doug & kara serving europe . . .

Following Ian Jagelman’s visit Scott and I have had the chance to process most of what he left us with.  It was fantastic to have Ian spend two days with us and just prompt us to ensure we are thinking the right way. Turns out we are on the right track.  He was able to point us in the direction of a few tools that will help us continue to shape things.  Tools like mentoring trackers, accountability charts and workflow or escalation lines.  On top of that he spent a lot of time helping us think through evaluation of people and their abilities.

On a personal note, I really appreciated having that much time with someone who has been in ministry as long as Ian has.  Not only that but he is someone who delights in sharing his discoveries with others so I thoroughly enjoyed myself and feel I got as much out of the two days as the organization will.

Well this week we have a visitor here to help us take a closer look at the organizational structure.  Part of the visit will be to double check to see if we really are setting ourselves up for success.  Success in structure is seen in the ability to help come alongside the NLI staff in meaningful personal development.  So our visitor is a fellow who has written several books on leadership and church structure, his name is Ian Jagelman.

Got the visas today.  We’re good for another 3 years!  Yay!

Nice weekend in London, well overnight.  We got to see a show, 39 Steps, and visited Hillsong on Sunday morning.  Good times.

Here is a book I’ve been reading lately - Beyond Budgeting - that has been giving us a bit of a clue of some of the steps we need to be taking as an organization.

Lest you think it’s all process and rules, take a read of this book.  It suggests that we can and should trust each other to deliver what we say we’re going to deliver.  That as a member of a team we can and will be held accountable for our work performance.  Sounds like I read something like that somewhere before . . . could it be I read it in the description of a healthy church in that book ummm . . . bestseller . . . ummm . . . oh yah the Bible!

Today we have a visitor in the office from Romania.  Iulia, my colleague and Romania’s STM coordinator, has traveled to England for 10 days.  For the next three days she’ll be spending time in the office talking through the past year of teams and the next year of teams.  As well she’ll be getting some further training in coordination and recruitment of teams.

Another glimpse at the organizational structure.  At a glance it looks like I just drew some bubbles in place of rectangles and at this point you’re right.  But what is behind this thought is an empowering of staff to provide more dynamic decisions and allow for the best person to be the decision maker.  In a team environment the group works together toward a common goal and support one another as opposed to staff working independently on either their own work or to support the work of a person ‘above’ them.  It’ll take some time to move toward this but we’re of the same mind in getting there so . . .

So here is a diagram that looks at the type of ‘customer service’ that NLI would like to have our partners experience.  In the past we have heard reports of some confusion at times in partners not knowing who they are to contact in different situations.  In an effort to increase organizational capacity we want to give partners a ‘point person’ who we are calling a Team Leader - Country.  Here’s a little picture for you:

In house week.  We are just in the middle of in house week which is one of three weeks a year when all staff are on hand.  This week has been a chance to do some training and have a few more discussions about the way forward as we change tack to a Regional Model. 

Following this week we’ll have our staff retreat which will be a first for Kara and I.  It is up in Lancaster which is a part of the country we’ve not been so we’re really looking forward to it.  Hopefully we’ll get to take a short drive into the Lakes District which I’m pretter sure looks something like the BC interior.