Leadership “hitch”

Every Sunday at Open Life we utilize a volunteer force that is full of amazing leaders who go shoulder to shoulder to make a church gathering happen in a market place worship environment.  Some volunteer roles are easy for anyone to do, and others need very specific apprenticing in order to function flawlessly.

This Sunday we looked square into the eyes of a very precarious challenge.  We had trained and empowered a new driver for our 7’ x 24’ trailer, which holds every item we need to do church within it.  We just missed one detail, which made for an exciting hour with many leadership decisions that had to be made under pressure.

I got a call at 7:35am that the trailer would not hitch from one of my leaders, not the driver.  I was in the shower, so asked if he could solve it.  Set up usually begins at 8am in order to be good to go for service at 10am.   After a couple attempts at a solution, we landed at success and had our trailer to the school by 8:40am.

Here are the mistakes we made and how those who go behind us can avoid them.

1. We missed a couple details on our driver information sheet
   1. We have a detailed document about what it takes to drive for Open Life.  We thought it had everything on it, but we were missing a couple key elements
      1. How high the hitch has to be in order to connect to our trailer
   1. Who to contact if there is a problem with numbers listed
   • Our poor driver was put in a position of being at a trailer with the wrong hitch and no person to contact.  That was our fault! (Can you believe it has taken us 2 ½ years to dis cover this? Wow, God is gracious with us.
2. We skipped 3-5
   1. In delegation and apprenticing there are 5 steps to make it function full circle
      1. I do, You watch, We talk
      2. I do, You help, We talk
      3. You do, I help, We talk
      4. You do, I watch, We talk
      5. You do, Someone else watches
   2. We had our driver shadow one Sunday, shadow and help within the process another Sunday, but never had him back his pick up to the trailer and pull it himself.  If we h ad done step three we would have realized his hitch was too high and the trailer would not hitch unless a new hitch were installed.

Here is what I am so proud of our team for doing right and show health.

1. Our driver called his Group Leader!
   1. He had his group leaders number in his cell and was able to begin solving the problem without calling the lead guy.
2. Our group leader took the lead until the solution was found.
   1. He kept me in the loop, so I could make decisions of how to revise the set up process
3. Our set up team was flexible, and went with the flow without panic
   1. We were able to have everything besides the trailer in place and ready to go for a quick roll in
   2. We revised the set up just enough to have our sound up and running with really only a 15-20 minute delay from normal.
   3. Our set up was crazy fast and efficient, with smiles coming through the drips of sweat.
4. We had fun
   1. Being a part of solving something like this gives us the confidence to attempt things beyond where we are at.  We can hold a deeper sense of our collective ability to not only pull this off, but tackle even bigger challenges knowing anything is possible.

I love my leaders, my church and those who have the courage to volunteer in order to be a part of something bigger than themselves.  Leading people into a growing relationship with Jesus.

Amazing!