MAKE YOUR OWN “MINISTRY COMPETENCY WORD CLOUD”

By On October 7, 2011 · Leave a Comment
This post originally published on http://www.simplediscipleship.com on 10/6/2011
MINISTRY LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES

Do you find yourself becoming an expert of many things other than for ministry such as preaching, teaching, evangelism, and discipleship? Make your own ministry competency cloud.
What is your church leadership competency cloud? Most of my readers are now scratching their collective heads as they are wondering what I am writing about in this article. To understand where I am going with this you need to be familiar with the meaning of the term “word cloud.” It is weighted list or a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword metadata tags on websites. Words that are used more frequently are given a higher weight and therefore appear larger in the final visual. Some search engines use the resulting information to rank websites according to their key words.
It occurred to me that a similar exercise might be useful to visually illustrate church leadership roles based on how much time a leader spends preparing and performing each role. The word graph is not as scientific as the word cloud used for website ratings but it is still revealing. To create it, descriptive words limited to various roles were listed. The same words were repeated once or more depending on how much time the leader spends preparing and performing each role. The result is like the one shown above. Create yours using one of the following links:Wordle (http://www.wordle.net/create) or Word it Out (http://worditout.com/word-cloud/make-a-new-one). With either site you may create your word graph, save it on the site and have it sent to your email as a picture file that you can use. Please share your leadership competency cloud with me by sending it to drthomreece@gmail.com .
THE MINISTRY OF MULTITASKING
Pastors fill many roles and this is doubly true for pastors of small churches. Small church pastors must be masters of multitasking. Each day is an adventure as the small church pastor may wear many hats before retiring to bed. Pastors of large and mega-churches often have the luxury of being able to delegate or hire someone to do the tasks. The small church pastor does not have the luxury of being able to do this and must often learn how to do many tasks that were never discussed during their course of education. The tasks are often necessary to the specific church or ministry, the pastor would certainly prefer to delegate or hire someone to do the task, and often finds himself having to develop the knowledge and ability to do the task. One final point is the pastor’s primary duties often suffer because he is spending so much time and energy on the other tasks.

REAL VS ASPIRED MINISTRY ROLES
Perhaps you are ready to curtail doing some of your tasks that are not directly related to church leadership. The following exercise combined with the previous word graph you created might help bridge the gap and provide some motivation. You might create two different word graphs: one to reflect how much time you spend preparing and performing each role, and another graph to reflect each role according to how much time you desire to spend in each role. Visualization is a powerful motivator and may be useful to help you set goals to make your aspiration graph a reality.
SD Blessings,
Dr. Tom Cocklereece, The Disciplist

QUESTIONS:
1.      After you create your word graph based on what you actually do, what activities do you desire to keep and which do you want to eliminate or delegate?
2.      Is it reasonable to eliminate some activities until God provides a volunteer or the resources to hire an able person?
3.      Are you multitasking because you can’t say “No?”
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Dr. Tom Cocklereece is CEO of RENOVA Coaching and Consulting, LLC
Author “Simple Discipleship,” contributing writer L2L Blogazine
He is a pastor, an author, professional coach, and leadership specialist
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