Major changes ahead

[[Admin] osborn4]

We've got some major changes ahead. We have a small pastoral staff of 2, a Senior Pastor and the Associate Pastor. The only other staff is the Office Manager/treasurer/receptionist/secretary (I'm sure you know what I'm talking about ).

The associate pastor (my brother, Steve), has accepted a call to become senior pastor at the Boulder, CO Seventh Day Baptist Church. He will be leaving this summer. It may be some time before we can find a replacement.

This is a great opportunity for him to grow in ministry. I'm sure God's hand is in this.

This also presents an "opportunity" here at Milton. No only will he leave big shoes to fill, he will be leaving several pair.

Of his varied and several duties, the main things for this forum is that he is the Worship Leader, chair of the Magnify Team (a.k.a. Music & Worship Committee), and was the main person that did the powerpoints for the Sr. Pastors sermons.

He is also our technical liaison at the church, helping make contact with vendors, and working with the Sr. pastor who quite often needs a hands on approach with technical things.

Our "creative team" is currently Smilesds (you've seen her around here some), Steve and me. Steve picks out the songs. Together we kick around ideas for the main sermon title and backgrounds. Normally I will put those together.

Either Smiles or I will do the announcement loop and the worship slides, switching by months. If Steve can't do the sermon PPT, generally the other one of us will do that.

Smiles has stepped up to become the chair of the Magnify team. (All our team names start with M. Don't get me started. )

She has taken this opportunity to talk with the Sr. pastor about having monthly creative meetings to set direction and lay out basic services. The Sr. pastor has been agreeable, but I don't think he realized that by doing this, we are locking in the sermon. The sermon has to make sense with the rest of the service. And if we come up with metaphor, the sermon has to fit the metaphor.

Anyway, we are thinking that we need

2 main worship leaders and a backup
4 main graphics folks and 1 or 2 backups

Basically doubling (or more) the number of folks we have active now.

We see the graphics as 3 different tasks, each taking a few (or more) hours.

• Announcement loop
  worship slide show
  sermon PPT

It would be great to have 3 different folks working on these (hopefully in some coordinated fashion), but we'd really need to be bringing more volunteers on quickly. So we'll see how these get divided up.

We may need to cut the amount of time spent on announcements, but it's hard not to do the best job possible. If we didn't use slides from the loop to show during spoken announcements, it would be easier to let it go. But having good slides up during spoken announcements really adds.

So pray for us, as we embrace this opportunity. I firmly believe (like I told the Sr. pastor) that if God wants Steve in Boulder, then He has some other amazing plans for us here in Milton. But we'll have to hang on for a while, because it's probably going to be quite a ride to get there (see this month's media freebie. )

Any hints, tips or tricks, ideas or directions to help us get through this time and come out with a stronger team would be appreciated.

[[Admin] osborn4]

Well, smiles got voted in as chair of the Magnify Team. So next step is to come up with job descriptions of what we do, so that we can start trying to recruit more people to do it.

[downeyflo]

I wish I could give you some words of wisdom.....

[Len Wilson]

Joel, sounds like an opportunity for some good things to happen.

If you emphasize the creative over the technical when looking to expand your team you might find some different people who like art but are intimidated by the technology. These people can be led along and hopefully will find new ways to serve the church that they didn't before think possible.

If you have to let one of the three drop, I'd definitely say do less announcements. Go for the powerful communication over the interesting information. Much of the time people ignore them anyway - just "eye candy" in the background.

On the job descriptions, there's some stuff in that section of the forum already, but not much. As yo make some up, if you wouldn't mind, post them for others to see/use.

[[Admin] osborn4]

I agree about the art. That's how we got Smiles involved. Fortunately, she's a closet techie, at least tech enough to really get the hang of the tools we use.

If we come up with anything worthwhile we will share.

I also agree about the announcements. I'm thinking of implementing a template for announcements with a welcome on the lower third and space on the upper 2/3rds for some text and maybe one piece of clipart.