3 Ways We Keep Choosing Process Over People
- KEBCreative
- Jun 16, 2017
- 3 min read
You've seen it a thousand times. In every interview, leadership team meeting, church conference, you name it. There's this push to attract visionary, big-thinking leaders. There's an air about them that simultaneously makes you nervous and excited about what's to come. So you bring them on the team and six months later you're wondering why your MVP is leaving a wake of dead bodies.
Maybe that's a bit over dramatic. Perhaps.
If you haven't experienced it yet, let's assume that maybe a marketing, church communications professional such as yourself could be the one rooting for Team Process. Either way, here's some food for thought.
1. We steamroll.
I'm guilty of this one. At least, I used to be. As an outgoing woman jockeying for influence, I was taught that only way to stand out was to make my opinion heard. Not only heard, but to make it happen. The scary part wasn't that it didn't work, it's that it did. I knew how to hustle. I was a master of manipulation, the queen of pulling it off last minute. I was also celebrating alone.
In Matthew 16:24, Jesus explains to his disciples, his team, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." Given the context and the events the follow, that's some pretty heavy instruction. For my fellow hustlers out there, it can sometimes be easy to give up our comforts. We're willing to put in the extra work. We oddly thrive in an ever-changing environment. So what is it that we deny in order to follow Him?
"How often do we pitch our own vision and then ask God to bless it?"
For me, laying down my own ambition was and still is one of my biggest struggles. How often do we pitch our own vision and then ask God to bless it? Allowing God to dictate my dreams was not something I was going to easily allow. I wanted to steamroll my way to the top, but that ending only had room for one.
2. We become gatekeepers of the process.
Churches can be organizationally chaotic. They get away with structures that make no sense and flying by the seat of their pants more than any entity I've ever seen.
Enter the Communications Director. You're hailed as the fixer, the organizer of all the things. Before long, you have a central hub for requests, projects are running smoothly, and you might even have time for lunch. But there is always that one guy that simply refuses to mold into your box. Is it really that hard to fill out a 30 second form versus emailing me your incoherent ramblings? You've gently pointed him in the right direction, maybe even forcefully showed him the right way to do things. Still, nope.
Have you ever stopped to consider that your process is getting in the way of progress?
Maybe you've got a ministry that works better talking face to face. Perhaps you've got a youth pastor that doesn't even know how to give feedback, much less articulate what he's wanting. We have to be willing to step out of our processes and decide who we are going to defend: the people or the plan.
3. We are not pastors.
This one might make you a little uneasy. So I'll say upfront that I'll agree to disagree. The best Communication Directors are pastors. They choose to champion the person sitting in front of them over the process every single time.
"The best Communication Directors are pastors. They choose to champion the person sitting in front of them over the process every single time.
I once worked with a church that had some pretty brilliant art direction. Even their bulletins were works of art. Surprisingly, their Comm. Director was a hard man to get a hold of. He was constantly getting lunch with his staff, spending time with their families, you know - actually getting to know them as people. It only took a few weeks before I found myself sitting across from him in a local coffee shop (as if he would would have settled for Starbucks) having a moment of my own that it all made sense. In explaining how he got to where he was, he told me that we were all told to spread the Good News - he just got paid to market it. He didn't view his job as a cat herder, but at a pastor of creators. He wanted to push his team to not view their tasks as mundane announcement videos or annoying Instagram posts, but as tools to reach someone in need. His designers were helping tell people about Jesus through their art and his project manager was putting all of the pieces in place for someone to encounter God. Ya know, I think he got it right.
