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Writing For Five Generations

I've spent most of the morning working on a sermon for the weekend after Christmas. I've come to a realization that should be absolutely obvious, but presents a challenge for those of us in a multigenerational church.

Sermon writing and preaching is a fairly comfortable endeavor for me - I've had the opportunity preach more than 30 times this past year. I primarily preach at The Green Room - a worship service Schweitzer offers on the Missouri State campus. Worship on the college campus generally means a congregation that is mostly 18-24 years old. A handful of times a year I preach for all of the weekend services.

Here's the challenge: illustrations, stories, and strategies that work with a single generation audience generally fall flat when applied to a multigenerational group. One perfect example is that I'm really wanting to talk about a specific characteristic of popular culture, hip hop, that I'm very aware will not work for most people over the age of 40. I think this situation is most visible when it comes to humor. 

It's a difficulty the church has in every area of communication, not just preaching, and it's an ongoing challenge. How do you address the differences in communication preferences in your life?

Vacation Email Strategy

Last fall I adopted a zero tolerance policy for my inbox being out of control. Some weeks I would end the week with several hundred messages that needed to be dealt with in some fashion. While I'm in the office it's been relatively easy to keep up. While my inbox has thousands of messages, they're there purely as an archive. Unread messages are dealt with rapidly. As I read each message it either gets left in the inbox to archive, responded to immediately, filed into a folder for later reference, or deleted if I don't need it. This has worked amazingly well when I'm checking email several times a day. Generally email doesn't pile up in a way that is overwhelming. When I'm out of the office on the the other hand...

I was away from the office for a week over spring break on a mission trip and the internet connectivity was sparse at best. When I returned it took an unhealthy amount of time to filter through all of the messages. I'm pretty sure it took me more time to deal with it than it took to receive it all. I determined that I needed a new strategy.

All of my email is in gmail accounts and I use the IMAP support, which makes remote access really easy. I've got the ability to manage it from my laptop, iPhone, or the web. My new strategy is to just read email whenever I get the chance, even when I'm not in the office. Generally that means reading email on the phone. Here's my new conference/vacation email strategy:

• Read mail when possible.
• Process immediately by:
  • Only replying to absolutely urgent email (most can wait a week or two).
  • Saving a draft of an empty reply. Basically I hit the reply button, then save the draft. The goal is just to have drafts started, not to actually have any content.
  • Reading and either saving into an appropriate folder or leaving in the inbox.
  • Saving into a "Needs Attention" folder if it can't be quickly registered.
  • Deleting if it doesn't matter.
• Try to have the unread count in the inbox as low as possible when I return.

I tested the new strategy at Q in April and it worked fairly well, it kept me in the loop without being overly involved and it dramatically reduced the reentry time the following week. It worked so well that I decided it might be a good strategy during vacation as well. I know I probably should 100% disconnect when I'm on vacation, but it's just not something I do well. Part of it is directly related to the volume of email I seem to get and how overwhelming having a huge unread message count is for me.

So this past week in Colorado I tested the theory. Over the course of the week I filed about 25 messages into the "Needs Attention" folder, started and saved drafts for another 30 or so messages, filed a bunch into folders, left many in the inbox, and deleted hundreds. When I returned to the office on Wednesday the only messages that needed attention were those that showed up overnight and my filed messages. By noon all of the email had been closed out and I was able to go about my day. My guess is that the same process using the let it all pile up model would have taken me all day Wednesday to process and several more days to close everything.

I'm really happy with how everything worked out. I flipped through a few emails at a time on my phone or on the laptop whenever I had a spare moment. It never really made me feel like I wasn't on vacation - all of the real work happened after I got back to work. It certainly was nice when I got back to only have a handful of email that needed attention.

How do you handle the pile of email while you're away from the office?

Guest Blogger: Kem Meyer - Less Clutter, Less Noise Blog Tour

Kem Meyer, communication director  from Granger Community Church is doing a blog tour for her book, Less Clutter, Less Noise. It's a great read and will seriously impact the way you think about communication in the church or any setting. I've got a copy to give away to one lucky reader who leaves a comment on this post. Most churches are small, and I was really curious to hear Kem's perspective on communication outside of a large church.

My question for Kem:

In a smaller church setting, where most of the communication material is from volunteers, what can be done to coach all of those volunteers to reduce clutter?

Kem's Response:

Coaching principles are the same whether you’re in a large church, small church, working with staff or volunteers. There’s no sliding scale or different approach, although a lot of people think or wish there were.

Besides sharing articles, links and BOOKS (ahem) with the things you’re reading and learning, the next best thing is to create space for conversations. It is in those conversations where the vision-casting and coaching takes place.

If we’re not leaving time on our calendar—the white space—for impromptu conversations with the people we work with (paid or unpaid), then we can’t expect to see organizational and relational change anytime soon. You see, momentum advances over time through a series of conversations; it is not a one-happy-chat or email event. Bummer. It’d be so much easier if it was. Am I right? If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking this to yourself “I can’t afford the time for that.”

But, the reality is, we can’t afford not to. Every conversation we invest in on the front end makes the next project go smoother. At the end of the day, it’s all in our perspective, isn’t it?

My pastor, Mark Beeson, talked to a group of church leaders last year about what we need to promote forward movement, progress and next steps as an organization. Interestingly, everything he shared starts with an individual’s personal habits, not his or her accomplishments. He reminded us that we can’t get what we “could” have until we let go of what we “do” have. We all need to work on our:
•  Attitude—without this, you will hurt yourself.
•  Relationships—without these, others will hurt you.
•  Persistence—without this, problems will defeat you.
•  Priorities—without these, the insignificant will hamper you.
•  Credibility—without this, no one will follow you.

So, that gave me a little bit more perspective and courage to put down some of my workload to create the whitespace for coaching and relational investments. Although it felt like I was losing ground at first, it didn’t take long for me to see the difference. I went from adding individual value to multiplying team value. Conversations. White space. That’s your secret weapon.