So this week, Anna and I are joining Chris at the United Methodist Camp and Retreat Ministries Conference. CRM folks gather every two years--the last gathering was in CA and Chris and I took advantage of having to go to CA to visit San Francisco and Napa. This year, it's being held at Lake Junaluska, or as I like to call it, the Methodist Mecca of the South. Boy, is it different to attend this with a 10 1/2 week old! But, Anna has been a trooper and thus far I've been able to attend everything, including three workshops today.
The first workshop I attended, Chris also attended. It was on dashboards and score cards, and though it was a very simple overview of those, I am embarrassed to say I've never really heard about them before. The presenter started by using Jean-Luc Picard as an example for what dashboards and score cards are getting at--a status update. She asked what he does on the show when he walks onto the bridge. Well, he asks "Number One" for the status. She explained that he's not asking about everything that's happening on the ship, just the key functions. I thought this was a really good way to explain how we set that indicators to track. I think it's really easy to list a ton of things we want to track, and kind of miss the forest for the trees. Of course that's not to say other functions (other than key indicators) are not important, just that as long as you have good key indicators, those are good ways to get a general picture of how things are going.
I also liked the graphic representations that score cards can take--my favorite which I think is really easy, is to use something like a traffic light (green, yellow and red). I also liked her explanation that the "score" should not be set by committee, but by a well-informed leader, and used as a starting point for discussion for the group. I thought this was a good point, since otherwise, you'd likely spend so much time debating the proper "score" (at least with only three options it shouldn't be too off). Instead, it's better to actually work on improving those things that need it.
The second workshop I attended was on camp couples. I actually had planned to attend a different one, but I had to nurse Anna in between lunch and that workshop, and just didn't feel like booking it to the other building. I"m really glad I want to the camp couples one, though, because I got some good advice for raising kids at camp. One couple had some great ideas, including the wife (the husband is the director) comes to staff training to give a presentation on family rules--which include that their house is private, that camps rules should be enforced on their children as well, and that since their three young kids join mom and dad for dinner, dad (the camp director) is off limits to staff for the first 20 minutes of each meal so they can be together as family. I thought there were lots of good ideas in those and others shared.
Finally, I attended a workshop on doing annual donor dinners. One of the areas I really wish I'd learned more about in seminary is finances--we did some, and I learned a lot in my internships, but it's an important area of ministry that doesn't come as naturally to me as it does some people (I don't think it comes very naturally to most pastors--God bless the elect few it does). I learned a lot of really interesting stuff in the workshop, and I'm looking forward to the other financially-oriented workshops I'm signed up for this week. I'm really hoping to focus my continuing ed. time on financial stuff for a bit now...try to get a bit more comfortable and educated about it all.
So, we'll see how the rest of the week goes. I had to miss Leonard Sweet's presentation tonight because of Anna's bedtime, so I'm looking forward to hearing him tomorrow. Chris just texted and said he was really good tonight.
At any rate, it's always nice to keep learning more and growing more, as a pastor and as a person.
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