, the problem was that the pastor lacked clarity on what the problem was that that person needed to solve. And because the pastor lacked clarity himself, he could not give what he didn't have. And so what actually ended up happening is that in the absence of that pastor's clarity, the person's work ended up lacking focus and direction.

And one of the worst things that we can do as a leader is tell somebody, make it happen, without understanding what it is or what happened looks like. And so what I wanna do today is I want to give you some just practical frameworks for how to get to clarity as a leader. Because I'm telling you brothers and sisters, Satan loves when we are not clear. Because that lack of clarity actually creates a seed bed where he can so confusion and strife.

And so this morning, I really want to help you think through how do we get to a clear definition of success across the various roles and departments and entities in our church? So one of the most important lessons that I've learned across my time leading teams is this, the problem that you name is the problem that you solve, but the problem that goes unnamed is the problem that goes unsolved.

So what are the three roles of a leader? There are three primary roles that we hold as leaders. The first is this, we are to define the problem to be solved. And I'm going to give you practical tips and tools on how to do that. Secondly, we are to structure the team to solve it. I'm gonna also give you a practical tool for how to do that. And then third, we have to give that team a clear vision for what success looks like to us as the leader.

We have to be very careful to not delegate vision to the people who are following us. You know why? Because when they are following us, we actually obstruct their view. And so what that means is they can't see what we see. As leaders we're the ones who have to give people vision because we have the clearest, unobstructed view of what God is calling us to. So never delegate vision to people.

So tip number one, before you do don't, before you do, think. What do I mean by this? As leaders, we have a bias to act. We see a problem and we wanna just go full steam ahead in solving the problem. But my brothers and sisters, what if all of your activity is solving the wrong problem?

I'm gonna give you three concrete examples that I have seen in my time coaching pastors and leaders, and you may have never experienced this, and so if you haven't experienced it, my apologies.

Let's just say that you're noticing decreasing attendance in church, and you decide that in order to solve that problem we're going to throw some money behind a Facebook Ad campaign so that we can increase the number of people attending our churches. I know nobody in this room has ever done that. So that's problem number one.

Problem number two, let's say you're noticing that there's a decrease in giving. And so what you decide to do to solve that problem is you decide to implement a new teaching series on the importance of tithing.

Am seeing all these smiles in this room, I love it. So third problem, let's say that you have a community initiative that you want your church to take a lead on, but the person who's actually serving as your community outreach director, they keep telling you, well, nobody's volunteering. And so what you decide to do to solve that problem is you decide to scrap the initiative.

You've taken three very decisive actions. But what if you're actually not solving the problem? What if the reason why your attendance is declining is because your services are long and lackluster, and there's a new church in town who has more concise high energy services, and so your people are going to that church. If you throw money into a Facebook Ad campaign to increase the visibility and awareness of your church, all you will have done is exposed more people to your long and lackluster services, which means you will have more people saying, don't go to that church.

(audience laughing)

What if the reason why giving is declining is because your people no longer carry cash, they use Venmo and Zelle and Cash app, and you insist on continuing to pass plates and buckets. So you teach on tithing, but the issue isn't one of knowledge, it's structural, people cannot give.

What if the reason why people aren't volunteering is because your community outreach coordinator is mean.

(audience laughing)

And people just don't wanna work with them.

So you scrap the initiative, but you haven't solved the problem because the next time that you wanna do something for the community, people still aren't going to volunteer because you have the same person in the role.

You see, we as leaders have to discipline ourselves that before we do, don't, before we do, think, we have to get very clear ourselves about what is at the root of this problem, why does this problem exist? One of the things that I do is when somebody comes to me with a problem, I ask why five times?

Because the first why is only gonna get you to the symptom. It's only gonna get you to the symptom of the problem. The second why is going to get you to the cause of the symptom. The third why is going to get you to kind of the crux of why the symptom exists. But you have to discipline yourself to continue to ask why until you really get to the root. Because once you get to the root of the problem, now we can actually invest time and energy into structuring a solution around the root of the problem.

I wanna give you three questions to ask yourself to start to get to the root of the problem. The first question is this, what is the problem we need to solve? This is a present state question. What is the problem that we need to solve?

The second question is, why does it exist? That's a past state question. So why does it exist? We have to look to the past to see what are the contributing factors that created this problem in the present.

And then we have to ask ourselves, how does success look when it's solved? This is a future state question. How does success look when this problem is solved?

And so by asking these questions, we have now considered the present, we've considered the past, and we've considered the future. And now that we've done that analysis, we can take it a step further and we can recognize three additional questions. Because once we ask those questions, we'll have actually started to get to the main culprit for why the problem exists.

And when we get clear on that, now we can ask, okay, what resources do we need to put behind this root problem in order to get to success? We can also ask secondly, what leadership competencies are needed by the accountable person? And then third, we can ask, what structural changes must happen to succeed?

You see, what happens is we tend to skip over the first three questions. We don't ask what does the problem we need to solve, why does it exist and what does success look like? We immediately rush to how much is it gonna cost, who's gonna lead it, and then do we need to put a team behind it? But we haven't got to clarity about what the problem is, why it exists, and what success looks like.

So what I'm gonna really encourage us to do is before you take action, pause, ask those questions, what exactly is the problem we need to solve? Okay, it's attendance. The problem is we need to solve attendance. Okay, well, why does the problem exist? Now, that gives us a time to maybe go to people who attend our church and say, Hey, what is your thinking on why we're seeing decreased attendance? That becomes an opportunity to even ask people in the neighborhood, ask people who left your church. So now you're gathering insights, you're gathering information, and once you're clear about why the problem exists, you can say, well, what exactly does success look like for us, and who has the competencies to lead this work for us? You've gotten to clarity.

Second thing I wanna tell you though is, we have to discipline ourselves to push beyond role clarity to responsibility clarity. What's the difference? You see, role clarity tells you what is the job that a person is supposed to do, that's role clarity. But role clarity isn't enough because that person is not just doing their job in a vacuum, they're doing their job in relation to other people, and that's where responsibility clarity becomes important.

One of the tools that I use to get to responsibility clarity is a tool called a DARCI Matrix. And I'm gonna share this with you and I'll explain what a DARCI matrix is. So DARCI, D-A-R-C-I, the D stands for decision maker. This is the person who makes the decision, very clear.

A is for accountable. The accountable person is the person that essentially the buck stops with them. They're the one that you have tasked with the thing. So they are accountable for how it turns out.

Then you have R. R is responsible. Responsible is a person and or people who contribute energy to whatever it is that you're doing. So if it's a giving campaign, the responsible team might be your facilities person, it might be people on the finance team, it might even be some lay members of your congregation, but these are people who are contributing energy to whatever the thing is.

Then you have the C. C is consulted. When a person and or people are Cs that means that they have information that the team needs. And so the team goes to them to get that information from them.

And then you have the I, the I is informed. These are people who are just kept in the loop. They're not actually actively working on whatever the thing is, but they're just kept informed on the progress.

Where I have seen the most dysfunction is when you have C's who think they're A's. When you have people who are supposed to be consulted, who think that they are either accountable or Ds, decision makers.

What does this look like? Let's give an example of a giving campaign. Let's say that you have some people who are supposed to be consulted. Maybe these are people who gave to your church in the past, they're not actually accountable for how the campaign turns out, but they are informing the team that is working on it, and they're just giving their opinions, they're kind of giving their experience. And when a decision needs to be made about the thing, they think that because they gave their opinion that they then can be the decision maker.

So you end up in a scenario where you have a bunch of people thinking that they are the decision makers, when in fact their whole job is just to inform the group, that's it.

So I have seen so many scenarios where in churches there's confusion because people don't know how their role fits into the ecosystem of the team. And so they assume that I get to make the decision about this thing and it gets held up, when in fact they may simply be responsible, they may simply be people who are supposed to be consulted, or they may not even be supposed to be consulted, they're supposed to just be kept informed, but they think that they're supposed to be a decision maker.

So what I want you to discipline yourselves to do is this, in any given area of responsibility, there should only ever be one accountable person. This is the one person that you go to to find out what's happening. This is the one person that you go to because they are quite literally accountable for what happens.

What I've seen happen many times is we have what I call role confusion. So you have people who they think they're accountable, so you end up having to go to three and four and five different people to ask a question, and everyone's like, oh, that's not my responsibility, I don't know who it is. I don't know anything about that, I don't know. And so you end up spending so much time and energy because responsibilities are confused.

So an activity that I want you to do, a practical exercise that I want you to take away from this is I want you to think about whatever area of your ministry that is experiencing some confusion, whatever area of your ministry where you're seeing a lack of progress and impact, I want you to overlay that with a DARCI matrix.

What that means is, I want you to think about who is the person who is accountable for this? Who is the person that their performance actually hinges on this thing, they are accountable? Now, if they're accountable, that means they're also a decision maker. There should only ever be two decision makers, that is the accountable person and their boss.

I'm gonna repeat that again. There should never be more decision makers than the accountable person and their boss. Why? Because when you have decision makers who are not accountable, that creates confusion and it creates strife. I can make a decision about something that I'm actually not accountable for. So if it fails, I'm not accountable for that failure. If it succeeds, I can just take credit for the success. No, there should only ever be two decision makers.

Your Rs, your responsible people, those are the people who contribute to whatever the project is, whatever the team is, whatever the strategy is. But put names next to the R. Put names next to the Cs, who's consulted. Put names next to the I, who's informed. There should be one name next to the A, and they should know that they're accountable. There should only be two names next to the D, the person who's accountable and their boss.

I promise you, brothers and sisters, if and when you implement this type of a tool into the rhythm of your ministry, it's going to get the entire team to a place of clarity. Because there's not gonna be confusion about, well, who's accountable, who makes the decision here? How many pastors in here find yourself making decisions on things that you don't even think you should have to make a decision on? Things that get brought to you? You know why? Because there's responsibility confusion.

So when you actually lay it out, no, worship team leader, you are accountable for the worship experience. This is something you're accountable for. What that means is, you also have decision making authority about whatever will affect the worship experience. So if it tanks, I'm coming to you. If it's amazing, I'm coming to you. That helps to drive responsibility clarity.

Thirdly, pastors, please hear my heart on this, we have to develop a rhythm of relationship for a cadence of accountability. You see, leadership is not a fly-by-night experience, it's just not. Leadership is an experience that requires us to be proximate to the people that we get privilege of leading and serving. And so we have to have a rhythm of relationship to create a cadence of accountability. If you are not meeting with your teams enough, there will be confusion.

And so I wanna just give you some thoughts on the rhythm of relationship that I keep, just so you can think about whether or not this will work for you.

So on a weekly basis, I have a one-on-one with my direct reports. On a weekly basis, I am spending time with my direct reports. Now, mind you, it doesn't have to be an hour. As a matter of fact, I rarely have hour long meetings, my meetings are 30 minutes.

And before the meetings, my direct reports have to provide an agenda. They also have to provide any reading material that they need me to digest before the meeting. Because our meetings are for decision making, not for information. Too many of us are spending way too much time getting information that could be sent as an email. I have told my team, listen, as much as I love you, I cannot waste one minute of time. You know why? You can always make more money, but you can never make more time.

So we as leaders have to also train our teams to value the time that we invest. And so you have to have an agenda. If there's something you want me to look at before the meeting, send it to me beforehand. And I will tell you this, if I don't get an agenda, and if I don't get pre-reads, guess what happens? The meeting gets canceled. I've only had to do that maybe two or three times until they got the memo that, no, I'm serious. I'm still holding you accountable to what we've talked about, but if you don't have the input from me that you needed to have because you were not prepared, what that means is you're at risk of failing.

And so I meet one-on-one with my direct reports every single week. I also like to do bi-weekly one-on-ones with my peers. So in your case, you may do a bi-weekly one-on-one with a pastor in your area. You may do a bi-weekly one-on-one with a pastor in your denomination, but just to stay connected and just to hear their heart and just to get an expanded view of what's happening in the world around you.

I also highly recommend that on a biweekly basis, you meet with your key constituencies. That could be a member of your church, but it could also potentially be vendors. And hear me when I say this pastors, sometimes we will delegate vendor relationships to the facilities team or somebody else, but the way that your team is showing up to vendors has a way of creating a reputation for your church in the community.

Which is why you want to meet, I call it skip level meetings, you always want to meet with the people that your people are working with just to verify that they are representing you and your church in a way that is honorable to God and the kingdom.

You would be surprised how many times I've talked to pastors who have been disheartened because they're like, I don't know how our church has this reputation in the community for being mean, we're not a mean church. And then you come to find out that it's because of the way that your team is interacting with people that they're paying.

So have those meetings with the key constituencies on a biweekly basis just to check and make sure that your church is actually being represented well. And what that also does is that increase is the relational runway that you have with the people who are serving your church community.

On a monthly basis, I will have skip levels with the reports of my direct reports. I do this on a monthly basis. I don't meet with everybody on a monthly basis. I do meet with everybody at least every other month, but every month I am meeting with the people that report to my leaders.

And you know why? Because leaders are very skilled at leading up. Leaders are very skilled at filtering. And so we sometimes get caught off guard, we sometimes end up having to put out fires because we were not made aware of the smolder in time.

When you have skip level meetings with the people who report to your leaders, they will give you the real real.

I remember one time, one of my leaders, and this was a couple of roles ago, one of my leaders, I thought he was amazing. I just thought he was the best because he was always prepared for our meetings, his reports were always on point, he was incredible. And I even was grooming him to potentially be my successor in the organization.

Well, I started to have skip level meetings with the people that report to him, and it took about two or three meetings with people to get comfortable with me. But once they did, they started to really tell me what was going on. He was mean, he was abusive. But none of that would've come out if I didn't have my skip level meetings, which is why I wanna leave you with this last tool.

I do what's called an organizational pulse survey. I send an anonymous survey to everyone on my team to check the pulse of the culture. And what happens is I do it on a quarterly basis. I find out how everybody feels about how they're being treated, about the work that we're doing, and how they feel about the way that they're being led.

As pastors this creates a rhythm of relationship so we can create a cadence of accountability. My prayer for every single one of you is that you will put these tools into practice because as you get clear, I promise you, clarity is the currency of momentum.

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Brian Mosley: In this session, Nona emphasized the importance of clarity in our ministry and helped us think practically about how to achieve it. As you leave this session, take a few minutes to consider how you can prioritize clarity in your leadership.

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