Transcript
A (0:00)
Hey everyone, and welcome to the Jabin Chavez Leadership Podcast, where we are doing everything we can do over here to help you grow in your leadership, help you with your culture, help you with your systems, help you make better decisions, wiser decisions for the health and the growth of you personally as a leader and then for your organization. I'm so excited about today's podcast and it's really kind of a part. Last week I talked about culture, and today we're going to be talking about systems. Systems might not sound like a fun thought or a fun idea, but I promise you it's really going to help you. So as we jump into this, a few things you can do for me. Number one, if you like this content, can you share it? Can you add it to your Instagram story? Can you send it out on your threads account or on your X account? Do something to help us spread the word, make sure that you have liked and subscribed and all of that to this channel because all of those things help us reach more people with these leadership thoughts. Last week we talked about culture, and culture is so important. And there's really been a lot of talk about culture within organizations, within the body of Christ, man. It's been, it's been so important. But today I want to talk about like the, the other side of the coin of your organization and that systems, an awesome organization not only has a healthy culture, but has strategic systems. And we need both. They're a little bit at odds, they're a little bit intentional, but they shouldn't be. And I say that because I think sometimes you can have someone on your team that's incredible at the culture, but terrible with systems. In other words, they might be awesome with people, but they're awful within a system. And so I think this is actually going to have to be. Andy Stanley called it attention to manage where your strongest culture carriers might be really bad within a system and vice versa, by the way, you might have someone who's awesome in systems that's terrible in culture. You're going to have to work hard to marry these things. So the system of the organization is what delivers the culture and the vision and the mission. So your organization has a mission statement, I would assume, or at least has a mission, has a vision statement, or at least has a, a picture of where you want it to go. And it has a culture, the feeling that you're trying to create within it, but it's the system that actually delivers it. The culture is the feeling and the emotion. It's the guts of the organization or of the church. But the systems are the mind, the thinking, the brain of the church, and we need both. You cannot separate them. And I think what happens a lot of times is we try to ignore it, but you can't ignore it. So here's a big question. I want you to think about this. What systems do you need to create to help lead through the problems? Watch this. That a healthy culture has created? What systems do you need to create to help lead. Lead through the problems? Problems that the healthy culture has created? Right. The proverb writer says, if there's not an ox in the stall, it's going to be clean. But if you put an ox in the stall, it's going to get dirty. When you're healthy, when your culture is healthy and people are being attracted to your organization, your church, man, it's going to create problems. A great culture creates big organizational problems, and you've got to create some systems. So if I was to ask you, what are the areas in your ministry right now where you want a healthier culture? You could probably jot those down. My question is, what systems are you lacking? I want you to write those down. And it can be challenging in the church world because we fight so much for culture. We fight so much for attitude. We fight so much for spirit. We fight so much for teamwork and just a feeling. Maybe we want it to feel good. But the question is, are the systems actually delivering and helping serve the culture you want? We cannot ignore the systems. I've learned this even about church growth. Most pastors that I meet are very sincere, incredibly sincere. But their churches don't always grow. And maybe even the organization, like, if you were to go, man, it feels healthy and it feels vibrant. It feels pretty good. People are smiling, but it's not growing. And what I've learned is that a lot of pastors are sincere, but very few are systematic. They haven't created systems. Now, when I first wrote this, I actually wrote down, most pastors are sincere, but fewer smart, but they're not systematic. And let me just say that about. I would say that about most entrepreneurs. Most people who, you know, they start that coffee shop, they open that restaurant, they start that church, They've got that entrepreneurial spirit. They've got major sincerity, and they really believe in their product. That's why they go all in on it. But it's the systems that are going to actually deliver the sincerity that's in the heart. I'll give you a breakdown of. Of systems. I have a friend. He will remain Unnamed, but he's one of my best friends and I love him. He was talking about how their service times are basically every 15 minutes, or there's a turnaround every 15 minutes. So one ends, they have 15 minutes. Clear the parking lot, get the new one in. Well, that works in the earlier services, but around prime time, there's too many people in the parking lot and there's too many people coming early and there's major issues. So he was telling me this weekend, he goes, man, we had overflow crowds. It was unbelievable. We were having to turn cars away. Well, they weren't having to turn cars away because there wasn't eventually going to be parking. They weren't turning cars away because there wouldn't be enough seats in the auditorium. They were turning cars away. Watch me, watch me. Because of a system, the culture created a big problem. The church is growing. It's an awesome problem. It's what we pray for. It's revival. But there's a breakdown in systems. 15 minutes is not enough time during that prime time. So I said, you're going to have to change your service times. So between that prime kind of 10 and 11 o' clock services, or whatever yours are, you need more time. So for us, between our 9 and 11 o' clock service, we have a 45 minute turnaround time. We go 9 to 10:15, and then from 10:15 to 11, we have a break. I don't like that. It's hard to keep my energy up. But we need it to completely empty the parking lots to get the next ones in. That's a system. The healthy culture has made our 9 o' clock and our 11 o' clock boom. But if I tried to turn that around in 15 minutes or even 30 minutes wouldn't be enough time. Now between the 11 o' clock and the 12:45, we don't need as much time. We go 11 to 12:15 and then we have 12:15 to 12:45. That's enough time. That system works there, but it doesn't work between the 9 and 11. I'm asking you, what systems could you improve? I'll give you another, just another thought. Our 11 o'. Clock. From day one, our 11 o' clock has been slammed to overflow chaos. It just is. It's the what, what 10, what? The 10 o' clock hour is in the south. 11 is in Vegas. Because it's just that perfect time. People get to sleep in a little bit, get to have a little breakfast and they're at that 11 o'. Clock. It's been booming since day one. There's nothing we could do about it. Well, we had to create some systems around overflow. We release our junior high students at all of our services after worship to go to their class. But at the 11, we had to create a system to get them out of the auditorium so we had more room. So the 11 o', clock, and we're going to talk about this in a second, because systems can't be rigid. The 11 o' clock junior high flow is different than the 5pm, the 9am or the 12:45pm why? It's a different system for different crowds. We had a what we called serve team hq. It was a room where our worship team could go. Photography could go, video could go, safety could go. It was just a little bit of a break room. It was a really great room. But we realized we need overflow at that 11. So we had to create a system. We had to move all those people into the offices. Why? So we could have that room. It's a system. The culture created growth. But without a healthy system, we're in trouble. So this weekend we were able to get. I'll give you an example. For weeks we were putting people in the lobby. It's loud, it's crazy, it's distracting, it's busy, people are talking. It wasn't a good experience this week because we moved all those middle schoolers out, which is like 50 kids. We got them out. We now had more seats in the auditorium. Between that, between the seats that we lay down and between that overflow room. Everybody had a great experience. That's not culture, that systems. That's not anything about the heart, that's about the head. That's not anything about sincerity. That's about being systematic. It's not about sincerity, but it's about being smart. So, so what is the system? A system is a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network. I'm going to say one more time because it's powerful. A system is a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network. So I just go back to the parking or the amount of time you need in between services. It's the parking, but it's also getting the kids out, resetting the room, getting the new kids in. It's also enough time to clear the auditorium, clean it, open up the doors again. It's all of those systems that are going to help you deliver the great culture that you have prayed for and fasted for and fought for and taught for. It's all about systems. All right, I'm just going to give you one today and we're going to continue on this thought next week. But let me give you. Let me give you one thing about systems. Systems serve the vision. Here is the question we should always be asking. Are we best delivering the vision? The way we deliver the mission, the vision, and the culture of the church happens through systems. Are our systems right now serving the vision? Are our systems best serving the vision? I just want you to wrestle with that this week. I want you to look at every system you have in place, everything you have in writing, every plan you have, every point of pain in your ministry that is not cultural. So in other words, for us, that 11 o' clock is a painful thing. Right now we need a system. Another pain point is we need to get people to Saturday night. It's not just culture, it's a system. How do we get them there? We're working on systems, events, plans, things. Bribes, Literally bribes. How do we get them there? Right. How are we feeding our Saturday night? We only offer baptism on Saturday night. Get people to Saturday night. How do we offer. How do we create ways to get people to Saturday night? We only offer young adult things on Saturday night. What do we do? We're creating systems to get people to Saturday night to make room for Sunday. There's the cultural side of the people who are really sincere, who will go, you know what, Pastor, I'll move to Saturday night for you. But that's only part of it. There also needs to be a system to get people to Saturday night, to where they go, oh, I like Saturday night. I'll start coming on Saturday night. What is. That's a system. I'll give you one more example. We'll be done for the day. Every year we've done a serve team conference. It's really good. It's always been great. But I didn't really feel like it really helped us last year. And as I was looking at the fall, I didn't feel like it was the best move. Again, this is systems. Our serve team is doing great. But I felt like instead of a serve team conference, we needed to do a team night in September and then a team night in December. So instead of a conference in October, October felt like we needed to do two big team nights along with some other breakout trainings that we're going to be doing okay. But I already had the date set for a surf team conference with my friend Marcus Mecham and I realized, I think the best thing we could do with Marcus and with that weekend that we've already set up is to do a men's conference. That men's conference. Now that weekend is the weekend of small groups. That small groups start. So what I can do, this is a system. I can do men's conference and get a thousand men in that room and then I can funnel them right into six weeks of small groups. That is not culture. That is systems. That is not sincerity. That is systems. That is not God. Send a men's revival to our church. That is creating a funnel, opening a door for the thing that God is doing and preparing for the thing that God is doing. It's a system. Systems serve the vision. The best thing we could do for the vision of our church right now is not a serve team conference. It's a men's conference that leads into men's small groups. It's a system. What are you doing right now? Is it working? Do the systems work? Does the parking work? Does the entryway work? Does the signage work? Does the kids check in work? Does the in between service times work? It's a system. I'll give you something real practically. How's the worship culture of your church? You know, I'm always amazed. I go to so many churches where the sound is so quiet. The audio is so quiet, you can't feel the subs. You can't feel the. The mix is so bad because they got some volunteer back there running it at 80 decibels. You're. You're toast. I'm just gonna tell you you're toast. You need to hire a sound engineer. You need to run that mix at 95 to 100 decibels or more, depending on how you like it. We like it even louder. It's a system. Yes, there's the sincerity of worship. Yes, there's the sincerity. We're always fighting for that. We're always fighting for that culture. But there's actually a system that delivers our worship at our church. So we have amazing, heartfelt, sincere, God loving worship leaders, musicians, texts, lighting, video, on and on and on and on. All of that's amazing. But if you turn the volume down, it's not being delivered. So we also hire really God loving, sincere audio engineers to run it the way I like it, which is basically like a concert. And guess what? For everyone who complains and they do, got earplugs for you. But I'm not going to run the mix for the five people who complain and there's nothing wrong with them complaining, man. It's too loud. Understood. Go ahead and put in earplugs. I'm going to run the audio level at a level that best delivers the culture, the vision, the mission of our church, the system. It's. It's more. It's just as much strategy as sincerity. And when those two things, when. When you get strategy and you get sincerity, when you get the mind and the thought and the spirit and the soul, when you get feeling and thinking and you marry those things, it's over. Your organization, your ministry is going to go to a totally different level. All right, I got through point one today. I'm going to hit you with point two and three next week. I love you so much. Again, make sure you, like, subscribe, do all the things. If you haven't noticed, this is now on the screen City Light Vegas page. So we're live streaming Sundays. We're posting a brand new sermon every Sunday night. I'm bringing fresh leadership content every Wednesday. And then every Friday, we are releasing amazing worship from our weekend experiences. When we release a worship song, sometimes it's original, sometimes it's a cover. But we're really trying to take this page to the next level and provide a lot of content for you. So please like and subscribe. That'd be such a blessing. I love you. You're amazing. See you next.
