Amitabh Singh's Blog, page 6

Church Leadership 4.0 (Part 5)

Church 1.0 was location-based. 
Leaders erected church buildings. People came to the church on Sundays. Having a better parking lot meant more visitors. We had restricted hours, mostly on Sundays, and people came when the doors were open. It was not a 24/7 experience.

Church 2.0 was customer-centric.
It was about taking care of “my people.”  The 1990s was about better service.  In 1992, the first week in October was announced as “customer service week” by President George H.W.Bush. Churches adjusted to better customer service as their selling point. Churches started to discuss how to follow up with their “guests” – hospitality, greeters, coffee in the lobby, and customer or guest service became the buzzwords.

Church 3.0 was cause-based.
Serving the community, supporting missions and short-term missions, giving to a local food bank, volunteering at a local charity, and running a community center became the priority for churches. In some circles, we began to discuss human-centric and ecological-centric missions.

Church 4.0 is moving from traditional to digital. It is phygical and phygital.

 

Phygical is the merging of physical and digital. Church 4.0 is the marriage of online and offline environments that creates a closer and an authentic engagement. All marketing channels have to work together to create a frictionless and seamless experience.

Phygital is a term coined to describe omnichannel marketing.

Phygical marketing, optimization, and automation will take place at an incredible speed. Take the case of Zappos. It is an online shoe and clothing retailer. They provide personal touch through their call center that removes the barrier of buying shoes online. Likewise, church leaders will utilize online tools to attract and merge with human-to-human engagement. We go to Twitter for breaking news. We eventually return to Fox News or CNN.

There is no “one-size-fits-all” guide available to leaders. The overall size of the church helps to decide the scale of administration.

Small churches need to attract online viewers and engage with them locally to grow.Mid-size churches face the challenge of expansion but controlling costs.Large churches need to innovate to avoid burnout.

Church Leadership 4.0 (Part 4)

Skillset

“None of us is as important as all of us.” – Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s.

The industrial age was the beginning of bureaucratic organization. The term “organizational chart” was first used in the early twentieth century. George Holt Henshaw drew the first chart created by the Scottish-American engineer Daniel McCallum (1815-1878). Organizations are not operating the way we have laid it out in a traditional organizational chart. Technological advancement overthrew the factory and productivity system. The organizational chart is static and not agile. Automation, A.I., and collaboration tools have replaced time and motion studies.

Church administrators have historically organized a church in a hierarchy. Church leaders are at the top, and everyone else is placed lower down the food chain. This hierarchy of accountability is becoming increasingly outdated. Management is now getting decentralized as we work in teams. Each team member is an expert in their area. The Jigsaw model is disrupting the traditional top-down management system that we follow in most churches.

Collaboration tools create improved real-time communication and feedback that is eliminating bureaucracy and red tape. Effective teams do not need to go through multiple levels to get the idea to the key person making the decision. Five generations of people working in our workplace are making team members communicate on a peer-based level. Multi-generational teams will push us to embrace a different team structure.

In 1 Corinthians 12:12 (NLT), Apostle Paul uses the body as a metaphor:

“The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ.”

One way you can structure your administrative team effectively is to pivot away from one person having a single function as their sole responsibility, with limited knowledge of anyone else’s role on the team. It is necessary to train other team members to jump in as needed as their secondary responsibility for any team member. Succession planning for each critical role eases the transition and avoids gaps in workflows when team members are on vacation, on sick leave, resign or retire.

With the rapid technology change, the skillset in the church will confront critical projects that require accelerated learning. We will find ourselves working in interconnected teams. Organizational charts separate different employees and do not show us how teams are working on various projects. Organizational charts are ineffective when they tend to lose sight of the overarching goal of marketing penetration.

Church Leadership 4.0 (Part 3)

Leadership Mindset

Everything grows or stagnates based on a leadership mindset.

Let me present the leadership challenge in terms of mountain climbing. Before a church team plans to climb a summit, they need to be clear about the vision. Leaders need to identify the mountain their team is trying to climb.

– Mount Everest is the highest peak in Asia.

– McKinley or Denali is the highest peak in North America.

– Mount Elbrus is the highest peak in Europe.

– Mount Vinson is the highest peak in Antarctica.

– Aconcagua is the highest peak in South America.

– Mount Kilimanjaro is the highest peak in Africa.

– Mount Kosciuszko is the highest peak in Australia.

Kosciuszko is the easiest to climb in all aspects. Kilimanjaro is the next easiest to climb. Elbrus, Mount Vinson, and Aconcagua are similar in terms of overall difficulty. Denali (6,190 meters) and Everest (8,848 meters) are both challenging mountains. Everest is the hardest to climb since it’s the highest and technically more complex than any other mountain. Denali is the second hardest in terms of the overall problem.

They are all mountains, but they come with different levels of challenges. The summit defines the roadmap and helps the team prepare for the challenges. Leadership mindset, in the church context, enables us to determine the path to automation and optimization. A leadership mindset helps us to understand our shared goals.

We all want to experience the joy of climbing the summit. We, at times, fail to realize that the desire to climb any summit requires preparation. Ben Webster had planned the 2004 Mount Everest expedition for two years before he attempted to climb it. Ben raised half a million dollars to have someone reach the top of Mount Everest. He arranged for six tonnes of equipment, 3,000 pounds of food, 100 bottles of oxygen, 16,000 liters of fuel, and 1,500 meters of rope. Ben arranged for Nepalese park permits, yak caravans, lanterns, radio systems, planning for how and when to climb.

When a leader says, we are going for Mount Everest, the executive leadership should think of the administrative vision behind this mindset. If we climb Everest, the central support at the Base Camp needs 30 people. There are camp staffers, porters, runners, cooks, doctors, communication experts, and the Sherpa climbers. If the aim is to climb Mount Everest, we need to hire 16 of the best Sherpas, a member of a Himalayan people renowned for their skill in mountaineering. If the vision is to climb Kilimanjaro, these resources aren’t needed.

The roadmap to the summit is determined based on the mountain we are trying to climb. You will probably take the “normal route” to the top of Aconcagua and the “West Buttress” to the top of Denali. To climb Everest, you will probably take the “South Col Route” used successfully by Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and New Zealander Edmund Hillary on their first summit in 1953. 

For executive leadership, understanding the leadership mindset is critical. According to the Himalayan Database, which maintains records of climbs, 5,789 people have reached Everest summit 10,184 times. Mount Everest is not kind. Since 1924, at least 311 people have died on both the Nepal and China side of the mountains. Some of them are buried in a deep crevasse. Over 100 climbers have died attempting to climb Denali.

Reaching a goal is not something that comes to us on a silver platter. There is a cost for any climb. For an individual climber, climbing Aconcagua costs $3,500. Climbing Denali costs $8,000. Everest costs $42,000 per person. It takes half a million dollars to organize an expedition to Mount Everest.

Four possible areas of improvement should be part of a leadership mindset as we consider what summit to climb.

How can I offer a better experience?How can I increase revenue or attendance?How can I decrease costs?How can I manage risks better?

In the long run, everything rises and falls on the leadership mindset. You and your leadership team needs to embrace an automation mindset. 

 

Church Leadership 4.0 (Part 2)

What Every Leader Must Consider (Before It’s Too Late)

I have been living in Mississauga, a city west of Toronto, since 2011. In 2003, my journey to the USA transitioned me from Executive Director of a hospital in India to serve as Director of Finance of a USA 501c3 operating in 19 countries. Much of my work life has been non-profit management, consultancy, teaching, fundraising, human resource, healthcare, marketing, process improvement, automation, and CRM.

In 2004, Jaico Publishers in India released my book “What Employers Want But Business Schools Don’t Teach.” John Maxwell, author and management expert, wrote the foreword of the book in which he said:

“The words you’ll read are the words of a wise mentor. They are words you may not have heard from your professor. Take them to heart. Apply them to your life.”

Yet, Yasmin D’Souza, my co-author, and I were only half right. We were not wise enough to envision the pace of change. Learning at a school or university is a good exercise. However, it is no longer enough to equip us with all the expertise needed to provide executive leadership.

If it were not for my Dad, I would be in serious trouble today. When Dad was 50, he was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis. The doctor’s prognosis put a lid on his dreams. They told him that he was dying.

“How long do I have to live?”

Dr. Biswas gently explained that it could be five, ten, or a maximum of fifteen years. Dad was a smoker. The doctor encouraged him to stop smoking.

George Bernard Shaw had said:

“Progress is impossible without change,
and those who cannot change their mind cannot change anything.”

Dad changed his lifestyle and quit smoking. He modified the way he ran his lock business. I watched how he wrapped up open-ended issues. As I observed him on his last lap, I made a silent resolution. I decided then that I would change my life when I am nearing my 50s. On my 48th birthday, while serving as an Executive Pastor in Canada, I remembered this resolution.

Here is what I thought:            

“It doesn’t matter how you have run the hospital in India or worked as a management consultant. Neither does it matter that you have hosted over three hundred television programs. It matters little what you did as Director of Finance in the United States. You traveled for more than 200 days each year for over five years and served as head of North American charities. It doesn’t matter, Amitabh, what you did in the past. You are dying if you won’t change!”

I decided to press the reset button in 2015. I asked myself this one question:

“If I was graduating from university today, how would I choose to run my business or a charity or a church?”

This one question, inspired by what I had learned from my father, took me on a beautiful journey. After hundreds of hours of research, studies, brainstorming with experts, and getting my hands dirty in the workplace, I relearned how to organize for growth. In those years, I deep dived four areas of church administration:

How do we increase revenue?How do we increase attendance?How do we decrease cost?How do we pursue excellence?

I ended up rewriting my mission statement and hung it on the wall. It reads:

“To help you achieve inspirational goals so that we can pursue excellence and change lives.”

I am part of a denomination in Canada where 68% of our churches have less than 100 people in attendance. This book is for you who wonder how change is possible within your limited budget or human resources constraints. I want to help you overcome obstacles that hinder you from growing and achieving the goals that inspire you and change lives.

This book has not been written for Fortune 500 company leaders with bigger budgets and a larger pool of available resources. The content of this book is relevant for churches, charities, and small businesses.

Change is inevitable. Learning to grow during change is a choice. I will help you take advantage of both.

Some are living in denial that they need to change. If you are tired of the status quo or afraid of the future, I have a few things to share with you. Here is what every leader should know before it’s too late. In a nutshell, by the time you reach the end of this book, it will all rest on one word that can take both of us forward.

Change!

What I like about “The Purpose Driven ChurchWhat I like about “The Purpose Driven Church

The news last week was about Andy Wood and his wife, Kay, from Echo Church taking over from Rick Warren as the Pastor of Saddleback Church. That is more than four decades of ministry by Pastor Warren. Saddleback Church will be celebrating Pastor Rick’s ministry during the first few weekends in September 2022. Andy Wood’s first official day as pastor of Saddleback will be September 12, 2022.

I decided to read Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Church for yet another time. This time, I wanted to look at part of its content and see how it applies to our current Phygital Church – the merge of the physical and the digital.

Here are a five things that stood out:

1. Evaluate the Purpose

This is how Rick Warren states it:

“To remain effective as a church in an ever-changing world you need to continually evaluate what you do. Built review and revision into your process. Evaluate for excellence.”

2. Plan Your Titles To Appeal To The Unchurched

“If you can scan the church page of your Saturday newspaper, you’ll see that most pastors are not attempting to attract the unchurched with their sermon titles.“

3. Pastor Rick was criticized for appealing to an unchurched audience

“I have been criticized for using sermon titles for seeker services that sound like Reader’s Digest articles. That is intentional. Reader’s Digest is still one of the most-read magazines in America because its articles appeal to human needs, hurts, and interests.

Jesus said, “Yes, worldly people are smarter with their own kind than spiritual people are” (Luke 16:8 NCV). They understand what captures attention. Jesus expects us to be just as perceptive and strategic in our evangelism.”

4. Develop A Plan To Assimilate New Members

“Because your congregation has a unique history, culture, and growth rate, you need to ask some important questions. The answers will determine the assimilation plan that’s best for your situation. Proverbs 20:18 says, “Make plans by seeking advice.”

5. Raise The Level of Commitment

“I’ve always loved Elton Trueblood’s name for the church: “The Company of the Committed.” It would be wonderful if every church was known for the commitment of its members. Unfortunately, churches are often held together by committees rather than by commitment.

One of the ways to assess whether or not your church is maturing spiritually is if the standards for leadership keep getting tougher as time passes, requiring a deeper level of commitment to Christ and spiritual growth.”

You can read about the announcement of Saddleback Church leadership transition at:
https://saddleback.com/watch/news/2022/06/02/Announcing-Our-Next-Senior-Pastor

Thank you Pastor Rick for being a powerful role model to us.

Epilogue

Round Pizza in a Square Box

Excerpt from the Epilogue:

As a father to two daughters, I was happy to manage a hospital that provided the core of its forty thousand free treatments to children. Without free care, I know that most would have had no choice but to suffer through their illnesses and deformities. I met many poor families in the Pediatric Ward who simply could not afford the ten dollars a month blood transfusions, or the two hundred and fifty dollar surgery for a cleft lip or palate. It would have taken them twenty years or more to raise the necessary funds, whether through backbreaking labor or the sacrifice of daily food.

Photo courtesy of Morgana Wingard

Financial need was not the only difficulty these families faced. Children born with physical deformities, especially blindness and cleft palates, faced grim and uncertain futures. Unless a deformed child was born into a rich man’s home, the mindset prevailed that he or she had been cursed. In the community’s eyes, the deformed child was nothing more than a beggar. If the parents did not cast aside the child to beg or starve, the child almost surely forwent education, marriage, and communal support for the remainder of his or her life.

I recall meeting a mother in the hospital who covered her head in shame because she had a child with both a cleft palate and a blind eye that hung loose from its socket. “Why are you covering your head,” I asked her.

“I am covering my head and also my face because I have been cursed by God,” she replied.

It was not until the hospital fixed the child’s palate and removed the eye that the mother uncovered her head. Both her and her son returned to their village with heads held high and confident smiles. Two simple surgeries not only brought self-esteem back to the child, but to the family as well.

Click here to purchase your copy of Round Pizza in a Square Box from Westbow Press.

 

The Good Hand of God

Round Pizza in a Square Box

Excerpt from Chapter 8 – The Good Hand of God:

My ten years as a hospital board member in Calcutta taught me a great deal beyond my business training. I remember clearly the day the hospital made headline news. The story revolved around an unusual incident that happened 24 hours earlier within the Casualty Ward, where one of their doctors was found with a fresh stab wound to his leg.

The next morning, the front page of the local newspaper wrote that the hospital had “denied admission to an AIDS patient.” The cover photo featured the very same doctor and his injured leg.

In the ensuing article, the doctor had told the Media that he was trying to admit an AIDS patient into the hospital when members of the hospital administration stabbed him with a knife in a violent effort to prevent the admission. 

His accusation spread like wildfire around the city. When the hospital accreditation board caught wind of it, they were furious. The public likewise was appalled. “What kind of hospital treats people according to their prejudices?”

The hospital personnel were no less baffled and confused. Never before had the staff turned away people in need of care, no matter their status or condition. This was a charitable hospital and helped the very people that could not get care elsewhere. What the doctor had told the press simply did not make sense.

Interestingly enough, just weeks before the incident, the hospital had installed security cameras in the casualty ward. Tracking down the videotape from the day of the incident, hospital administrators were shocked by what it showed. Clearly the doctor had forgotten about the newly-installed cameras. Lying there upon an emergency room bed alone in the casualty ward, we watched as he removed a knife from the folds of his clothing, ensured that no one was looking, then thrust the knife halfway into his leg. Trying not to scream from the pain, he continued to lie there for some time before a media team mysteriously arrived to interview him.

When authorities called in the hospital’s administrative team and board for inquiry, we showed them the videotape. A play button later, with a few rewinds and pauses along the way, the case came to a quick conclusion. The hospital was exonerated of all accusations.

Click here to purchase your copy of Round Pizza in a Square Box from Westbow Press.

Walking With the Poor

Round Pizza in a Square Box

Excerpt from Chapter 7 – Walking With the Poor:

Mother Teresa

Growing up in Calcutta, I had the rare privilege of meeting Mother Teresa. She ran a network of nineteen charitable homes that cared for orphans, the mentally ill, lepers, and the dying. Cots, clean sheets, and running water simply outfitted each facility creating an unsophisticated yet functional home environment. Never did the Sisters who helped manage the homes turn away any person in need or charge for services.

Surrounding Mother Teresa’s work was an ongoing controversy about the quality of care afforded to her patients, especially those at the Homes for the Dying. Journalists from the Western medical press time and again reported poor living conditions, which included cold baths for patients, and a level of medical care that precluded modern diagnosis and treatment. Furthermore, they complained of the homes’ shortage of doctors on one hand and too many volunteers lacking medical knowledge on the other.

I have always been intrigued by critics who sit in air-conditioned offices providing a spectator’s account of how work should be performed in third-world countries. It is easy to give expert advice on what more must be done and how someone else should do it without being there.

For those who sit and critique, how about actually going to the area of need and doing something, instead of simply writing or talking about it? Serving with the poor is much more than creating a power point, designing a neat brochure, flying business class to fundraisers, or staying in five-star hotels in third world countries. There is no better way to care for people than by walking alongside them.

Click here to purchase your copy of Round Pizza in a Square Box from Westbow Press.

Just Do It

Round Pizza in a Square Box

Excerpt from Chapter 6 – Just Do It:

I turned to my laptop where I had open a photo of Papai. He was just one child representing millions more in need. When we trialed the online education model, Papai was one of our first students. When I first met him, he was addicted to adhesives and covered in lice. He did not have a home or family, and least of all an education. His first day in class, he sat looking straight ahead with his eyes on the teacher, fully engaged in the lesson. He did not resist the volunteers who worked closely with him, and eagerly participated in the songs and art activities.

Photo courtesy of Morgana Wingard

As the weeks passed, Papai displayed amazing resilience. The volunteers spotted less signs of substance abuse, and noticed that Papai was steadily gaining weight. His engagement with the other students increased, while he took a great interest in reading and writing. “I want to be a teacher,” he told volunteers. The last I heard, Papai has moved up another grade level, and often stays after school to help younger children with their lessons.

Yet Papai’s life is just a drop in an ocean of need. An opportunity to learn lifted him from the dregs of poverty and gave him a real chance at hope and happiness. He is doing well to this day. Papai is why thousands of people worldwide work and give on behalf of the poor. It is not about the millions, but about each one in whose life differences can be made. The same can be said of Amar in the feeding line and the fifty children in the Kadamtolla school. In their lives, every single meal and each English lesson makes a difference.

In India, we are blessed with many children. Forty percent of India’s population is below the age of fifteen. That comes to four hundred million children.

But consider the plight of India’s children:

Nearly two hundred million children suffer from malnutrition.

One child dies every second of preventable causes.

One out of eleven children do not live to see his/her first birthday.

One out of ten children is disabled.

One out of four girls is sexually abused before the age of four.

One hundred and fifty million children have no access to education.

Fifteen million children work as bonded laborers.

It does not matter where you live, whether you are young or old, single or married. These are our children. I wish you could see them as they pick through garbage heaps and plow their family’s fields in bare and bleeding feet. They should not have to live like that. Children should not have to wonder where their next meal is coming from.

I know how hard it is to make a change amid such overwhelming statistics. I too have been overwhelmed with the need. I have felt inadequate in my abilities and hurt by criticisms. A couple of years ago, I had the task of raising twenty thousand dollars for a charitable project. Twenty thousand dollars was a lot of money. What if I could not raise the support?

My wife sensed my fear, and I will never forget what she said to me, “Well Amitabh, God never told us how big we need to do a project, just what we need to do. If you raise two hundred dollars for the project, great! You can execute the project at that level. If you raise twenty thousand dollars, wonderful! You can do it at that level.”

Click here to purchase your copy of Round Pizza in a Square Box from Westbow Press.

They Taught Us

Round Pizza in a Square Box

Excerpt from Chapter 5 – They Taught Us:

I am a firm believer in holistic approaches to serving people in need. A holistic approach ensures that a person receives food, shelter, education, and medical care, in addition to a positive, uplifting message.

Sometimes, though, we become so good at meeting a person’s physical needs that we fall woefully short of meeting their emotional and psychological needs. In the flurry of building schools, handing out food to the hungry, and vaccinating children, we forget to motivate the student, heal the hearts of the destitute, and make glad the sick child.

I was never made more aware of this common shortfall than during a walk through Sonargachi. I entered the district alongside a North American doctor who had asked for a tour of our red light medical clinic. The doctor was quiet as we wandered up and down the garbage-strewn lanes. Deep in thought, she seemed to be searching for a hint of hope amid the ruin.

Rounding a bend onto a side street, the doctor spoke a simple, yet striking statement. “You are not simply invested in helping sickness and disease. You are about providing health and happiness,” she told me.

“What do you mean,” I asked.

“A clinic is a necessary starting point. You send one of the sex workers to the radiology department and a tumor is discovered. You have found sickness. That is very good, but any hospital can find sickness and disease. Greater still, how does one find health and happiness? How are you providing well-being to these women? And what about their children? How are you giving them hope and opportunity beyond these streets?”

I admired her discontent. She was right. A medical clinic was a good starting point, but it was not enough. How could we go beyond sickness and disease and rescue entire families from the sex trade?

Click here to purchase your copy of Round Pizza in a Square Box from Westbow Press.