The Power of Getting Out of the Office

One of the best things you can do as a leader is plan a time of celebration, reflection, and growth for your staff.

After a season like Easter or Christmas, take some time to celebrate and praise God for all He did, and inspire your team to leverage the momentum of the season by working through these steps.

Get out of the office

“Because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, [Jesus] said to [his disciples], ‘Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.’ So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place.” (Mark 6:31-32)

Take time this week to gather your team and get away together. It doesn’t matter if it’s your living room or a coffee shop; just change it up and get away to a ‘solitary place.’

Changing your environment helps you get out of the everyday routine and be intentional with your time together.

Reflect

Use this time to think about everything that happened over the weekend. Take time to pray as a team, share stories, and praise God for all He has done. Something special happens as a team when you praise God together!

Next, take a moment to ask three powerful questions:

1. What do we need to keep doing? Review your entire Easter experience and name the things that were successful, had high ROI, or made your team feel empowered. Stories of positive life change and positive data show that something worked—so review your stats in Church Metrics and see where you saw growth.
2. What do we need to stop doing? Identify the things that weren’t that effective or may have actually been harmful to your ministry or your team. Talk about things that were high energy with a low return, or look for programs that are shrinking. Low ROI or negative data will show that something didn’t work.
3. What do we need to start doing? What opportunities did we miss? What’s a great idea someone had that you can implement next time? Make a few goals for next Christmas or Easter based on what you learned this time around.

Set a time limit for the responses to these questions—five or ten minutes each should be enough—and record responses on a whiteboard, notepad, or app.

End this time by celebrating the wins of the weekend with your team and recognizing all their hard work. Remember, what gets rewarded gets repeated.

Refocus

You now have a lot of momentum from Easter weekend, both among attenders and your staff. Now’s the time to refocus your energy, resources, and heart toward the mission.

Refocus your team by reminding them of:

1. Your concern. You care about them as people and followers of Christ more than you care about their roles. Schedule some one-on-one meetings to check up on how they’re doing. Are they burned out? Do they have unresolved conflict they need to address? Do they need time off? Has God put a new passion inside them?
2. Your mission and core values. This is a great opportunity to reinforce your mission and point out key core values.  Give concrete example of where you saw your team live out the mission and values in their specific ministries, and explain the “why” behind each one.
3. Your goals. Many team goals revolve around events, like Easter. Use this time to set a new goal following the momentum you’ve seen recently at your church. Ideally, your next goal should be something you can reach in the next 4-6 weeks. You want to keep up the momentum of winning as a team.

Taking some time to work through these steps in the weeks following Easter will help your team refocus and get inspired—all so we can charge the gates of hell and fulfill the calling God has placed on our lives and our churches. 

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For more on helping your team grow, watch Pastor Craig’s podcast video “Creating an Empowering Culture” or any of our other leadership trainings available for free on Life.Church Open Network.

And if you’re not tracking data in your church—things like attendance, salvations, or number of baptisms—you’re missing out on a great way to see how God is growing your ministry. Set it up and start tracking all the numbers that matter with Church Metrics, our free tool just for churches.