All About Kids Leadership Training Session

Great to work with the crew from 'All About Kids' in Louisville Kentucky today. Angie Tyler and her team were great to work with. We explored a lot of key ideas related to leadership in a session called, 'Leadership Is...' All About Kids is a true entrepreneurial endeavor and they're doing great stuff with kids in the Louisville Area.

Leading the 'I wanna play, too' generation...

How do you lead people who invest huge chunks of energy, emotion and passion coaching their own Fantasy Football Team and contributing their ideas, notions, and opinions about nearly everything to nearly everyone?

They blog, post status updates, make & post their own goofy 'home' videos and they opine about nearly everything in their universe in some manner for the whole world to view from cell phones, laptops, pdas, voicemail, chatrooms, text messages, forums and they call their tribe to order around a new 'cause' on Facebook on a regular basis.

These are the 'collaboratives' -- a tribe of people who are tech saavy, well-educated and love to share their strong feelings with the world -- they insist on being heard, and seen, and read, and tweeted and twittered....they wanna play, too!

What do you do with collabortives?

Well......you let em play, too.  

You invite into the virtual sand box and give em places to contribute, sound off, and opine.  In worship experiences you let them work with their hands and their hearts by calling them into Service Worship Experiences.  You connect them in learning cohorts and small group gatherings where they participate and collaborate.  They shift from consuming experiences to mashing them up on the fly with a few good friends.

You let them text in their ideas during a worship experience and then you send them a follow up series of text messages related to the message in the days after the gathering.  You let them collaborate with you on creating the worship experience and give you ideas on how the central scripture impacts them and then you allow them to send in ideas for videos that you help them produce featuring you know who....them!  

That's what I'm learning these days as the Point Leader of Phos Hilaron Church -- how to expand the virtual sand box and let a whole lot of people participate in the Grande Theological Discussion! (if none of this makes sense to you then chances are you are either not paying attention, or are part of an organization with an average age way over 50)

The prompt for this post came from reading our local weather man's blog about the snow / ice storm brewing in the Louisville area today.  What I noticed was that over 29,000 people connected with him last evening on a live chat.  That's a trend that's only gonna get stronger. Gone are the days when the Weather Man was the lone authority -- in are the days when everyone has an opinion, maybe has taken Meterology 101 so considers themselves somewhat of an expert, and they wanna play, too! When the weather man is finding ways to connect and 'play' with the collaboratives, I think I should, too!!

And, so I will. Wanna play?

I'd love to hear how you are letting the 'I wanna play, too' generation, the Collaboratives, into the sandbox in your business, club, or church.

Jeff Fuson

Jeff Fuson serves as Point Leader for Phos Hilaron Church near Louisville Kentucky. Jeff's # 1 passion is being a husband and daddy. A close second is seeing people grow spiritually. As a Professional Speaker Jeff also serves as a Keynote Speaker & Trainer crafting & delivering high impact keynote addresses & training events for Entrepreneurs, Banks, Credit Unions, and small to medium sized non-profit & for profit enterprises. He's got one incredible wife and 3 awesome children.

Leadership Rises and Falls with Courage

Leaders dream, dare, and do what it takes to usher in a future that others can't yet imagine.  

Because leaders are visionary by nature and because they can see farther faster than those they lead there are moments when the leader must deal with a vast unknown and make 'best guesses' with less than all the data that they'd really like. 

Therefore, there is a level of angst and fear that I leader must stare down and move through and still make the call, take the shot, pull the lever, take the leap.  

John Maxwell says that leadership is influence.  I think that he's mostly right.

So, a little leadership algebra might help you do what you need to do as a leader....

Influence Rises as the Leader risks boldly for Christ.  No courage = no leadership.  A leader who boldy trusts God with all he/she is/has and takes bold leaps of faith under God's rule.  And, when she/he does that she/he takes others with them.  

Courage is the ingredient that High Impact Organizations must have.  And, the more the better!

Jeff Fuson serves as Point Leader for Phos Hilaron Church near Louisville Kentucky. Jeff's # 1 passion is being a husband and daddy. A close second is seeing people grow spiritually. As a Professional Speaker Jeff also serves as a Keynote Speaker & Trainer crafting & delivering high impact keynote addresses & training events for Entrepreneurs, Banks, Credit Unions, and small to medium sized non-profit & for profit enterprises. He's got one incredible wife and 3 awesome children.

Phos Manifesto

'God send us the ones you want to run with us and keep those away that would derail this Missional Church Launch.'  --that's one of the top prayers that I've prayed during this past 12 months of launching PHC.  

Guy Kawasaki's 'Art of Innovation' presentation over at 'zentation' has had a huge impact on my thinking related to the launch of Phos Hilaron Church.  He helped me realize that we needed to innovate and that it's okay to 'polarize' people, because that's taboo in church-land where the goal is to be uber-nice and to keep things nice and calm.  

The mission in church-land is to swab the deck on the cruise ship and provide tasty meals right on time so that the tourists remain calm and leave nice tips.  I bet they even have some pictures of fish and fishermen on the cruise ship!  The goal of a fishing vessel like Phos is to co-labor with Jesus to head out into the open sea full of adventure and become 'fishers of men' on a journey with Him.  The goal is the catch and not the comfort of the 'guests'.  We take people deep sea fishing!  It's not for everyone.  Every church must make a choice -- cruise ship or fishing boat.  We're a fishing boat!  ( I think Jesus likes fishermen!)  

The usual goal of starting a church is to get as many people to join you as fast as you can and that can lead to the law of unintended consequences drop-kicking your collective heinies into oblivion.  Our goal has been to put forth an 'Operating System' that has a monthly Sunday AM 'Service Worship' built into our life-cycle. We've launched a fishing vessel and the experts have told me that it can't work and sometimes I've wondered if they might be right, but then God intervenes again and gives us the people, the resources and the vision for His next adventure to participate in.  He has given us good days on the wide open sea with full nets many times.  

We're edgy on purpose.  We polarize people and send 'church-shoppers' who are bargain hunting right back out the door pretty fast.  Why?  Because they're used to 'thinking' about their faith and not used to 'acting' on their faith.  We ripped a thought line off from Rick Warren's 'Peace Plan' that says that 'We turn spectators into contributors'  (I like to call em 'participators', but I don't know if that's really a word) and that's something we're very committed to do.

The reason Phos exists is to Propel Ordinary People into an Extra-Ordinary Relationship with Jesus who can Fly into the Future that He has Dreamed for them.

It' a high calling and it takes courage to build a church that has 'ACTION' in her DNA.  We chose the name Phos Hilaron to remind us of our mission to be 'dancing light' in this community and around the world -- to go into hard & dark places with this great Good News and love people.  To literally live out the 'Good Samaritan' story that Jesus tells in Luke 10.  

Our paid servants have known from the beginning that this is not 'business as usual' for a church and that we're running the edge of disaster all the time.  And, they've had paychecks held long enough for one more Sunday as we pray that the offering will be strong enough to pay em.  And, they know that when we go out and do 'Service Worships' that sometimes we take a big fat Goose Egg home with us in the offering bucket.  In the business world that's called 'Opportunity Cost' and it's 'costed' us plenty this year as we have taken it on the chin a few times.  And, right now we're running in the red because of it.  And, we won't have it any other way.  Give us this adventure with God in forging apprentices or give us death.  We can't stomach the thought of more business as usual in church-land.  

But, I have loads of God-fidence that He'll show up again and rescue us from out of the blue again.  I'm kind of addicted to the adrenaline rush of seeing what God does up close and personal.  I like the 3 AM head-rush of wondering if anyone will show up the next Sunday and if God will provide what we need again for another day.  I'm learning to live on Manna that comes when we need it, but only as much as we need...and, I like the new diet!

Our Paid Servants have positioned ourselves as Missionaries and NOT as Church Staff.  Church Staffers have office hours and programs to run and volunteers to recruit to run said programs.  We don't have offices or office hours but we have a mission of being engaged with our neighbors and of doing whatever it takes to reach them and build them into Full On Apprentices of Jesus.  Our team works their tails off each week and has proven that they'll do anything to reach others and see them enter into a full-on relationship with Jesus. 

And, they're just taking their cues from the AMAZING Volunteer Army that makes Phos run.  You wouldn't believe the level of commitment, energy, zeal, and passion that this crew plays with.  You wouldn't believe what they do to set up for just one worship experience at Tinseltown Movie Theater in 11 & 13 & the Kid's Area each week.  You just wouldn't believe it!!  They're the best.  

God has called us to the edge and pushed us off over and over again and I'm beginning to learn to trust Him and to know that we can fly & that He'll bring the thermals we need to move us along.  That sometimes we just have to set our wing and let Him provide the lift.  I'm not really very good at flying, but I'm getting real good at falling off the edge after a nudge from God and then 'soaring' as I rely on His energy to carry me along and to provide the updrafts that take me to incredible 'un-earned' vistas -- that is, I didn't work real hard to fly high--He just takes me there because He wants to.   

Last Tuesday I got some potentially devastating news about two key families at Phos....they're leaving!  We're not gonna be their church anymore.  In both cases these are people that I care about and that care about me and Phos.  There is no animosity.  There's just a sense in both families that they need something that Phos just doesn't provide....lots of Bible Studies with no expectation that you ever really do anything with what you are learning.  They are Christian families and they'll do just fine at another church.  And, I'm happy to let em go even though it makes one wonder how God will carry us next.  I'm happy to let em go because if we shift to try to keep them we'll loose our soul and we'll compromise and we'll become a church content with 'content' (knowing stuff) and no action.  We'd be okay with 'head knowledge' disconnected from Kingdom Oriented Action and that smells like rotten putrid maggotty road-kill to me.  So, I celebrate their departure and I welcome the Wave Two people that God is bringing lately who 'get Phos' and they sense that we're on the move and they want to be on the move and they want to take action.  They want to be in the game and they're not content to be spectators.  They love to be into what God is up to and they're not happy unless they're right in the middle of the action--that's who we are and that's who God is bringing to us.  A breed of people who are addicted to the adrenaline of walking with Jesus into a Homeless Shelter to serve rather than into a posh sanctuary to consume another sermon.  A breed of people who study their Bible and then GO live it out rather than study their Bible so that they can have yet another Bible Study and babble on about what they've never really tasted.  It's one thing to study the Good Samaritan passage and to know all the nuances of the story and it's a whole 'nother thing to LIVE IT.  We're taking 'experiential' to a whole new level with Phos.  We don't just bring an actor into our 'sanctuary' dressed as a homeless person..We will walk with those who are reaking of urine and showerless days this coming Sunday when we have another 'Service Worship' and we'll bring the 'sanctuary' to the homeless and share our lives with them.  This is remarkably uncomfortable for many who are content with yet another Bible Story with zero application in their richly appointed church building -- safe and secure from all alarm and sanitized from the possibility that she/he will ever experience the thrill of walking with God into the great big wide open unknown where there's nothing to rely on except for God.  

Alan Witham gave me some vitally important advice as I was launching Phos when he said, 'Put a sign on the front of your bus and let people know exactly where you're going.'  And, that has helped us more than anything.  We are and will be a people who run into the dark with the light of Jesus.  We will not shrink back.  We will take courageous action to be good neighbors in our community.  We will light candles and not just curse the dark.  We will study the Bible and then we'll go live it out there.  We won't be content with head-knowledge but will lean into actively walking with Jesus as modern day disciples.  We will engage our culture with this great Good News by loving God and loving people because God loved us first.  

We will run and not grow weary because He is our Hope, our Joy, and our Power.  

We will soar because He wants us to and provides the updraft.

We won't back down and we won't give up. To rip Barack Obama off, this is 'Change YOU can believe in' and this is change that propels you into a whole new faith journey and revitalizes your relationship with God and others.  

This is our attempt to co-labor with God to change the world by ushering in His Kingdom and by bringing hope, light, and resources to those who have none.  

This is our mission and we won't back down.

Game On.

Let's go fishin,

Jeff

Jeff Fuson serves as Point Leader for Phos Hilaron Church near Louisville Kentucky. Jeff's # 1 passion is being a husband and daddy. A close second is seeing people grow spiritually. As a Professional Speaker Jeff also serves as a Keynote Speaker & Trainer crafting & delivering high impact keynote addresses & training events for Entrepreneurs, Banks, Credit Unions, and small to medium sized non-profit & for profit enterprises. He's got one incredible wife and 3 awesome children.

What it takes to be a GREAT TEAM LEADER

If you are a leader, or you're a 'wannabe...' then read this NOW. Enjoy.

Thanks Bruce Hildenbrand for writing this insightful article...no leader, not even Lance Armstrong, gets there on his own!

Jeff Fuson

Jeff Fuson serves as Point Leader for Phos Hilaron Church near Louisville Kentucky. Jeff's # 1 passion is being a husband and daddy. A close second is seeing people grow spiritually. As a Professional Speaker Jeff also serves as a Keynote Speaker & Trainer crafting & delivering high impact keynote addresses & training events for Entrepreneurs, Banks, Credit Unions, and small to medium sized non-profit & for profit enterprises. He's got one incredible wife and 3 awesome children.