Building a Strong Foundation for Ministry So, as I said before, the greatest challenge in ministry is; the people.
After finalizing the draft of what would become the “Open Doors for the Open” business/ministerial plan, I distributed the copies though email to all of the individuals that attended the initial meeting. What surprised me most after this was the lack of response from anyone in the entire group other than Vicky (fictitious name). Her response was a two or three page summary of the plan that I had put together with very little comment other than, "Here is the plan I generated from your notes." At no time after this was there any real discussion of the comprehensive plan draft I put together from Vicky or from any of the other recipients of the initial plan. We're talking about an entire year of walking down the path to success for a ministerial outreach without a formalized plan accepted by the entire team. Doomed to failure, right? Not on His watch.
This, then, leads to a segue into the difficulty, again, that the main challenge in ministry is the people. It became apparent from my conversations with Vicky that her two to three page summary of the entire plan was considered by her to be the actual plan from that point forward. I didn't understand this for awhile, but it was pretty clear to me as things moved along that, indeed, this was thought of by Vicky herself as the actual plan for the outreach.
I referenced earlier that Father’s Day 2013 was a big confrontation between Vicky and me. We had a serious discussion 2 days before Father's Day, I believe, regarding the identification of a leader for the Outreach. Up to this point, Vicky continued to tell me the Outreach was brought about through a vision she had back in 2005 when the U.S. Open was last conducted at Pinehurst #2. During that time, she expressed, the Holy Spirit had shown her what really needed to be glorified during the Open was Himself, Jesus Christ, as opposed to the international media, the Players or the game of golf itself. What really should be glorified is, of course, Him!! This is what we are called to do in all things, right? On this fact she and I, firmly, agreed.
Regarding leadership of the Outreach, I had already bought into the fact that she would be the Executive Director or day-to-day leader of the ministry. Early on, Vicky and I had talked about how she would be remunerated in that regard. In my plan and in our discussions, I quickly identified the main priority on acquiring funding for her through donations or other initiatives and, indeed, had accepted this as the primary focus of the beginnings of the ministry.
In fact, this was, once again, a concern regarding a team approach to the ministry. I had written a comprehensive draft of the business plan and a rough financial development model and, we weren’t walking down a path of order and agreement. I had included in the plan all of the major components for implementation as well as draft financials to support the strategy, including marketing, travel, monthly support of the Executive Director and funds for general management of the entire process for the next year to 14 months.
I began to take an aggressive approach with the rest of the team as we continued to discuss the overall focus of the outreach even though we didn't further discuss the formal business plan. It was clear to me that each of us was focused on securing the first donation which we estimated at approximately $10,000 in order to fund Vicky to be the daily operator of the Outreach. This focus, however, was met with a significant amount of resistance from the folks at the Chapel, specifically from Jimmy Schneider. I spoke with him a few times about this during those first few months, in fact, several times over the next year, making it clear that in order for Vicky to work as the full time action person, she would need to be compensated. In addition, she needed the money right away. This continued to meet with incredible resistance and I kept hearing the same story as to why. I, finally, heard from Jimmy that the funding for Vicky was not going to be covered by the Chapel and he would not recommend that Vicky lead nor be compensated from the first donations.
This was a significant obstacle and became the reason that very little activity was done on the initial plan nor was there ever another full team meeting to continue down the road on a comprehensive work on the Open Doors Outreach for the next 6.5 months.
Challenges ….. people!!!
So, who's gonna lead??
After finalizing the draft of what would become the “Open Doors for the Open” business/ministerial plan, I distributed the copies though email to all of the individuals that attended the initial meeting. What surprised me most after this was the lack of response from anyone in the entire group other than Vicky (fictitious name). Her response was a two or three page summary of the plan that I had put together with very little comment other than, "Here is the plan I generated from your notes." At no time after this was there any real discussion of the comprehensive plan draft I put together from Vicky or from any of the other recipients of the initial plan. We're talking about an entire year of walking down the path to success for a ministerial outreach without a formalized plan accepted by the entire team. Doomed to failure, right? Not on His watch.
This, then, leads to a segue into the difficulty, again, that the main challenge in ministry is the people. It became apparent from my conversations with Vicky that her two to three page summary of the entire plan was considered by her to be the actual plan from that point forward. I didn't understand this for awhile, but it was pretty clear to me as things moved along that, indeed, this was thought of by Vicky herself as the actual plan for the outreach.
I referenced earlier that Father’s Day 2013 was a big confrontation between Vicky and me. We had a serious discussion 2 days before Father's Day, I believe, regarding the identification of a leader for the Outreach. Up to this point, Vicky continued to tell me the Outreach was brought about through a vision she had back in 2005 when the U.S. Open was last conducted at Pinehurst #2. During that time, she expressed, the Holy Spirit had shown her what really needed to be glorified during the Open was Himself, Jesus Christ, as opposed to the international media, the Players or the game of golf itself. What really should be glorified is, of course, Him!! This is what we are called to do in all things, right? On this fact she and I, firmly, agreed.
Regarding leadership of the Outreach, I had already bought into the fact that she would be the Executive Director or day-to-day leader of the ministry. Early on, Vicky and I had talked about how she would be remunerated in that regard. In my plan and in our discussions, I quickly identified the main priority on acquiring funding for her through donations or other initiatives and, indeed, had accepted this as the primary focus of the beginnings of the ministry.
In fact, this was, once again, a concern regarding a team approach to the ministry. I had written a comprehensive draft of the business plan and a rough financial development model and, we weren’t walking down a path of order and agreement. I had included in the plan all of the major components for implementation as well as draft financials to support the strategy, including marketing, travel, monthly support of the Executive Director and funds for general management of the entire process for the next year to 14 months.
I began to take an aggressive approach with the rest of the team as we continued to discuss the overall focus of the outreach even though we didn't further discuss the formal business plan. It was clear to me that each of us was focused on securing the first donation which we estimated at approximately $10,000 in order to fund Vicky to be the daily operator of the Outreach. This focus, however, was met with a significant amount of resistance from the folks at the Chapel, specifically from Jimmy Schneider. I spoke with him a few times about this during those first few months, in fact, several times over the next year, making it clear that in order for Vicky to work as the full time action person, she would need to be compensated. In addition, she needed the money right away. This continued to meet with incredible resistance and I kept hearing the same story as to why. I, finally, heard from Jimmy that the funding for Vicky was not going to be covered by the Chapel and he would not recommend that Vicky lead nor be compensated from the first donations.
This was a significant obstacle and became the reason that very little activity was done on the initial plan nor was there ever another full team meeting to continue down the road on a comprehensive work on the Open Doors Outreach for the next 6.5 months.
Challenges ….. people!!!
So, who's gonna lead??
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