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The Meeting
Once you establish your own personal board of directors, I’d suggest you meet as a group one to three times a year.
(I’ve done this with individual mentors but never had them all together. I’ll be doing it this year.)
If a meeting in person doesn’t work, you might try some form of conference call.
I’ve already got a list of personal questions to ask my board.
What is one question you’d ask?
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I would ask:
What do you see as my blind
spots?
What are the top three things you see that you see that I should not change?
These are two that come to my mind right away.
In each of their lives what is the most significant leadership advice they ever received?
Assuming that I were in the room with people older and more experienced, I’d ask a two part question concerning their particular field of experties:
“If you could go back and do things over in a particular area in your career/life:
a) What would you absolutely change or do differently?
b) What would you absolutely not change or do differently?
I have a whole bunch of questions…
What are you thinking about ministry and the opportunities in the days ahead?
What is God teaching you personally and how can I learn from that?
What is your best advice for me as a husband and father?
What is one thing I need to change about my schedule to be more effective?
What is one thing you have been hesitant to say to me or ask me?
Have I given you full permission to speak into my life?
Having a meeting is a very interesting idea. Do you think that having multiple people meet to talk with you about you would give you more honest feedback, or less? My guess is that it would give you less honest feedback than a one-on-one meeting, but that is just a guess. I’d be curious to find out how it works out for you.
Ben, I would like to give you my thoughts. I believe for the most part you will get greater insight from a group. I believe that the group dynamic will give some people more confidence to speak the truth, ask tough questions and give a greater sense of accountability. There may be a super sensitive question that a group member holds off on and asks one on one. I think you just give the group permission to approach you one on one after the meeting. I don’t think it’s a question of one or the other, it’s both individual and group.
I’d ask what my top 5 faults are / what their’s were and how to fix them / avoid them!
Question I’d ask: Are we becoming more holy?
I would ask for help with identifying and rebuilding those areas where my church is failing to meet its own needs. Those areas that seem to repeatedly show up but we still do not want to recognize them as important.
When we can chronically announce that the back door is just as busy as the front door, and we still have a hard time giving value to the multitude of complaints. Do we ever find out why our lay leaders disappear?
Did we even notice? There is always someone ready to take there place so do we really need to try to figure out why they left? Did we hurt them, or fall short? Do we have time to find out? Are they okay?
I have a ton of questions and prayerful suggetions for our pastors and I have been with them around a decade and have never really found them to be avaiable enough to really talk about it. Other than the one time I said I would by my pastors lunch, he wowed me at the meeting but has never been availabel since for the follow through.
Question: “In what ways does my life/ministry reveal Christ & in what ways does it not?”
I will be honest…Meetings can be either REALLY productive (Iron/Iron) or the group as a whole may want to prove their knowledge and look for personal “golf claps”….How do you combat the “Augusta Syndrome”? My take…
Ask them How well do they think they are doing as whole when it comes to saving the lost? They will probably go into “hands raised”, “new members”, “coming forward”, “baptisms”….and then show them a video/ interviews on the street or give the stats on the real “Dark Word” (something that will ROCK their world/ my advice…Go to Vegas)…after it’s over pump them up and and Ask… how do we stop pretending that WHAT we are doing is “amazing”? What is God putting on your heart right now? What is he showing you? Are we convincing our Church bodies to “stay in” or “go out”? What can we do to make our church body “uncomfortable” and help them “STEP OUT”?
We need to be “uncomfortable” to really make a change in today’s “breaking news” culture….The lost and dying are “billions”…Think of the pictures of the German concentration camp victims and multiply those faces/bodies by Billions…wow what a picture!!!!!!
happy easter Craig and Bobby!
May the shalom of Christ be with you and your family and your ministry continue to be vibrant with the resurrection!
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