,

Receipts? Where to Find

Receipts can be located taking these simple steps

A common request I receive is, “Where are my receipts”? First, account administrators receive an emailed notice each month. But often our modern security systems block automated emails and so these important messages go unreceived. This was a serious problem in the old AssessME.org platform. But in the new AssessME, we have now provided a solution. To find your ministry’s archived monthly receipts, please take the following steps:

  1. Log into your Admin Account’s Dashboard
  2. Select “Settings”
  3. Select “Account”
  4. Select “Manage Billing”

A page similar to the following will display…

AssessME.org Invoice History

 

When a date is selected, the invoice details will display and a PDF of your receipt may be downloaded and printed if required…

AssessME.org Invoice Details.

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Assessment Pack Counter Now Available for Legacy Accounts

Our office has received numerous calls and emails by churches wanting to know how many Assessment Packs remain in their account. Since the new platform no longer tracks Assessment Packs, this feature was an oversight for our long established clients. If your ministry is a carry-over from the old platform, pre-January 2024, you will find your pack count presented in the subscription field. Go to Settings > Account > Subscription as displayed below….

Assessment Pack Counter Added to Legacy AssessME.org Accounts

Once your Assessment Pack inventory has been depleted, this field will disappear, and your account will automatically migrate to the new subscription system.

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Getting Started with NextSteps

Configure NextSteps Now

For many of our existing customers, and for all new customers, you will now find a new assessment and equipping program has been added to your ministry account…it is called NextSteps. It is far different from our traditional temperament-based assessments which require no configuration by our ministry administrators. NextSteps indeed requires your ministry to configure it for your use.

NextSteps is a discipleship tracking and equipping program. We made NextSteps 98% customizable. So while in most cases modifying the question pool or the reports will not be necessary, you have that option available to you. However, more importantly, is the need for you to flesh-out the Equipping Center. Right now, if your people take the NextSteps assessments, the Equipping Center will be blank. As a result, you may wish to temporarily turn off NextSteps access until you are ready to release it to your people. To pause NextSteps, please follow these instructions….

  • Log into your Admin Dashboard
  • Select “Settings” from the sidebar menu
  • Select “Options” from the sidebar menu
  • Select “Inactive” from the NextSteps configuration box

NextSteps configuration by AssessME.org.

NextSteps is a powerful program that can totally revolutionize your discipleship efforts. Our hope and prayer is that you will take this new program seriously and utilize it. We know how easy it will be to forget about it once you have made it inactive.

A New Training Book

David A Posthuma has just completed his latest book entitled, Active Discipleship. Like Made for a Mission was our training book for using the mobilization assessments within your ministry context, Active Discipleship is our training book for utilizing NextSteps within your church. We are currently in negotiations with numerous possible traditional publication houses for the publication and release of this new book. Lord willing, it will become publicly available within a few months.

New Book: Active Discipleship

 

Building Out Your Equipping Center

Your NextSteps Equipping Center supports two categories of equipping:

  1. Self-Help Resources
  2. Church Programming

Self-Help Resources

Adding Self-Help Resources is easy, simply go to the webpage promoting a book, or video, and copy the URL to that page. Then, log into your AssessME.org dashboard and take the following steps….

  1. Log in
  2. Select “Settings” from the left sidebar menu
  3. Select “NextSteps” from the left sidebar menu
  4. Select “Formation Strategies” from the left sidebar menu
  5. Select the equipping level tab appropriate to your resource: Discover, Develop, or Deploy
  6. Then scroll down the page and select the developmental phase best suited to your resource
  7. Then locate the “Add” button on the far right of the interface and select
  8. The “Add Strategy” pop-up window will display
  9. Paste in the URL and select Next (Alternatively, you may explore our “Suggested Resources”)
  10. Select the resource category, book, video, etc. and select a number for the best order to use (#1=first, #2=second, etc.)

Add Strategy interface for NextSteps by AssessME.org

Your catalog entry into your Equipping Center will be automatically formatted. You will now be able to track how many people have completed your equipping resource, because each person will be able to mark it “completed” once finished.

Church Programming Integration

Alternatively, you can bypass the pasting-in of URL addresses, and simply select “Next” to manually build-out an Equipping Resource associated with your church programming, such a joining a small group. When you select the “Next” button, the “Add Strategy” popup window will display. In our present example of adding a small group, select “Group” from the “Type” options to expand the popup features. You can add a URL from your church website for information regarding small groups. You can also add an email address of the group leader so they will get notified by email that someone has signed-up to join their small group, and receive the registrant’s contact information to begin their relational connections with the new member.

Add small groups to your NextSteps program by AssessME.org.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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How the New Mobilization Report Features Work

One of the fantastic additions offered by the new generation of AssessME.org, are advanced Mobilization Reports. This is a feature request we have received for two decades. But to be honest, to create such reports we needed data to work with…LOTS OF DATA TO WORK WITH. And so, in planning the new generation of AssessME.org, we studied all the data collected over the past twenty years. We wanted to find patterns of behaviors that were consistent across multiple assessment combinations. For example, while our Leadership Style Assessment can identify an Administrator profile, beyond that report, what other ePersonality report combinations and/or GraceGifts report combinations contributed to confirming that a person would truly make a great Administrator. So what the Mobilization Reports give you, in our example, is not all the possible Administrators in your database, but only the very best validated Administrators from your database.

Mobilization Report interface for AssessME.org

 

So, the report begins generating the Mobilization Report by projecting data from the most trustworthy data, the ePersonality assessment. In our present example, the most validated Administrators are either Analyzer or Overseer profiles. The difference in bar graph height represents the quantity of people who possess each profile within your database. It says NOTHING about which Administrator profile is best, because we don’t know how you wish to have the Administrator serve…your application might prefer the qualities of an Overseer over that of the Analyzer. Behind the scenes, the software is cross-referencing the data with the Leadership Style Assessment, and/or GraceGifts or even Skills profiles. Within the current database, the system recommends five of the top validated Administrators within the system.

What It Takes to Make the Mobilization Reports Work

For the Mobilization Reports to work, you ministry must make use of all of our Mobilizations Assessments. These include:

  1. ePersonality
  2. Leadership Style
  3. GraceGifts
  4. Skills Tracking

For the new program to cross-reference assessment data to provide validated Mobilization Reports, the data must first exist. If you are a new ministry with AssessME.org, it make take some time for you to build up your database before you begin to see the Mobilization Reports do their work for your ministry. If you are an established ministry, that has been telling your people to only use the GraceGifts assessment, then this wonderful new feature will not work for you.

Please understand how assessments work. Assessments contain within them validation systems to help ensure the data-result is correct. However, we can add an additional level of validation through cross-assessment validation, accomplished by comparing data from other assessments. AssessME.org utilizes both internal validation, and cross-assessment validation to ensure that the data you receive from us is highly trustworthy. In the earlier version of AssessME, we asked you to conduct cross-assessment validation manually by studying the results of all the differing assessments and ensuring continuity between them. Now, we have automated this process for you!

What Report Categories Exist?

We cannot give you mobilization details as specific as telling you that “John Smith is perfectly suited for directing traffic in your parking lot”. What we can give you is broad mobilization categories that are essential to your ministry’s success. Let’s take a look….

  • Administrators – The report provides the most validated Administrators, of differing types, within your database.
  • Content Teachers – Ideal classroom or course-work instructors who value the content they teach apart from their relationships.
  • Counselors – Ideal mentors, recovery ministry staff, intervention staff, Christian counseling staff, etc.
  • Creatives – Musicians, vocalists, stage designers, drama and stage artists are among the people-types in this category.
  • Entrepreneurs – Need to start a new program or a new church campus? You will need entrepreneurs that know how to build new ministry systems.
  • Hospitality – These are people who love to host and serve others, they bring meals to those who are sick, they are host homes for small groups, etc.
  • Relational Teachers – Compared to Content Teachers, these are ideal inter-personal spiritual mentors and small group leaders who place relationships before any content to be taught (Not ideal for classroom instruction).
  • Servants – Servants serve people, providing help directly, or by providing the resources others need to be successful.
  • System Designers – What is the plan for your new program? What is the plan for the new building project? What is the plan for the new campus church?
  • Team Leaders – Perfect church staff and program leaders, they excel at both relationships and leading a team to accomplish their mission, whatever it may be.

In Conclusion

The Mobilization Reports do not cover all that bases. This is why we still provide a revamped version of our Candidate Search Engine. It still empowers you to custom-define Candidate profiles according to any need, and find the best candidates (See below). But the new Mobilization Reports are intended to streamline your search for the top broad categories ministry leaders need, and validate that report at the same time.

AssessME.org Candidate Search Interface

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The Launch of the Next AssessME

A New Generation of AssessME

At the beginning of 2023, I was was deeply concerned that COVID had seriously damaged our AssessME.org ministry. Every business analysis suggested the ministry would be bankrupt by Fall of 2023. However, our Lord was faithful, and so was our customer base, enabling AssessME the time needed to restructure and rebuild our platform to make it better than ever before. Around this January 1, Lord willing, the next generation of AssessME.org will launch! 

Please take a few minutes to study this article and learn about the incredible new features AssessME.org will soon launch.

The New Price Structure

To ensure that AssessME.org can continue its ministry for years to come, it is long past time that we revise our price structure. Our last revision was in 2015. Since that date, inflation has impacted almost every business. However, rather than raise our prices across all our services, we have decided to restructure from selling Assessment Packs to a Monthly Membership Subscription…which is the same method used by most other Software as a Service (SaaS) providers. The new subscription model will make it easier for any church to get started with AssessME.org. The price structure is as follows….

  1. AssessME Starter Plan*                 $25/month                 1-25 People  (The database fee for current customers)
  2. AssessME Community Plan          $50/month                 26-100 People
  3. AssessME Congregation Plan       $100/month               101-500 People
  4. AssessME Campus Plan                 $175/month                501-1,000 People
  5. AssessME Unlimited Plan             $300/month               1,000 – 1,000,000

*PRICE ACCOMMODATION FOR ACTIVE MINISTRIES WITH PACKS –  [SEE CHART BELOW]  Around January 1, 2024, established ministries with a remaining Assessment Pack inventory will be required to confirm your subscription by entering a credit card, and will then be charged the base membership/data access fee of $25/month until your Assessment Pack bank account is depleted. Once your assessment pack inventory is depleted, new registrants will then be applied toward the new fee structure…so even if your church has an established database of 14,000 registered members (and yes, we do have churches that large), your new fee structure will only be $25/month until you reach your 26th new member, then increasing to the $50/month, etc. Failure to affirm subscription will result in the closure of your ministry account.

Current NextSteps Clients: Churches who have been paying $30/month or more for NextSteps will no longer have a second bill. NextSteps will now be fully included into one online invoicing process with our Mobilization Assessment Service…and you will start at $25/month for everything! Saving your church $5/month.

AssessME Price Explanation chart

NOTE OUR NEW POLICY: Database access now requires an active membership. Your ministry may cancel your subscription at any time, but doing so will restrict viewing of your data. Closed accounts may be reopened at any time without penalty, subscription rates will continue at the rate established when the account was closed.

 

The New Admin Dashboard

Again, Lord permitting, we will launch the beta version of our next generation of AssessME.org around January 1, 2024. One of the dominant changes our customers will celebrate is a complete rebuild of our Admin Dashboard.

AssessME.org Dashboard

 

The new dashboard is patterned after the dashboard we built for our NextSteps software, and in fact, NextSteps is now fully integrated into AssessME (more on this later). NOTE: The dashboard development is in flux and may change as we receive customer input.

The Personality Mix graphic report displays in percentages your church’s unique combination of ePersonality profiles, in essence representing your church’s Organizational Temperament. This also helps your leaders discern temperament deficiencies in your church’s Organizational Temperament. For example, churches devoid of entrepreneurial temperaments will find it extremely difficult to launch new ministry programs. So, if change is necessary for your church, then your leadership must recruit needed temperaments into your ministry body.

The Congregation Assessed report helps your leadership validate how well AssessME.org has penetrated your ministry’s culture.

The NextSteps Progress graphic report shows how balanced your church is between those exploring Christianity, those growing in their faith, and those being equipped for Kingdom ministry service. A lack of balance demonstrates ministry areas in need of additional planning and resource application.

The People Graduated report is tied to the NextSteps Discipleship Tracking & Equipping system, now fully integrated into AssessME.org. This report conveys how many people have matured spiritually from a previous phase of development, to a more advanced phase of development, on an annual basis. Graduation will be fully addressed in the NextSteps portion of this new system update.

 

People Management

Let’s now explore the first menu item entitled: People. We used to call People “Users”, and as a retired pastor, I was always uncomfortable with that term. This is now the master People-Management interface.

AssessME People Report

The Quick Search feature enables Administrators to enter a name and have that particular person’s information immediately displayed. Otherwise, data sorts based on last name alphabetically. Placing a check in a person’s checkbox identifies that record(s) with a following action to be applied: REMOVE, RESET, PROMOTE.

Data Re-Sort: However, this report can be custom-sorted by selecting a header title, such as ePersonality…then all data will re-sort alphabetically based upon ePersonality profiles. This feature is consistent across all sub-header titles: Name, ePersonality, Leadership Style, graceGIFTS, NextSteps Phase, Felt Need, and Skills. Never before has it been possible to have so much data sorting power at your Administrator’s finger-tips!

Filters: As before, the People report can have various filter-options applied in order to get the exact data you require. The Filter options include:

AssessME Filters

Candidate Search: It’s still available! The Candidate Search Engine that empowers you to free-form your data selections in order to create ideal profiles for any ministry service opportunity has been completely updated:

AssessME Candidate Search

Invite People – The final function available from the People report page is our “Invite People” button. This is an automated messaging system that enables church administrators to send an invite-email to anyone they wish to register an account with their church and begin the assessment process. Simply type or paste email addresses into the interface to send an invite to register an account; no typing of a message is required….

AssessME Invite Screenshot

Reports

For years our churches have requested a better interface for mobilizing specific kinds of people into specific service roles. While this might seem easy, it is not. Because of the unique qualities that embody churches of differing Organizational Temperaments, a one-size-fits-all solution will never work. However, in an effort to provide our churches with highly trustworthy data, we examined the data patterns of all system-wide users since 2005, then created a data reporting system built around the most trustworthy data combinations. This will become more clear as we proceed….

1) MOBILIZATION REPORT

AssessME Mobilization Report

Our Mobilization Report enables your church administrators to find broad categories of people-types based upon a combination of datapoints across numerous assessments. This means, for these reports to function, your people must be instructed to complete all assessments, otherwise they will be excluded from these important reports. Mobilization Report categories include:

  • Administrators
  • Content Teachers
  • Counselors
  • Creatives
  • Entrepreneurs
  • Hospitality
  • Relational Teachers
  • Servants
  • System Designers
  • Team Leaders

We are using cross-validation of assessment data to identify the most trustworthy candidates that fit a selected Mobilization category. So, for example, your church may have very aptly gifted Administrative-type people who do not make this report because the person’s data has not been validated across multiple assessments. This methodology is called, External Validation. Your discernment must always be applied when mobilizing people into ministry service roles, but especially when mobilizing an individual who assesses outside the scope of our report ideals.

The ePersonality report types that best support the selected Mobilization category will display, and bar graphs will convey how many people are comprised of each temperament-type. This tells Church Administrators that while X-number of people have been confirmed as Administrators, there will be differences is what each Administrator offers based upon their temperament. Your discernment is still essential. We do not know how you plan to apply the data you seek, So, you must still prayerfully review each Candidate and select the best one for your application.

At the bottom of the interface will be a highlighted link telling Church Administrators how many people qualify as, in our present case, Administrators. Our current Demo Account shows that “5 people meet this criteria >“. Selecting this link will take the church Admin to the People Page with that data pre-sorted to only display the five ministry Candidates under review.

 

2) PERSONALITY REPORT

The Personality Report displays a bar graph representing how many people in your church comprise each temperament profile type. While this bar graph can give church administrators some idea of what temperament types are more common than others, it may also convey the unique mix that comprises your church’s Organizational Temperament. Vacant temperament types, or type categories lacking a sufficient quantity of temperament types to accomplish the vision set forth by leadership, will require intentional recruitment of these types within your church, to enable your church to accomplish its mission goals.

AssessME.org ePersonality Report

The second part of the ePersonality Report interface continues as follows….

AssessME.org Personality Report

By selecting an ePersonality title, a bulleted summary of that report displays. By selecting the quantity of people assessed as possessing the desired temperament type, the system will open the People Page, pre-sorted with the relevant data.

 

3) LEADERSHIP STYLE REPORT

All Report categories are consistent in their data layout, so interacting with the interface is quite intuitive. Compare the ePersonality Report above with the Leadership Style Report below….

AssessME.org Leadership Style Report

4) GRACE GIFTS REPORT

The graceGIFTS report will be presented in two parts because the data reported is extensive. Our graceGIFTS assessment has both Gift Category titles, as well as Sub-categories of data we call Gift Expressions. Originally, Gift Expressions were merely descriptions of how people with specific temperaments would utilize the gift in question. However, over time, some of the Creative Categories required further detail. These expanded Gift Expressions may include: Tenor, Alto, Baritone, Soprano, Guitar, Piano, etc. As a result, Gift Expressions are the most essential gift-data that I rely upon for mobilizing the right people, in the right way, for the right position.

AssessME.org GraceGifts Report bar graphs

The data used for our Demo account came from a past customer that described themselves as “relational praying church”. Look at the number of people who assessed with the gift of Intercessory Prayer – ZERO! Who you think your church is, and what it really is, are two views that are often at odds with one another. Data is your friend. If this was your church, and you truly wanted to instill a culture that valued prayer, what would you do to help your “prayerful people” fan into flame their dormant gift of Intercessory Prayer? As is consistent, the gift data is displayed below along with selected Gift Expression sub-categories….

AssessME.org graceGIFTS Report, part 2

The number associated with each Gift Title, and each Gift Expression, conveys the quantity of people your church has assessed who have been validated to possess the gift in question, and remember, the selected Gift Expression(s) are Temperament-defined descriptions of how a gift might be used. The selected Gift Expression(s) ought to match the qualities listed in the Candidate’s ePersonality Report. Selecting a displayed quantity associated with a gifting will open the People Report with all report data pre-sorted per the previous selection.

 

5) SKILLS REPORT

The Skills Report conveys all available Skill categories. For 2024, we are converting our Organic Skills Tracking Program into a hybrid model whereby the interface defaults to display the top skill titles proven to be in high demand by our churches since 2005. People may chose to select from a default Skill Title and then simply add their Micro-Resume comments, or they may opt to create a new Skill category if their skill is not found in the default list. Our hope is that this new format will minimize the desire of some church staff to create their own unique skill list. These practices have proven to provide the least amount of validated skill data to churches, when they try to customize their skill list.

AssessME.org Skills Report graphic

 

By selecting a quantity associated with an active Skill category, the People Report with presorted data will present the requested information (NOTE: development still to be finalized).

AssessME.org Skills Report #2

6) FELT NEEDS REPORT

As I stated earlier, the NextSteps Discipleship Tracking & Equipping program is now a fully integrated assessment platform within AssessME.org. Previously, it was a secondary system with its own billing apart from our Mobilization Assessments. Now, NextSteps is fully integrated by default. However, if your church does not want your people to see the NextSteps assessments while your leadership is customizing it, or, if your leadership decides not to use NextSteps, we have offered a functionality within Settings>Options>NextSteps>Inactive or Active, to deactivate NextSteps. From our perspective, permanent deactivation would be a shame and a philosophical error. For we believe that church leadership ought to track people’s spiritual maturation, as well as know the Biblical and ministry equipping your people have undergone.

Now to Felt-Needs….Felt Needs are the emotional/spiritual motivations or obstacles to a person’s spiritual development. There are twelve positive Felt Needs (i.e., motivations), and twelve negative Felt Needs (i.e., obstacles)….

Below the bar graph is the details report field. Here, if you select a Felt Need title, a bulleted pop-up box will convey the qualities associated with the selected Felt Need. If you select the number associated with an active Felt Need, the People Report page will display the person’s data, pre-sorted based upon Felt Need data.

AssessME.org Felt Need Report, part 2

 

7) Formation Analysis Report

The Formation Analysis report conveys people’s progress in growing spiritually across nine Biblically-defined growth phases throughout your entire church (Our demo version only has three users). This is essential to know how mature people are in their faith in Jesus Christ before asking them to serve in any particular ministry position.

AssessME.org Formation Analysis Report

AssessME.org Formation Analysis Report

Again, selecting a Category title will pop-up an info-box containing a bulleted summary of the category’s maturation information. Selecting a number associated with an active report will bring the Church Admin to the People Page with the data pre-sorted to accommodate data associated with the selected maturation category.

 

8) FORMATION PROGRESS REPORT

While our Mobilization Assessments are not designed to be retaken, this is not the case with assessments associated with NextSteps. By default, your people will be invited, through automated email messages, to retake their NextSteps assessments annually. Data from each assessment period is dated, archived, and displayed in various reports. Among these is the Formation Progress Report….

AssessME.org Formation Progress Report

People who are still in their first assessment period will display in blue. People who have graduated from one growth-phase to another will display in green. Your Admin Dashboard will also record how many people have graduated from one growth phase to another as a percentage of People within your platform.

Your leadership can custom-define how the Email Invites to retake NextSteps are sent. Visit Settings>Options>NextSteps for setting adjustments. By default, the system is set up to send retake invites annually from the date of each person’s registration. However, this is not the most powerful setting. I recommend configuring the auto-invites to initiate about two weeks prior to Fall Kickoff so that all discipleship programming offered by the church may be matched to the needs of each person. This is a revolutionary feature that can greatly transform your church for the better. See the interface below….

AssessME.org Auto Invite

Additionally, our software enables Church Admins to manually initiate a request for selected individuals to retake their assessments if the Admin believes the NextSteps data is not up to date with what the Lord is doing in the selected person’s life.

 

New Training Support

Coming very soon, a new book by David A Posthuma entitled: Active Discipleship. This book, like Made for a Mission, was our training resource for church staff to implement our mobilization assessments into their church, Active Discipleship provides the systems and solutions to help churches transform into truly Active Disciple-Making churches!

New Book: Active Discipleship

Integrations

The Integrations menu item will enable churches to integrate and automate data-flow between AssessME.org and a growing list of Church Management Software Systems. There is a one time setup fee of $125 to help AssessME.org recover the development costs for building the interfaces for these various programs.

AssessME.org Integrations

 

Account

The Account menu item provides access to several administrative functions. To access Account, go to Settings > Account.

AssessMe.org Account interface

Features include management of your Ministry Information, Subscription (ministries may cancel at any time), and data export. Additional Administrative functions may be accessed by selecting “Options” under the “Settings” menu. Additional functions include….

AssessME.org Options

 

NextSteps Customization

Finally, you have about 98% customization ability over the NextSteps Discipleship Tracking & Equipping Program. This is not the place to go into customization details other than to affirm that your Church’s version of NextSteps can truly represent your church’s unique culture. We found during our fourteen years of market research, that no two churches agreed on discipleship language nor process. As a result, NextSteps is NOT a one-size-fits-all application. To access NextSteps customization, select Settings/NextSteps and then select the area you wish to customize….

AssessME.org NextSteps Customization

 

 

Conclusion

Your congregation’s software interface will remain largely the same. They will not be aware that all these changes have been made. Taking assessments will remain a simple and friendly experience. However, Church Administrators will cry out for joy! In addition, every aspect of AssessME.org is now mobile-friendly, so Church Administrators will be able to access AssessME on the go! Further development is still in the works. Additional features we hope to bring online in 2024 include:

  • Monthly membership payment system (Finally an end to purchasing expensive Assessment Packs!)
  • Admin access to ePersonality Flex Reports
  • Assignment and tracking of people to specific/multiple departments and service positions
  • Additional communication and notification features
  • Additional API Integrations (Please offer recommendations!)

Thank you for your patience during this past year when we had no idea what God was up to. But thanks to the Lord, and to our programmer James Wiersma, God clearly has much good in store for our futures together as we all seek to grow in our faith in Christ, and learn to better serve our Lord and His people.

In Christ’s Service,

David A Posthuma, Owner & Systems Designer

 

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How to Build Entrepreneurial Ministry Teams

How to Build Entrepreneurial Ministry Teams. Church staff regularly request our recommendations regarding which personality profiles and leadership style profiles are best suited for the various leadership roles within their church. On the surface this may seem like an easy service AssessME should provide. But, in reality, it is not so obvious.

Why? Because of the influence imposed by Organizational Personality. Every church possesses a unique Organizational Personality that defines their core systemic values. Each temperament exhibited by the key influencers within a church combine to form its unique Organizational Personality. The result: Some churches are very corporate in style, while other churches are very relational, still other churches are highly artistic. These are only a few examples of differences that impact the mobilization process. (NOTE: The proven Meyer-Briggs construct can also apply to Organizational Personality to identify 16 potential organizational types). This variety hinders our use of a one-size-fits-all team building solution. However, there are common principles and practices church leaders should learn and apply so that they can effectively mobilize ministry teams. Today, let’s examine How to Build Entrepreneurial Ministry Teams.

Four Basic Ministry Team-Types

At a basic level, temperament theory suggests there are a minimum of four categories of ministry teams. These categories are not based upon titles such as “Youth Leader”, but rather upon the fundamental functions practiced by our One God, expressed through three personalities: 1) Creative/Entrepreneurial Ministry Teams, 2) Human Resource Management Teams, 3) Task/Systems Management Teams, and 4) Human Care & Recovery Teams. For practicality sake, we divide the Administrative/Management function between management of people and management of tasks.

  1. Entrepreneurial Ministry Team
  2. Human Resource Management Team
  3. Task & Systems Management Team
  4. Human Care Team

How to Build The Entrepreneurial Team

Regardless of the ministry department (Children’s Ministry, Teen Ministry, Outreach Ministry, etc.), whenever your church desires to start a new ministry program, recast and implement a new ministry vision, or start a new church, you will want to learn How to Build Entrepreneurial Ministry Teams. Entrepreneurial leaders and ministry teams can do wonders for any church or program, IF they are allowed the freedom to create, and receive support from fellow leaders who are not threatened by their strong personalities and immense capacity for casting vision. This team-type, like all others, should be comprised of a Three-Strand-Cord team of leader-members. In our present case, the Ministry Team’s entrepreneurial purpose will define the kinds of people that will comprise this leadership-team.

Entrepreneurial Team Lead 

When your church leadership seeks to build Entrepreneurial Ministry Teams, the Team Lead should include an individual with a Leadership Style of “Pioneer” and an ePersonality profile consisting of one of the following: Designer, Planner, Creator, or Super Leader. Which is best suited for your church and your particular team mission? Well, this is where you will require discernment from the Holy Spirit. In all honesty, I believe AssessME.org would do damage to many ministries if we bypassed your responsibility to discern God’s will and purpose by forcing a one-size-fits-all solution for team building. Each of the listed profiles include entrepreneurial abilities. Look at the bulleted summaries of each profile below and ask yourself, which kind of Entrepreneurial Leader would I likely select for for a given open position?

 

Creator

Entrepreneurial Temperament Types

Creators like to do ministry as it has never been done before. New practices, new systems, new procedures. Creators are often driven by a unique vision which may clash with establishment leadership. However, they will gather data and develop strategies to prove the validity of their ministry dream.

 

Designer

Designers are good organizers and systems planners. In essence, they want to first develop an accepted blueprint

for the ministry to be developed, but once it is developed, they get quickly frustrated if establishment leaders do not get onboard with the blueprint. They have a small relational pool, so their ability to persuade others may be limited.

 

Planner

Planners are one of the rarest temperament types. They are truly visionary and can perceive all the steps necessary to build for the next five years or more. They think in process, systems, and strategy, and can pull people together to support a noble vision. Obtaining the vision is the goal and glue that holds the Planner’s ministry team together. The Planner excels at positioning the right people in the right roles. The Planner will follow-through relentlessly pursuing his/her strategic plan.

 

Super Leader

Super Leaders are leaders of leaders. This temperament is the most relational of the four entrepreneurial types. Super Leaders are the least visionary, but ably pull the necessary people together to accomplish the new ministry objective. Strong at strategic planning, they are also ardent change-agents…everything can always be done better. Their perfectionism creates high standards that quality leaders will want to strive to uphold, but may cause lesser leaders may grumble and complain.

There are certainly similar qualities within each of the four entrepreneurial temperaments, but also some distinct differences. Another way to evaluate the differences in each profile is to look at their ePersonality graph scores.

 

Graph Score Evaluation

Creator

ePersonality Super Leader

How I Relate to People

Please evaluate the bar graphs. Note that the Creator and Super Leader are solid “Social” people on the “

How I Relate to People” dichotomy. While social people will be more pleasant to work with, they will not likely be as strong in the area of strategic planning and systems development. Social people like to relate to other people through “being with” them; whereas Independent people prefer to relate to other people by “working with” them…relationships are formed through shared t

ePersonality Designer

asks and/or projects.

How I Process Information

All four temperament types are “Abstract” thinkers. This is an essential trait for envisioning what is not yet built, as if it were already fully developed.

How I Process Decisions

Also, all four temperament types process decisions with their “Head“.  In other words they use reason, logic, and data to make decisions.

How I Relate to the World Around Me

The Creator and Designer are “Adaptive” in how they relate to the world around them, while the Planner and Super Leader are “Systematic” in style. Adaptive people are more quick to change the plan as the perspectives of other people are

ePersonality Planner

considered. Whereas the Planner and Super Leader, being more systematic in nature, will stick to a decided plan unless verifiable data dictates plan modification. In some cases flexibility might be considered a valuable trait. But, in most cases it is not. When plans constantly change, people become frustrated, timelines are never met, and budgets quickly get out of control.

Score Intensity

Another point of evaluation is Score Intensity, or how strongly each profile tends to score within the dichotomy statements. The stronger the dichotomy score, the more that attribute will control the way a person thinks, feels, relate to others, and makes decisions. A 90% Independent will exhibit a much stronger internalization of the analytical and strategic planning thought process than will a 60% Independent. Similarly, the person assessed with a 90% independent score will also likely exhibit poorer social skills, which may inhibit team member recruitment.

This is the process I work through when considering candidates for various positions. In each case represented here, a temperament strength also represents a temperament weakness. This is why I strongly advocate Three-Strand-Cord leadership teams. The basic Three-Strand-Cord Leadership Team looks like this…

3 Strand Cord Leadership

In our present scenario, How to Build an Entrepreneurial Ministry Team, the Team Leader within the three-strand-cord model is replaced with an entrepreneurial leader who serves as the team lead. The Administrator provides support by managing the many tasks associated with the ministry team. A Nurturer/Care leader helps care for the emotional/spiritual needs of the team members as well as the needs of the people they lead.

Finally, I would never make decisions about people based exclusively upon their data. Personal interviews are critical to either affirming your mental picture of the candidate, or disproving your mental picture. We should never prejudge people without first giving them the courtesy of a personal interview. If the candidate is not ideal for the current open position, then my next question is: “Where should they be positioned within the ministry?” Let’s not dismiss or reject people based upon their scores, for each person is a God-given resource to help your church succeed in it’s ministry mission.

A Cautionary Tale

What happens when churches fail to build entrepreneurial ministry teams? Many years ago, Group Publishing had a Church Consultation division. Their consultants used AssessME to analyze all the congregants within 100 stagnant or declining churches. They found in each of these stagnant or declining churches that there existed not one person with an entrepreneurial temperament. Why? Over the years, all the entrepreneurial types of people had been forced out of the church. This is a very common scenario within change-resistant churches. People who wish to help implement change are resisted and sometimes even vilified. As a result, in frustration and experiencing the pain associated with rejection, entrepreneurs leave the change-resistant church. Now, when they need entrepreneurs the most, they no longer possess the very people essential to their future development. The loss of entrepreneurial leadership is one fundamental cause for the plague of dying churches across Europe and North America.

Please respect and nurture your entrepreneurs. They will constantly challenge the status quo…and that is a good thing!

 

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Why Can’t Church Staff Pre-List Skills?

Why does AssessME.org use organic skills list development rather than permit church staff to pre-list what they are looking for?

 

This is a very common question. I recently received another email inquiry about this issue so I thought I would finally publish my response for all to read:

 

Dear Pastor:

In our study of how to use skills, our initial format was to allow church staff to create a list of the skills they were looking for and to seek responses from congregation members. While this seemed like a simple solution, it actually resulted in far less data from a congregation. People saw the list, realized these were the skills valued by church staff, and would perceive that there skills were not of value. Pre-listing skills reduced user participation. This assumes, however, that church staff is encouraging people to take all three assessments plus list their skills and micro-resume.

True skills are an outgrowth of temperament. Your temperament as a child causes you to like some activities and dislike others. The things you like become more and more practiced and form true skills. As a result, skills become another layer of the temperament check and balance system inherent in the AssessME assessment program. So, it’s not just about getting some skills wanted by church staff.

Finally, we learned that an organic skills program not only will provide people with the skills sought after by staff, but it will also provide for many other important skills that church staff never considered but can also be helpful to Kingdom ministry. Let me share an example from my extended family. Recently my in-laws were visiting a mega-church in Detroit. After the service, their car would not start. This church of over 5,000 people had no idea who they could call upon within their church to provide mechanical support. The staff said they never even considered tracking such skills as important. When we pre-list skills specifically associated with our programming needs, we skew the data to that end to the neglect of other important skill areas.

I believe God gives every faithful church everything they need to do His will…this includes every skill represented in the church.

In Christ’s Service,

 

David A Posthuma

AssessME.org

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Flower Power

Years ago, when I was a young pastor in my twenties, the Lord used me to start a new outreach church within a community devoid of healthy churches. Most of the people who came to our outreach ministry had little or no church background. What church experience community members had, they disliked passionately. As a result, I made it a point to promote Christ rather than our church. In my sermons and many conversations, I tried to work-in a key-phrase to emphasize my perspective: “There is a real God working in our real lives”. I was surprised, however, by the negative responses I often received. Many people did not recognize God’s work in their lives. To them, God was distant, abstract, and seemed to lack consideration of their personal needs or concerns. I realized that many people in my congregation did not perceive Jesus Christ as alive, real, and personally involved within their lives…this troubled me deeply. I did not know it at the time, but God was about to reveal himself as very real and very involved within the lives of our congregation…but it would take the power of a simple flower to enable us to acknowledge God’s gracious faithfulness.

As I wrestled over how my church members could be helped to perceive Jesus as “a real God at work in their real lives”, the Lord impressed upon me two different biblical lessons:

  1. People are naturally forgetful and need help remembering – People today are no different than the people if Israel, as soon as God did a great work among them, they would forget and begin to once again complain. Psalm 106: 21 states, “They forgot the God who saved them, who had done great things in Egypt….”
  2. Our highly programmed church services don’t often allow people to publically encourage one another with prayers and praises of how God is working in our daily lives – The Psalms exhort God’s people to sing to one another “new songs”; new songs are songs of praise for how God is actively working in our lives. Psalm 40: 3 states: “He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord”.

I shared my concerns and insights with my church board and we began to brainstorm how we might create a church culture that would help the congregation see God as real and active in their lives, encourage people to share their “new songs” with the congregation, and keep people from forgetting how God had worked in our lives. The result was the Flower Power strategy.

Our church purchased a giant grapevine wreath with nothing on it and hung the wreath in a highly visible part of the worship center. Below the wreath, we positioned baskets filled with silk flowers and blank tags. Every week I challenged the congregation that if they had a sincere prayer concern, they were to take one flower for each prayer concern, write the prayer concern and date on one side of the tag, and tie the tag to the flower. They would then take the flower home or to their office and keep it in a prominent place as a reminder of the concern they were bringing before God in prayer. Each week we also reminded the congregation that when God answered the prayer, they should write on the back of the tag how the prayer was answered, and the date it was answered.

At first, people would sheepishly come to me on Sunday mornings with their flower and quietly tell me how God had answered their prayer. I challenged them that God had given them a New Song testimony that was meant to be shared and encouraged them to share publically in the worship service. As people shared their testimonies and the congregation clapped and cheered at how God had worked, they would make their way down from the stage to the wreath and wrap their silk flower and tag into the grapevine wreath. It did not take long before our praise and thanksgiving celebration each Sunday revolved around these events and our wreath blossomed with New Song testimonies about how a real God was actively at work in our real lives. Our congregation emerged into a people who naturally encouraged one another regarding God’s faithfulness. Visitors to our church were drawn to the floral wreath and were in awe at what they discovered tied to each flower. Often, when I would become discouraged, I would find myself tearfully standing before the wreath reading the many stories of God’s faithfulness. The flowers included stories of how God had enabled people to move into their first homes, find the perfect job, and healed their marriages…there was not a single divorce during my five years serving this congregation, The flowers also included stories of how family or friends came to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, been delivered from alcohol or drug addictions, and even how individuals had been physically healed.

It’s amazing how a simple flower can so dramatically remind us of God’s power.

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Free eBook Download for Church Leaders New to AssessME.org

AssessME Free eBook

Free eBook Download

Title – BETTER TOGETHER: The Top 5 Strategies to Maximize Volunteer Mobilization

For many churches, volunteer mobilization is a never-ending plea for more help. Announcements in the church program, and in Sunday services, and on the church website. These announcements efforts provide some support. But while these volunteers may be good-hearted people, are they truly the best people for the available positions? Wouldn’t be nice if your volunteer mobilization efforts could move beyond plugging programming holes, to helping people fulfill God’s call upon their life?

New to AssessME?  Download our FREE eBook entitled, BETTER TOGETHER: The Top 5 Strategies for Maximizing Volunteer Mobilization.

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