Food court lessons

Here’s the scene:  food court in a mall, choir director with 25 hungry high school kids on a field trip.  Everyone has choices about where and what to eat.  Represented at my table were Taco Bell, Sbarro, Saku Japan (my pick), Chick-Fli-A, and few others.

We’re wrapping up the meal when an employee from Chick-Fil-A approaches the student with the Chick-Fil-A meal and offers her a refill on her drink.  As she is leaving with the cup, I make a comment to the kids about going beyond people’s expectations in service and product, and how important it is to get people’s attention by doing what no one else will do (namely, not hiding behind your counter, waiting to be asked for a refill).

Get this:  the Chick-Fil-A lady overhears me, stops, and comes back to our table to ask the rest of us if she can refill our drinks as well.  

My kids are stunned.  I’m giddy.

After the refills were distributed, we talked at length about what just happened, and drew out these lessons:

1. Forgiveness is a powerful tool in customer relations.  In a real sense, the employee forgave us for not picking her store in the first place, treating us as if we had picked her, as if we were already her customers.  She did not exercise her “right” to deny us the service.
2. Can you say “leverage?”  Giving away a refill that costs maybe 10¢ in product in a way that will likely produce hundreds of dollars in future sales is “leverage,” class.  That’s L-E-V-E-R-A-G-E, and yes, you’ll be tested on your grasp of this concept for the rest of your life.
3. Doing flows from being.  Chick-Fil-A is not in the chicken business.  This employee understands that Chick-Fil-A is in the customer-acquisition-and-retention business.  The predicate in Chick-fil-A’s mission statement is a verb of being: “To be America’s best quick-service restaurant at winning and keeping customers.”  This woman wasn’t sleeping through her Chick-Fil-A training classes.
4. Doing the right thing is more important than getting credit (or a grade) for doing the right thing.  I pointed out to the kids that they were now drinking free Chick-Fil-A product from cups that advertised for Chick-Fil-A’s competition.  Chick-Fil-A had every “right” to get credit for outstanding service, but this employee was more interested in actually providing the service than in getting the credit.  
5. Advertising (or advocacy) is good, but doing the right thing by people is much more effective at changing minds.

It’s not exactly easy to impress high schoolers, but this Chick-Fil-A associate had the undivided attention of some saucer-eyed kids with a lifetime of purchasing power ahead of them.  

(If Chick-Fil-A’s paying attention, look up the manager at the Hamilton Place Mall’s food court during Friday’s lunch hour.  It’s promotion time for the blonde who gets it.)

Also, if you’re a CFA fan, you’ll love this.

Advocacy, or Why Choir? (part 2)

Advocacy bugs me.  Marketing doesn’t bug me, packaging doesn’t bug me, but advocacy bugs me.

This past week I accompanied 3 of my students to the annual Tennessee Music Educators Association (TMEA) conference in Nashville.  The students qualified to sing in the All-State Honors Choir, and got to sing under the baton of Anton Armstrong of St. Olaf’s College and Peter Bagley from the University of Connecticut.  They worked very hard and deserved the recognition and honor of being selected, as well as the priveledge of working with 2 masters of the choral craft.

And the payoff for their hard work was to be the final concert in front of their parents and chorus teachers, bursting with pride.  It was a wonderful, magical moment.

Right up until the advocacy part.

Before each choir’s performance, the emcee made it a point to advocate for music education, often in strident, combative terms:  ”If your school board even hints at cutting music programs in your communities at home, I hope you’ll stand with me and by God make your voices heard!  Yeah!”  Obligatory applause, and even an “Amen!” here and there.

It was weird.  It was annoying.  It made me want to go out and cut a music program somewhere just because. 

I understand that TMEA is at its core an advocacy group, and that the primary mission of TMEA is to advance and protect music education’s place and role in public schooling.  But must we turn a beautiful music concert into a pep rally for music ed?  Can’t we just let the concert make the point for us?  Can’t we just celebrate the kids and their work?

There will always be school boards that consider cutting music programs in times of financial crisis and stress, but no parent will stand up and take a bullet for a music program because of anyone’s advocacy.  

The best strategy to ensure that music programs survive is not noise and preaching.  The best strategy to ensure that music programs survive is to have awesome music programs everywhere, music programs that provide tangible value to their communities, value that extends beyond the benefit of the participants.  Who are the people in your community other than the parents of your currently enrolled students that would notice or care if your music program was nixed?

What kind of music program would your community fight for?  

Maybe advocacy is just easier than taking a hard look at what we’re producing and re-vamping the product so that people will willingly throw themselves between our programs and budget-cutting school boards.  Maybe it just makes us feel like we’ve done something when for the most part all we’ve done is preach to the choir and irritate the heathen unconvinced.

Maybe I need to redesign the chorus program at West High…

Family Visit at Fellowship Church

I’m one of those kids who grew up far removed from extended family–we lived in East Tennessee while my Mom’s family was in West Tennessee and my Dad’s family was in Louisiana.  We’d see the cousins, aunts, and uncles on annual trips, and it always amused me to know exactly what each aunt and uncle would say when they saw me:  ”Oh, my goodness!  Look at how you’ve grown!”  

One year it was less amusing than others and I started complaining to Mom about the “look how you’ve grown” chorus.  ”What’s the big deal?  Nobody else ever makes a fuss over me growing.”  

Mom wisely explained that, while I was growing all along, it wasn’t as obvious to people who saw me every week, because the changes were more subtle.  It’s the people who didn’t sit through the process who most easily notice and appreciate the change from one year to the next.

Today I worshiped at Fellowship Church for the first time since July of last year.  Fellowship is my home church, but I don’t get to attend because of my duties at Powell Church on Sunday mornings.  Today I had the morning off from Powell and went with my family to Fellowship.

And today I got a taste of what Aunt Mae felt when she saw me at Thanksgiving.  ”Oh my goodness….”

When I was on staff at Fellowship there wasn’t a lot of growth to be seen.  Change came hard and at a high cost, and every inch gained by those of us who wanted to see Fellowship grow and progress in ministry effectiveness was matched by an inch lost to those who wanted to see Fellowship retreat to its glory days.  Proposed improvements to worship center technology were shot down as “extravagant” and “self-indulgent.”  When we added an audition to our worship-volunteer selection process we were dismissed as “shallow” and “all about the show.”  Concerns about aesthetics in worship and production values were derided as “fleshly,” “frustrating the Spirit,” and “immature.”

I don’t know much about the “how” behind the changes that have taken place–for all I know it may still be a battle of inches, but I doubt it because 1) the differences can be measured in feet and yards now, and 2) the rate of change appears to be accelerating.  The “how” is not for me to know, anyway.  I can sure see and discern the “what,” though!

Here are the markers of growth I saw just in the service today:

1. Rick Dunn referred to The Pastor of Children’s Ministry as “Pastor Gwen” from the stage.  Back in the day her predecessor (also a woman and for all practical purposes also a pastor) had the title “Director of Children’s Ministry” simply because the church leadership couldn’t abide a woman having the “pastor” title.  Fellowship’s ability to call things by their real names is remarkable and commendable.
2. There’s been a noticeable bump in the quality of in-house video production.  The interview with the college student about serving in Children’s Ministry was spot-on, not only in its writing and content, but also in its videography and editing.  Nicely done!
3. Someone’s paying attention to aesthetics and design in the graphic arts.  The onscreen packaging of the sermon topic was fantastic.  I don’t know, but I suspect the message-planning horizon at Fellowship is approaching or even exceeding 3 months now.
4. Someone’s paying attention to onstage lighting.  The color of the scrim wash now coordinates with the palette of the screen graphic behind the song lyrics.
5. The speaker can now advance his onscreen slides from the stage with a handheld remote without having to give cues to the production booth!  Sweetness.
6. There’s a lot of new technology on the stage in general, which means there’s money being spent on making things work well.
7. The band not only plays together really well, but the playing is very musical.  Noticeable variety in dynamics and energy levels makes this artist very happy.

Kudos to the staff and volunteers who are putting together Sunday mornings at Fellowship.  You’ve come far, and at least one person has noticed.

The Gorilla Parable

Yesterday in a breakout session titled “Music Learning = Life Learning” Tim Lautzenheiser told this great story about our learned aversion to change:

A scientist did an experiment involving 5 gorillas in a cage.  The cage had a bunch of bananas hanging from the ceiling and a ladder sitting right under the bananas so the gorillas could get them.  Simple enough, but here’s the catch:  every time one of the gorillas approached the ladder, the scientist would spray all of the gorillas with cold water.

Gorillas hate being wet, and cold water is particularly uncomfortable for them.  So it didn’t take long before no gorilla would approach the ladder under any circumstance for fear of being sprayed.

Once the gorillas had given up on the bananas, the scientist exchanged one of the “trained” gorillas with one who had never been sprayed.  Predictably, when the new gorilla approached the ladder to get the bananas he was attacked by the other 4.  No water was used this time, but it didn’t take long for the newbie to learn that approaching the ladder would result in a beating.

The scientist then replaced another “trained” gorilla with another newbie, who took a similiar pounding when he approached the ladder.  The kicker this time was this:  the first newbie happily took part in the beating of the second newbie, even though he personally had never been sprayed with water.

The scientist continued to replace “trained” gorillas with newbies until the cage contained none of the original 5.  None of the current gorillas had ever been sprayed with water, and none of them ever approached the ladder for the bananas.  

And none of them knew why.

On Conferences and Jubilees

I’m in Nashville for the rest of the week, attending the Tennessee Music Educator’s Association annual conference in conjunction with the All-State band and chorus clinics.  Ostensibly I’m “chaperoning” 3 of my kids who made All-State choir this year, but that’s akin to holding my yard accountable for growing grass.  They get a cursory check-in from me just so I can confirm they’re still alive and the lawn’s not on fire.

Last year this conference saved my sanity–I was in the throes of my first semester teaching high school chorus and not certain I’d survive the experience.  Getting away from the choir room and hanging out with fellow chorus teachers (many of whom were my classmates at UT back in the day) was so helpful and so refreshing.  It refilled my hope-bucket!

It reminds me of many, many Arts Conferences at Willow Creek that kept me in the game during my worship pastor days, so much so that I have to wonder if the main value of these conferences isn’t the content so much as the environment.  Being away from what’s “normal,” whether it’s schedule- or duty-wise or simply being in a different city, may be all it takes to reset the system back to hopeful joy in the “normal” flow of life.  

It’s a sabbath, a jubilee for people who don’t normally do sabbaths or jubilees.

I miss my normal, but am still so glad to be here.  Let some other people do the teaching for two days.  Let someone else lead the worship at Powell Church on Sunday.

I will simply rest and receive.

Until Monday….

Here’s a Thought….

I’ve been writing my student handbook for the chorus kids at West, trying to set up the next year well for my students and for my sanity.  This past week I focused on grading policy, and I had an awesome epiphany–one of those perspective-skewing thoughts that will make a huge difference in how I run the choirs this year.

Here’s how it came–I was setting up a typical grade weighting system for a high school chorus, much like what I had inherited at WHS and used last spring semester:

• Performance Attendance:  20%
• Class Participation:  50%
• End-of-Course exam:  15%
• Other exams:  15%

“Performance Attendance” amounts to a term paper in any other class, and any more directors have to weigh performance participation so heavily just to ensure that the kids will show up and sing for the term concert.

“Class Participation” is a subjective measure of the quality of a student’s effort during rehearsals.  It’s weighted so heavily because rehearsing is the nitty-gritty work of chorus or band.  Directors use this as a stick to enforce good rehearsal practices–not talking, being on time to class, maintaining good posture, having a pencil with you at all times, following the director’s instructions, etc.

It’s also weighted so heavily because chorus directors like rehearsing better than, well, school.  At least I do.

And here’s the epiphany–I had reduced the measurement of the students’ actual chorus competencies to a mere 30% of the grade, and had reserved 70% of the grade as a rule enforcement mechanism.  Got a slouching kid who won’t open his mouth and sing with the rest of the group?  My response was to cut his participation grade for the day and let it go, as if cutting his grade was going to show him a thing or two.

And don’t you dare miss the concert, because I’ll fail your sorry little…

The problem last spring was this–the kids who were consistently not complying with my classroom expectations of active participation, no gum, etc., were the kids who didn’t really give a rip about their grades.  Losing their 5 participation points for the day didn’t exactly phase them.

What I’m trying to do now is to parse out and separate the behavioral measurement / feedback issues from the performance measurement / feedback issues.  In other words, when a student does not actively, positively participate in the class, I want to treat it as a discipline problem, complete with a demerit system, calls home, and trips to the principal when necessary. Grades are a separate system measuring a separate reality-can the student sing and read music?

The new grade weighting will look like this:

• End-of-Course Exam: 15%
• Exams (Written and Singing):  50%
• Performances (Qualitative):  25%
• After/Before-School Rehearsal Participation:  10%

The biggest change this brings is that I’m going to have to ramp up my measuring system, adding in regular singing exams to assess student progress toward vocal goals.  It also means that I’m going to have to ramp up my discipline system.  But I’m most excited at the thought that my grading system no longer will have to bear the burden of also being my discipline system.

That’s good for both grades and discipline.

Soul Food

I just got back from attending this year’s TMEA (Tennessee Music Educators Association) Conference in Nashville.  To be honest, I was dreading going at all because I didn’t feel like I could afford the time (we’re less than a week away from opening night for the WHS performance of Beauty and the Beast). 

But now that I’m back, I know I’ll never miss one so long as I’m teaching.  There is something so refreshing about being with other music teachers, telling them my story and hearing them say, “Yep.  That’s about how it was with me, too.  It’ll only get better, though.”  I hung out with other Knox County choral teachers, met up with friends I haven’t seen since my Music Ed days at UT (that’ be 1996-ish), and attended sessions with titles like “Lemons to Lemonade:  How to Turn Around a Distressed Choral Program” and “Current Research on the Psychology of Large Groups.”

Loved it.  And I’m more hopeful about the Choral Program at WHS now than I’ve ever been before.

Random quotes from the sessions:

We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an event, but a habit.  (Aristotle)

Great choral programs are built over the course of a decade, but they can be destroyed over the course of 20 minutes.

A group will never attain “we-ness” unless the individuals sublimate themselves to the good of the group.  And individuals will never sublimate themselves unless they trust the leader.

But the most powerful moment came for me during the symphonic band concert.  The band was performing a piece called No Shadow of Turning, a theme-and-variations approach to the old hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” and I found myself crying with joy.  It was so beautiful, and my soul was so hungry for beauty.

And I had no idea how much I needed that.

My soul is full now, having feasted on music in the company of friends who know me and understand what it is I’m trying to do as a chorus teacher.  And because my soul is filled with beauty, I am hopeful.

Isn’t this what chorus teachers really want to do?  We fill souls with beauty, first with our students, and then train them to fill other souls in concerts and other performances.  And a community that has beauty-filled souls is fantastically hopeful.

That’s good stuff.

Potential

So, my new job involves extended time in the car driving between Knoxville and the Tri-Cities, which allows for extended time for uninterrupted thinking.  Here’s my latest profundity:

 Potential is the difference between what you could have done and what you did.  Or (for us engineers / mathematicians),

Possibility  -  Performance  =  Potential

I’ve taken the decision in my life recently to minimize my potential, i.e., to measure my value more by what I actually do with my life instead of by my inherent talents and capacities.  It’s quite a challenging stance to take, especially for someone who has drawn loads of personal value from others’ opinions:  “You have so much talent, so much potential, etc.”  Here’s how it shows up in my decision management:

Just for today, I will invest in myself to become the best Byron possible.  I will not leave potential on the table.

Thanks, John Maxwell!

Mad Church Disease and Why I’m Not Necessarily Mad

Anne Jackson’s getting a lot of blog press these days with her request for stories and data to support a book she’s writing titled Mad Church Disease.  But more importantly, she’s a regular commenter on themattchews’ blog, and Mr. Mattchews is one of my best buddies.  He knows my story, and has been oh so gently twisting my arm to get me to participate in the surveys Anne’s conducting as part of her research.

Well, last night I gave up and just did it.  I’m writing this article to explain why I didn’t want to.

My initial response to the Mattchews was “I fear my present perspective would skew the sample too much,” and I really mean it.  My experiences as a church staff member have left me fairly jaded and cynical about the church, and though I know I’ll recover, I also know that now is not a good time for me to be talking church stuff with anyone.

To which the Mattchews replied, “That’s why you need to take the survey.  Your story needs to be told.”

My second reason goes a little deeper:  I don’t want to pile on and give undue weight and credence to the “poor pastor who gets abused and screwed up by his congregation” mythology.  I don’t know what direction Anne Jackson will take in her tome, but I hope it won’t go that way because I don’t buy it anymore.  It feels good every October during Pastor Appreciation month to hear the stats about pastors leaving “the ministry” and be petted and pitied and given an encouraging gift certificate because “church work is such hard work and our pastors are all depressed because we’re so hard on them,” but something tells me that the whole story isn’t being told.

Yes, churches are hard on their leaders.  Yes, pastors do flame out, often spectacularly.  Yes, church people can be unbelievably cruel to pastors and their families.  I have earned all those merit badges and I get it.

But what I’m not buying anymore is the idea that it’s the church’s fault that church work eats pastors alive.  Pastors are not passive agents in the formation of their congregations.  When a churchy person bites the arm off a pastor or refuses to serve in children’s church or clucks her tongue when the pastor’s kids aren’t exactly perfect, there’s something going on beyond a simple victim/perp story.  Congregations take on the characteristics of their leadership, and they learn how to express disagreements with their leadership from how their leadership expresses disagreements with those outside the church.

Really, it reminds me of those stories that pop up on the news every now and again about the guy who breeds pit bulls and is shocked when one of them mauls his visiting Aunt Margaret.  The breeder is always surprised when pit bulls do what they’ve been bred to do.

Ever heard the “I’m a (insert denominational label here) because we’re more biblical than everyone else” sermon?  Trust me, Baptists aren’t the only ones doing this–it’s pandemic in the church.  These sermons teach congregations that people who disagree with us aren’t just mistaken, they’re less committed to truth than we are.  It shouldn’t surprise us, then, when people in these congregations are unable to disagree with a pastor in a loving, accepting way without presupposing malicious motives or deficient morals.  All of a sudden, the inclusion of an electric guitar on the worship stage isn’t a stylistic issue, it’s a moral issue because I disagree with the decision and don’t know how else to handle it.

The same dynamic occurs with the “10 Reasons Why Dan Brown (of DaVinci Code fame) is Wrong and Going to Hell” sermon and the “Why the Homosexuals are Coming for Your Children” sermon and the “People Who Have Faith Give Extra Money to Missions” sermon.

Until the gospel becomes less about the preaching and defense of certain propositions (biblical inerrancy, original sin, substitutionary atonement, etc.) and more about how Jesus enables us to actually love each other and get along with each other (Jesus is in the business of reconciling all things together again in himself), church is going to continue to be a dangerous place to be and a suicidal place to presume to lead. 

Bang! There Goes My Theory

I had this theory about the edgy, innovative, and awesome churches that have influenced me over the years while I was in vocational church work–Willow Creek, Saddleback, NorthPoint, Fellowship Dallas, McLean Bible, etc.–and why Knoxville didn’t have a church like any of them.  After a particularly frustrating staff meeting one day I sat down with my Technical Director and together we came to the conlusion that Knoxville was the problem.

Willow Creek has Chicago, Saddleback has L.A., NorthPoint has Atlanta, Mars Hill has Seattle, etc.  The common denominator among these churches seemed to be a certain critical mass of urbanity surrounding them that Knoxville didn’t have.  The theory was that Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, Andy Stanley, and Mark Driscoll would all fail in Knoxville not because of a lack of leadership skill but because Knoxville couldn’t demographically support a cutting-edge church.  These leaders succeeded mostly because they chose fertile ground for their church planting efforts.

The theory was useful because it helped us cope with the reality that we weren’t in an über-cool, über-missional church and the church we were in wasn’t interested in becoming one.  After all, it wasn’t our fault that Knoxville couldn’t support such a church, was it?

The theory held up well until I discovered NewSpring Church in Anderson, SC.  Anderson is a city with a population of 22K in a mostly rural county with a population of 172K.  NewSpring’s weekend attendance swings between 7.7K and 9K (you might want to read those last two sentences together again slowly).  And NewSpring is just about the coolest, most daring, on-focus church I’ve come across.  Really.  They opened last Sunday’s service with "Friends in Low Places" and rocked the house for the Kingdom.

That big bang is the sound of my theory blowing up.

One common denominator in these churches really is Level 5 leadership at the top.  NewSpring has Perry Noble, Willow Creek has Bill Hybels, Saddleback has Rick Warren, NorthPoint has Andy Stanley, and Mars Hill has Mark Driscoll.  And they were all in positions to execute their decisions and drive the process.

So I guess I need a new theory.  Suggestions?  Is Level 5 leadership in churches so rare that there aren’t enough to go around? 

Would you go to a church like NewSpring?  What would your reaction be if the 1st song out of the gate on a Sunday morning was "Friends in Low Places?"