::Leading With A Limp::

A Week In The Life...Thursday

Continuing with the series "A Week In The Life Of An Executive Director".

I'm writing this on Friday, referring back to yesterday.  The bottom line?  It was a long and tiring day, but very good.

9:00am... I met with Eric, our facilities manager.  Do you have a facilities manager at your church?  If you do, you know these folks keep the place going.  Seriously, Eric knows every corner of this campus, it's crazy. So we talked about the fact that even though we have 150,000 square feet of lovely campus space people want more.  Yeah, it's a never ending conversation.

10:00am... Lincoln and Courtney (from the high school department) came and visited with me.  This was great, this is the first time that we have had a chance to sit down and chat about things.  These two love the kids that they work with and it's obvious is everything that they do.  We took a walk down to the student center and talked about what we could do to create a better environment for the students.  We kind of brain stormed about what would work and what wouldn't.  It's easy for me to catch their vision and run with it, I love working with high school kids.  When I snapped their pic, for some reason Lincoln felt compelled to do a handstand and Courtney thought she was a secret agent.  Hrm, go figure. ;)

I spent some time after that catching up on some important things...like returning phone calls, answering emails and signing checks.  Although not the only check run of the week, this was the primary.  It was about 1/2 foot thick.  Enock (our pastor for missions) stopped by to say hi and chat for a few minutes.

12:30pm... I head over to the club to meet Mike Hooper, John Bedrosian and an attorney for some lunch and a little business conversation.  It went well.

After lunch I had several meetings, most of which I cannot talk about.  Kelly loves the fact that I do secret stuff and don't write about it here, this should drive her crazy.  I will tell you though...it was good stuff.  Double secret probation stuff (can you name that movie quote?)

4:00... I'm outta here!  At least for a couple of hours.  I head down to the 24 Hour Fitness in the Sherman Oaks Galleria.  This is a renovated version of the mall that they filmed a lot of Valley Girl in.  It's much nicer than it was in the movie.  This is an interesting gym, it's full of porn stars and steroid guys.  I mean that in a literal sense because of a lot of the adult industry is housed up in the valley just down the road, so I guess a lot of the folks that work that industry go to this gym.  There isn't much of a dress code there, so it's kind of like working out on the set of a porn film.   I kept my eyes on the TV monitors or down to the ground, and I tried to focus on my music and my workout.  I accomplished this task. In fact, about 1/2 way through my workout I was focused enough to pray for those around me.  I wasn't judging or presuming...I was just praying.

6:30... I exhausted myself at the gym, I had a very aggressive workout and now I'm tired.  What should I do?  How about go back to the church for another meeting? Yes, that is what I will do.

7:00... Session starts.  For those of you outside of the Presbyterian church (which is most of you), Session is the governing body of elders within the church.  It usually meets once a month, and it is the voting "the buck stops here" group.  Mark runs a tight ship with Session, and we were in and out of there in two hours flat.  We were done with the business portion of Session by 8:30 at which point we were lead through devotionals by Mark.  He took the time to explain Rosh Hoshanah to us, and the significance behind this Jewish celebration.  It was fascinating!  I learned a lot.  We then broke up into groups of 3 and 4 and prayed for and with each other.  After that we sang a worship song together (kind of a traditional, old-school hymn) and adjourned.  I spent some time hanging out afterwards, it's important for me to get to know the elders.  What a neat group of people!  They come from all backgrounds and I'm excited to work with them.

9:45... I pack up my office and head home.  For some reason I didn't hit rush hour traffic. :)

How was your day?

A Week In The Life...Rosh Hashanah

Continuing in our series "A Week In The Life Of An Executive Director".

Today is Rosh Hashanah. Our Jewish friends from the temple down the street will be leasing our facilities for part of their celebration. That will certainly keep me busy around here.

How has my day been so far? Well, I got up at 5:45am, did my usual morning routine and decided to do a little extra grooming.  My eyebrows are thick....thick like Larry Hagman.  If I don't give them a trim from time to time I can't see.  Well, it's never actually come to that, but I'm guessing it could.  Anyway, I grab the scissors and go after them, like Edward Scissorhands taking care of the topiary.

Question:  what happens when a tired guy tries to trim his eyebrows in a dimly lit bathroom at 6am? 

Answer: a gap. Ugh.  I look like Vanilla Ice in his hayday when he shaved lines in his left eyebrow.  I don't even want to hear a word about it from this guy or this girl. On with the day...

A Week In The Life Of...Wednesday

Continuing the series of "A Week In the Life of an Executive Director"...

Today is far less busy than Tuesday.  Not that it has been boring by any means, it is just a little easier to deal with.

Early this morning I met with our Communications Director, Christine.  We solved many problems and figured out a way to communicate with everyone totally effectively but for no cost.  Yeah, right...but we're trying!

After that I met with most of the administrative support staff, facilities, IT and Joyce our office manager to talk about reserving rooms.  We just built some amazing additions to the campus, we are now pushing 150,000 square feet.  Guess what? People are still wanting more room!  Crazy.  Would this happen if we had 300,000 square feet?  Probably.  So we got all of the players together to go over some guidelines.  The result of that meeting?  Everybody is happy, and we discovered that ogres have layers.  Yeah, we got right down to the issues.

Time for lunch already?  Off to Gelson's I go for some sushi.  Today's lunch was a spicy tuna bowl and some vitamin water.

While eating lunch I went over check requests.  $63.85 at Starbucks?  C'mon, people!  I turned in the folder to Alaina who in turn sent me a link to Spock singing about a Hobbit.

After that I got the pre-payroll report from Brenda, and I went over it with a fine toothed comb.  The person that spent $64 at Starbucks?  I took it out of their paycheck.  Okay, not really, but it crossed my mind.

I strolled down the hall and met with Roger for a while, and of course we couldn't go for very long without having a conference call with an attorney.  I could tell you what we talked about but...oh, well, you know...the whole killing thing.  See yesterday's post.

I called our security company.  It seems that we have some creeps coming around the campus in the afternoon.  I told them to shoot on sight.  I'm referring of course to the camera phones that they carry with them, we need some pictures.  I also talked about some other sensitive security issues that are coming up.  Let me tell you, in La La Land there is not a lack of security issues, even at church.  Especially at church.

More phone calls, yada yada yada...I'm outta here.  How was your day?

A Week In The Life...Big Tuesday

Continuing on with the week.

I call today "Big Tuesday" because it's a pretty crazy day.  Back to back to back stuff to do.  Shall we begin?

6:05am...arrive at work.  Wasn't I just here?  Oh yes, I left 12 hours ago. Believe me, I'm not complaining, I love my job!  Sometimes I just have to work some challenging hours.

7:00am...Operations Meeting begins.  This is one of the core leadership teams of the church.  We talk about the business of the church past, present and future.  This group is what I would call the "think tank".  Some of the most brilliant minds in Los Angeles are here, and it's a pleasure to work with them.  We went over budget and construction issues, as well as reports from various areas.  We talked about some other things, but if I told you about them I would have to kill you.  That's no good, it takes away from the message of Jesus, so I won't tell you about them.

9:00am...I run from the Operations meeting to Evans Chapel where the staff gets together every week for a chapel service.  Roger read out of 2 Chronicles 17 & 20, talking about the leadership example of Jehoshaphat (is this where the old term "phat" came from?).  He touched on three main points:

• Leadership doesn't always mean that you aren't afraid...it means that when you are afraid you lean on the Lord
• As a leader we are to be humble and not standoffish
• A strength of a great leader is to give leadership away...in other words, empower others to lead as well (taken from 2 Chronicles 19:4-8)

At the end of chapel we got together and prayed for the people of the church, then sang a song of worship.  It was great.  This happens every Tuesday and is a requirement for all staff.

10:00am...I run from Evans Chapel to the Executive Staff meeting.  This is a meeting composed mostly of the pastoral staff, communications and finance.  We talked about how the Sunday experience was for everybody (not just service but events outside of service as well), and some other things.  Example: we started serving communion every week at the 6pm service...are we going to continue that?  The answer is yes, with some work to be done so that it doesn't become a rote practice.  We also talked about a SWEET collaborative effort between Bel Air Pres and Mosaic that will occur in November.  Rest assured, more details will be posted on this blog.  We then talked a little about Lent and what we will be presenting.  It was a good meeting.

11:00am...I run from Executive Staff to Service Planning.  This may seem a little strange since they are held in the same room, but the bottom line is that I had been drinking water all morning through every meeting, and I had to go visit the loo in the worst of ways!  So I ran to the bathroom and then ran back.  There really isn't much of a break between meetings.

At service planning we went over the format of the three upcoming weekend services.  All three are different at BAPC.  The 9am is quite traditional (think choir and beautiful hymns, sometimes an orchestra) the 11am is far more edgy (TJ and the group blasting David Crowder into your ear hole) and the 6pm is all over the board...very post modern.  All three have the same message.

We watched a really good video, I can't wait to post it up later this week.  I won't spoil it for you now.

12:00...I could stop running for a moment and stroll casually to the car with Mark (senior pastor), Roger (executive pastor) and Mike (former executive director turned fisherman) for a drive over to the regular Tuesday lunch spot.  We had a good meeting and talked about a lot of things that if I told you about I would have to kill you.  Yes, there's that old killing thing again.  I need to get out of that habit.

1:30...got back to church and met with Imrie (finance guru) and Mark regarding budgeting stuff.  We all furrowed our brows so that we would look smart while we talked about money.

2:30-5:30...I ran furiously around the campus having meetings on the fly and making sure that people were happy.  I spoke with Jeneen about some Children's Education logistics and explained to her that I was a visual learner so I needed to take pictures with my phone.  Don't tell her I posted her picture here.

Presbytery is being hosted here today.  For those outside of this denomination, that basically means that all of the Presbyterian churches within a certain geographic region get together and vote about things.  The picture that I have here is Mark telling the Presbytery about the big fish that he caught when he was in Alaska with Mike and John B recently.  It looks like a really big fish.  TJ et al came out and did a worship song for them at about 110db...I loved it!

5:30-6:30...I did more secret stuff, made secret calls, gave people the secret hand shake.  Lots of secret things.  Now it is time to go home.  See you tomorrow!

A Week In The Life...

...of an Executive Director.

I get a lot of email each day, both through my work account (matt at belairpres dot org) and my personal account (matt at mattsingley dot com).  Over the last few days there has been a common theme:  hey Matt, what in the heck happened to your blogging?

I've slowed down a lot.  A lot!  Sorry, that's just life sometimes.  As I am settling into my new life in L.A. I am starting to feel those posts stirring again.  Last night I was thinking of a series called "A Week In The Life of an Executive Director", and today it was confirmed in a phone call when somebody asked me, "what exactly do you do, anyway?"  She meant this is a kind way of course.

So this week I will detail my daily goings-on.  After this week is over, I will be back in the swing of things, and I will start throwing out sweet tech and ministry blogs like nobody's business.

Let me summarize today:

Mondays occur on Monday.  Therefore, they are problematic.

Throughout the early morning I was following up several leads about a stalker/con-artist that has been hanging around the church.  I will find him and deal with him.  I really won't tolerate behavior like that.

Just before lunch I was going outside to make a phone call, and as I walked through the entrance of our church (the pseudo-lobby) a lizard ran in front of me.  Being the Crocodile Hunter that I am, I scooped him up with the help of Annie and brought him outside to roam free among the rocks.  Yes, being an ED is hard work.  No "ED" jokes please.

For lunch I drove to the bottom of the hill, grabbed some sushi and was sitting back at my desk 20 minutes later.

In the afternoon I met with Mark for about 45 minutes and we solved many of the world's problems.

After that I met with Ellen, our clerk of Session, and Roger.  We solved some more world problems.

After our meeting I dealt with several very sensitive issue via phone.  I can't really tell you what they are, because of course I would have to hunt you down to make sure that you don't talk.  Neither of us want that.

Around 5 I got on the phone with Rachel from the Blog, our friend from Abundant Life in Portland.  We talked a little business, we talked a little life.  It was good to hear from her.

That was my day, Mondays aren't all that exciting.  By Tuesday though, things really heat up, stay tuned....