Reinventing Yourself

At CPC last month, I did a workshop titled “10 Steps to a Ministry Reboot.” You can listen to it and get my notes for a limited time here: www.kidology.org/cpc12

In short, it was 10 basic areas of ministry / tips you need to address in order to both keep your sanity and have a well functioning ministry. Some of the tips are a little shocking to newer administrators. Like “Don’t Recruit” and “Stop Leading.” In other words, you should only recruit a leadership team, and they should do the rest of the recruiting (under your guidance), and don’t lead any ministries yourself. Equip leaders who lead under your leadership. It’s a workshop that often saves the sanity and ministry of those who hear it.

In response, I got the following e-mail today:

Hi Karl,

….Last week I had the opportunity to attend CPC in San Diego.  I attended your breakout:  “Ten Steps to a CM Reboot…”  I appreciated the things you shared.  I am currently on a sabbatical that my church has blessed me with and this is exactly where I am at right now… I am at a point in my life where I need to re-invent myself as a leader and our ministry.

My question is, HOW does one make these changes.  It seems impossible and impracticable to implement all of these at one time.  So where does one start?  How do you implement these in the midst of trying to keep everything afloat?

Thanks again for sharing your wisdom and insight.

Blessings… [name removed]

It’s a GREAT question! I wanted to share here on my blog a little of what I shared with the person who wrote to me:

You are correct. You can’t do them all at once! Reinventing yourself and ministry WHILE keeping it going is the trickiest part of ministry, isn’t it? The key is prioritizing what needs to change and working on one area at a time.

What a blessing to have this sabbatical to refocus and get an opportunity to step back a bit and get some perspective. There is no “quick answer” – but I can encourage you to consider a few things.

1) Take a look at the Kidology Online Training I’ve put together. It contains five leadership labs to help leaders do just that. There are five training videos and five download kits to help walk you through this very process.

There is also a pack of all five available. If you work through these, it will really help you! It’s almost like having me as a personal coach.

2) That leads to the next best thing, getting yourself a personal coach, which we also offer on Kidology, known as Kidology Coaching.

A coach can really help you step by step to take things to the next level in your ministry by helping you set goals, holding you accountable, and helping you troubleshoot and problem solve specific problems while also identifying areas you can improve both personally and in the ministry itself. Perhaps a church that will invest in a sabbatical would also invest in coaching?

But the simplest answer is to take those “10 steps” and put them in priority order and address them two or three at a time. When I started my last ministry, I made a list of 12 areas I saw that needed to be addressed, and it took me eight years before I felt like I had addressed all 12 (and none to perfection, mind you!). I didn’t get to the ugliness of the facilities until the 7th year, and most CPs seem to start there – decorating. I wanted recruiting and the strength of the educational ministry to be my foundation, therefore I addressed those first, but not before I first addressed forming a leadership team. I had a list of my priorities (that no one saw but me, or I’d scare them all away!), and I hit them one at a time (or maybe two) and worked my way down the list, sometimes going back to refix things that were breaking because I had turned my attention to other things.

3) If you are not a member of Kidology.org yet, do join, and use the forum to ask specific questions as well, and you will find people answering with great advice.

Bottom line: you are not alone, there is help, and you can do it! Being willing to seek help, digging for answers, trying new things, and knowing you need to do some reinventing are half the battle. It is those who are content that have a problem.


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