My goodness friends . . . It's been too long since I added a page to this blog for Missouri Church Leaders. Some of this is because you all have been so great in carrying out the mission and facilitating LLD sessions all around the state, and also because we've been evolving the course and it's execution as YOU have asked and needed to make your leaders successful. Thank you for all your leadership. Most updates are now available on the Conference website www.moumethodist.org and is a best practices resources for all things LLD - sort of a one-stop shopping experience. There is more good news, and innovations to come and I look forward to seeing you, and sharing these announcements at Annual Conference in Springfield this June. Stay tuned :) Kevin <((><

A Big Pat on the Back

Greetings friends,

Someone recently said to me "You've really done a lot of great work coordinating and encouraging LLD" but then they went on to say that "the real heroes are the facilitators and participants in this next thing which God is leading us in".

BINGO!

While I humbly appreciate the nice words, I couldn't agree more that YOU - our wonderful cadre of facilitators leading these committed and passionate laity leaders involved with LLD groups all around the Conference are the saints doing the hands on ministry with our Pastor Partners. YOU are an awesome extension of the ministry of Jesus Christ in a troubled world needing to hear his message of love and grace, and in the Methodist movement so hungry for this process of church renewal, YOU are holy heroes and worthy of praise, what a gift to be among you.

God Bless you all, you are each in our daily prayers.

In HIS service

Kevin <><

FORE!!

Ah yes the temperature is rising, the ground is thawing, and our spirits are rising as we exit a winter I’m happy to put behind. I’ve had the old golf clubs out and ready, and have even been able to sneak out a couple times with a great group of “putt ‘in Pastors” but we’re all a bit rusty so occasionally you’ll hear the dreaded FORE as an errant shot goes seeking a different direction than what we’d planned. Maybe with some practice.

Much of our discussions within our LLD groups revolve around practice. Yes practice, practice, practice but who has the time? Well now that the weather is changing and the pressure on already busy schedules tends to increase I’m reminded of our promise to accountability with the group – hum, how could I weave this into an analogy for our laity leadership?

Lucky for me, I was recently scoot ‘in around in the boot heal of our wonderful state at the invitation of the Southeast District Lay Speaking committee and a friend of ours, and fellow LLD Facilitator, Mike Bell reminded me of this accountability tenet in our LLD sessions. You see, just as I am looking forward to the weather changing and my fairway woods and irons becoming consistent once again, many of our LLD participants will also be longing to put the long, cold, and messy winter behind which will have the normal consequence of having those dreaded “scheduling conflicts” involving all sorts of activities come up, oh no, FORE!

Just like Mike’s insightful reminder, now is the time for each of us to re-engage with our course participants and review the commitment we made to each other during session one, our covenant. Let us resolve to keep our active participation with our LLD course work, and Pastor Partnerships just as much a priority as all the other activities which will compete for our time and attendance. Many of you use e-mail messages for reminders, and encouragement – might I recommend a gentle reminder of our mutual accountability to each other, and the work of our leadership journey in our congregations. A quick review of the covenant we all signed could also help to reinforce this accountability at the start of our next gathering, just to reset ourselves to the mission, and to keep from hollering FORE!

FACILITATOR TIP – If you do not have a copy of “Bull Horn Guy” the short DVD clip used for the final session (Session 8) among your Districts Facilitators group let me know. We’ll find one, or get you a download for that portion of your presentation so that you have everything you need.

Additionally, as many of you are over half way to completion it’s time to start thinking of creative ways to recognize the hard work and commitment of these individual servant leaders. LLD Certificates are available with Brian’s signature which can be printed locally, and many of the District Superintendents make themselves available to attend your final session to present these (just ask). I’ll send the Certificate file (PDF version) to each District Office so you can have them produced and available in time.

BIG NEWS – Many of you have been asking about what comes after LLD? Well, here it comes. LLD-NEXT is being developed right now and will be ready for you this fall. I’ll send you each a separate message with the LLD-Next overview and book list to review. Look for it in your e-mail.

Blessings for your continued leadership and as always our heartfelt thanks for your dedicated service to this growing ministry.

Kevin <><

What? This isn't turkey!

The third session of LLD is the real “red meat” part of the LLD course – team building is critical for our Pastor Partnerships and Congregational movement. Our ability to effectively and positively facilitate this session is a major part of adding to these leaders tool kit and echoing the message the prayer team, dream team, and leadership teams development within congregations. Thank you for your dedication and commitment to leading this process – Dream on!

Evaluations and website data posting: Thank you for posting the evaluations from each of your sessions. If you are experiencing any difficulty with the SurveyMonkey website, http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LLDevaluations2010_2011 or just have other questions regarding evaluations and data collection feel free to message me and we’ll get things working for you. Ken Willard has offered to host an on-line webinar regarding the evaluation posting tools easing the website navigation and we’ll plan to do that in early January. Remember, if you are unable to post your evaluations for technical reasons simply mail them in to me or Ken and we’ll take care of it until your technical difficulties are resolved.

Leaders tip(s) – this one comes from our good friend Larry Johnson in the Ozarks South District. Larry, as the District LLD Coordinator passes out handouts and talks with congregations at Charge conference gatherings about LLD, even has members who’ve attended LLD offer their witness of how it is changing lives for the transformation of the world – helping laity and pastors partner in mission and sharing the love of Christ. This is just another one of the many ways all of you are sharing the good news of the Lay Leadership Development and Lay Speaking Ministry opportunities around the Missouri Conference and beyond. Thank you Larry and everyone for sharing the good news.

Just a reminder to stay in touch with your groups over the holiday breaks if you have them in your schedules. Even a simple message via e-mail or a quick phone call to encourage and share a moment about the reading, or team development is an important link in keeping the motivated participation alive for the next gathering. Also, if you haven’t already communicated some inclement weather options for course meetings as winter settles in, this would be a good time to think that through with your servant leaders and host churches.

God’s Blessing to each of you, for your excellence in service, and for a wonderful holiday season. We are very thankful for each and every one of you.

Godspeed

Kevin <><

Great Starts

You know, it really is no simple task to spin up a training program in your Districts. Doing all the coordination with the DS, office staff, PLD Pastors and potential candidates just to name a few, at the same time preparing yourselves to effectively facilitate quality sessions of a leadership program designed to orchestrate change in dynamic and exciting ways. Yet that is exactly what you have done – and I celebrate your great gift to the mission of our church, the wonderful servant leaders you are and who you are working with as we keep moving forward, Amen!

As part of our understanding of the changes our spiritual culture has undergone and continues to wrestle with like the discussions we will hear in the Session 2 of the LLD curriculum, the demographics associated with our congregations and communities is a key insight – ahhh, insight, like MissionInsite.

Those of you familiar with this tool may benefit from a quick refresher, and the rest of us leading this session for the first time may be looking for a little help, so here you go. The following link on the Missouri Conference webpage gives you the step by step directions to this valuable tool. If after going through the instructions you still have questions feel free to contact me, or Ms. Tammy Calcote at the Conference Office (our resident expert in all things Mission-Insightful). Here’s the link.

http://www.moumethodist.org/console/files/oFiles_Library_XZXLCZ/MIRegister09_DLSSCZ9F.pdf

Have a great session, and as always – Thank you for your servant leadership!

Leaders Tip – Here’s a great idea offered up from one of our most seasoned facilitators, and all around great guy Larry Fagan. Prior to each session, in most cases soon after each session Larry sends an encouraging e-mail to all the class participants and includes about a dozen “fill in the blank” questions from the next book in the series to assist in the intentional reading of the text. Many of those who use Larry’s dozen comment how it really helped in their reading and added to their discussions. Remember, we’re not doing book reports during our sessions but these types of creative ways to enhance our learning are so very valuable to those we lead – Thanks Larry!


Kevin <><

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One Clear Point

If we think back to our learning from Andy Stanley I'd imagine we can all remember about making our presentation clear and on topic – making that one clear point!

So it is, as many of you have begun your LLD sessions this month, or are preparing to begin in the next few weeks let us be clear as we communicate with our fellow servant leaders. Weather we are making a follow up to the orientation session communicating in between gatherings, or leading this session for the first time the one clear point we need to always highlight is partnering with our pastors. Our continuing to emphasis this critical result of the LLD method cannot be overstated – this is what makes the mission of the church and fruitfulness of our congregational leaders so successful and pleasing to God.

We have a great tool in the LLD facilitators guide and the outline provided to cover many insightful, new, and leadership enhancing discussions among your groups. The book selections will add to the understanding, and leadership capabilities of all those participating in this program, but if we fail in always leading in the need for pastor partnership among ourselves and those we are working with, then we will not accomplish our goal of leading congregations to lead people to actively follow Jesus Christ – that’s the point!

Leaders Tip – this from one of our new facilitators, Cara Pilch who shares the capability of electronic download of several of our reading books on Kindle, Reader, and other electronic book devises, many of the titles we use in the LLD course are available for download at less than the publishers price of the paper-book version . . . Thanks Cara.

Participant Guides – if you need additional Participant Guides to begin your course let Tammy Calcote TCalcote@moumethodist.org at the Conference Office know and they can be shipped to you. If you have extra available, hang on to them for a month or two just to make sure you have what you need (in case there are any late come’ers, or someone misplaces theirs) and then you can turn them in to your District Offices.

Session Evaluations – Remember to add your questionnaire results to the survey-monkey link which Ken has up and running, just copy this link to your address bar http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LLDevaluations2010_2011
follow the prompts for each survey (yes, each one separately). If you have any trouble, just give me a call.

Thank you for your servant leadership and all you do for the Kingdom of God – Blessings to all.

Kevin <><

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Welcome Team - Now off we GO!

Last week we enjoyed the radical hospitality of Community UMC in Columbia and trained 14 new facilitators for the upcoming Lay Leadership Development courses starting in each District this September, we now have over 30 trained LLD Facilitators in the Conference and are blessed to have such outstanding servant leaders, many thanks to all who helped put the weekend together and to Ken Willard for his leadership.

As we discussed, this year we are going to be more intentional in regard to staying in communication with you, our talented group of facilitators by using tools like this blog to share insights, best practices, tips and traps as we go about leading the sessions. I would invite each of you to join in as a “follower” on this blog (just click on the button to the left) which will then automatically notify you when a new posting is added, additionally feel free to add your comments to these posts which will allow others to witness the invaluable sharing offered to each of us. I’d encourage you to use these tools and share your comments and experiences.

In this spirit, we’re off with our first “Partnership Posting” – let me lead this off by telling each of you how we have been lifting you up in prayer, and let me suggest that throughout our working together we remember to add each other to our prayer list and ask the guidance and spirit of the living Christ to wash over our efforts and guide each group as the Lord leads.

LLD classes are forming in every District of the Missouri Conference and I look forward to hearing how the process is going with each of you. Our next Facilitator Conference Call will be August 30th, at 7PM where we can share scheduling, locations and planning information together – as each of you know, any assistance you may need is simply a message or phone call away, your District leaders are well positioned to coordinate these classes but don’t hesitate to let me know if there is a question or comment you might need clarified.

Lastly this week let us remember, as facilitators we sometimes overlook that we too are in partnership with our clergy leaders, so take a moment before your classes begin, as things seemingly are progressing so fast to just pause and visit with, or pray with your pastors as you prepare, and begin leading the eight sessions ahead - it’ll be well worth the time.

Talk with you soon, and blessings to all

Kevin <><