The First Five | June 22, 2020

Five Things to Focus on this Week towards the New Normal

This is as close as a massive relaunch of every church that we will ever experience
Your approach to reentry will directly impact your influence of your relaunch
If you and your team are not thinking like a church planter…start now.
- Are we prepared for the long haul ahead of us?
- If we were planting this church again, how would we pivot from prior patterns?

All previous benchmarks are irrelevant. You are now in the midst of building a brand new foundation that will be important as you make decisions going forward.
We cannot use our previous data or expectations to drive our decisions toward the future.
Use previous metrics/data at your own risk of experiencing massive frustration and disappointment.
- What new metrics are we now considering important and essential to measure impact?
- How do we balance previous expectations with present realities?

In the midst of a season of tremendous uncertainty, look to leverage a few important strategic moves that are high impact, but are not going to take your organization to the edge unintentionally.
This is always a strong filter for decision making, but is essential in this current season.
- What are the outrageous opportunities our team could get excited about without causing anxiety or unrest within the organization?
- What role does outreach/evangelism play in this low/high mindset?

Upstream strategy and wins are rarely celebrated or even acknowledged. This is due to their proactive position in the decision making process. But upstream decisions happen in the motives and strategic plans of the effective leader in order to facilitate observable results.
What your team begins to do upstream at the moment may never even be measurable, but willbe crucial to setting the vision for the future of your organization.
- What problems do we see in the distance that we can strategically tackle right now?
- How can you coach your team towards ownership of this mentality and culture?

One of the most overlooked aspects of this season that has led to greater team fatigue and anxiety is the need to mourn. Pause on that. Now process that. Now give your team an opportunity and permission to go through that.
Encourage them to grab what they are mourning that they have lost. Areas that were part oftheir rhythms, disciplines and routines that have now changed or completely gone away. For example: The absence of sport may seem silly, but is a real loss for many and is causing a deeper emotional fatigue than we may know.
- When it comes to our organization and how we “used to” do that, perhaps much of the exhaustion your team is feeling is due to the speed of pivot and execution we have been under which also has caused us to move too quickly through our grief.
Five Stages of Grief are relevant to where our teams are at the moment. We have to identify why our emotions are where they are and how we begin to process that together. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. (Did this with my team for 30 minutes today…)
- What emotions have come up within your team that you realize are loss based?
- What are you doing intentionally with yourself or team to acknowledge these losses andprocess them appropriately?

Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen
○ https://www.amazon.com/Upstream-Quest-Problems-Before-Happen/dp/1982134720/ref=nodl
How I Built This Podcast (Great Resiliency Conversations)
○ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297