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Letter #3 - I was wondering if you could provide insight into how Granger handles compensation issues (i.e. salary levels, raises etc). –from Mark in Edwardsville, Illinois

Mark, I’m glad you sent your message, because it’s created a great deal of conversation on my blog the last few days. As promised, this is how much I make. All you have to do is follow this simple formula to calculate my salary or anyone else’s:

1. start with your metric weight
2. multiple that by the number of suits that you own
3. add the zip code where you live
4. subtract the number of career home runs Duane Kuiper had with the Cleveland Indians
5. divide by the square root of your mother’s age
6. do something with "pi"
7. then ask your boss how much he’s going to pay you

You didn’t really think I was going to tell you how much I make, did you?

Let me try to give you some guidance, though, based on how we try to establish wage levels at Granger. When we’re setting salaries, we primarily consider performance and ministry/leadership capacity. Additionally, we take into consideration responses to questions like these:

• What do "normal" people in our area make for similar roles? (We can’t compete with marketplace employers, but it helps us get a general idea of what similar positions pay.)
• What do similar positions pay within our organization?
• What would it cost to replace this person? How easy would they be to replace?
• What do other churches our size pay? (This question obviously applies more to pastor and director-type roles where we may be competing with other churches to keep our talent.)
• What can we afford? (It’s pretty safe to say we’d typically love to pay our staff more; however, we need to balance that with being good stewards of the resources God has provided for ministry.)

The best place I’ve found for external wage comparisons with other churches is the National Association of Church Business Administration. For a small annual fee, you can use their online compensation data to analyze wage levels by position  based on factors like budget size, attendance, denomination, region, etc. Of course, this is no exact science. A position, even with the same title, in one church, may look very different in another church. That’s why external comparisons can’t be the only factor you consider.

For more insights on how we determine compensation levels at Granger, you may check out chapter 61 in Simply Strategic Stuff, "If you can’t pay your employees well, you have too many employees."

And, if all else fails, just follow the formula I outlined above. It really works!

Kem Meyer, our communications director, has posted our newly finalized list of communication values for Granger Community Church. This is a list the senior management team has worked on for several weeks in cooperation with our communications team. Of course these values also reflect some key ministry strategies that we’ve embraced at Granger. The cool thing is that these values were also used to shape what you’ll be seeing in the coming weeks on our updated website at GCCwired.com. All of this has been timed to coincide with the move into our expanded auditorium and children’s center. Good stuff is coming.

"We take those funds that might otherwise be used to shout about our service, and put those funds instead into improving the service. That’s the philosophy we’ve taken from the beginning. If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful."

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com as quoted in BusinessWeek Online (Aug. 2, 2004)

Man, I love this blogging thing, because I’m meeting cool cats all over the country that are trying to help people take their next step toward Christ. Bruce Johnson is one of those guys. He’s pastoring a church of about 1,200 in the DC area. Bruce is also a fellow blogger and has some great insights on leadership. His recent post about “How Leader’s Think” was…well…how should I say this…thought-provoking. Here’s my favorite takeaway from the post:

“Leaders continually ask the question, ‘What’s the simplest way for me to say this?’”

When you’re not highly cerebral like me, it’s good to have someone like Bruce on your side encouraging others to keep it simple. Thanks, Bruce. Speaking on behalf of all the simple guys, especially us Hoosiers, we really appreciate it.

Today’s edition of Rick Warren’s Ministry ToolBox includes one of my latest articles: Is your ministry strategy creating buzz? And, for you lucky folks that have an early release copy of Simply Strategic Growth, we cover that principle in chapter 10.

I received another question about compensation in the ole’ mail bag this past week. I’m going to take a couple more days to formulate my response on how we set salaries before I post the answer on my blog. In the mean time, I’m thinking about telling you what I make. Do you want to know? Why? Better yet, how much do you think I’m worth?

I think I’ll post the answer on Friday. That seems like a good day to do it. That way you have the whole weekend to talk about it at the donut shop and in your Sunday school class. I think my boss is going to be out of town beginning on Friday. Since he’s reading my blog, I better wait until he’s not around. I don’t think he likes it when I tell other people about these types of details. It’s just a blog, though. No one’s reading this, are they? And, really, who cares what the Pastor of Administrative Services at Granger Community Church makes?

Friday it is.

I received a fun message from Dave Cox, the senior pastor at Westside Family Church, with an update on what’s happening with the Hollywood Jesus series that I featured in my cool-church-of-the-week post. Here’s the update from Dave:

The series has been great. We did one week each on movies, music and literature. Used a lot of [Granger's] stuff. We changed up the music more than the movies one. Our folks actually "got" the music message better. They liked the movies one but understood better what we were doing and why after the music week. 

Our band did a montage of music by Evanescence, U2, and Joan Osborne. We took cuts/clips from Kanye West, Audioslave, Sting, Tim McGraw, Kansas, and Michelle Branch. Then we closed with this awesome song by Jewell called "Absence of Fear." Very positive impact. All in all, worth the risk.

Thanks for the kind words. Westside is a work in progress for sure. We’re learning from those of you out there on the edge and trying to figure out how to take what we learn and put into our environment. God continues to pour large amounts of grace out on us, which blows my mind. When I visit with others about what’s happening here, we always take a look at I Cor. 3:6 to make sure everyone knows who gets the credit for the growth. 

We launched service #8 in February on Saturday night and have filled up all the prime time seats that were vacated when we created it. We’re now averaging between 3500-3700. That’s our new lid until we can launch an additional service or venue. Construction is going slow on our new campus. We won’t be in until this time next year, but I guess that will be here before we know it.

Dave said some other nice stuff that I’ve deleted to spare you from having to read how swell he thinks we are at Granger. We obviously have some people schnookered. (Old people use the word "schnookered." I’m getting old, aren’t I?)

Guys like Dave are my heroes. Eight services in one weekend? That’s craziness. I’m grateful that he’s doing it, though, because it’s helping people meet Jesus in Kansas.

Thanks for the update, Dave!

As I mentioned in the box score for this weekend, this was the first time in Granger history that we had over 5,000 people in attendance for 4 weekends in a row. For you numbers people, I thought you might be interested in this look back at other times in our history when we’ve hit 5,000 on successive weekends:

• The prior record of 3 weekends in a row over 5,000 was set in February 2004 during the "Pop Spirituality" series. That was the only time during 2004 that we had successive weekends over 5,000.
• The first time we hit 5,000 in attendance was Easter 2003. That was also the first weekend of "Matrix Revealed." The very next weekend we were also over 5,000.
• We also had back-to-back weekends over 5,000 in November 2003 during the "Parental Guidance" series.
• The only other time we had back-to-back weekends over 5,000 was earlier this year for Palm Sunday and Easter–the beginning of "Desperate Households."

It’s pretty exciting to see the momentum we’re experiencing before the expanded auditorium even opens. This current series definitely has a good beat.

Here’s the "box score" for this past weekend at Granger Community Church.

Music: "Marvelous Light" by Charlie Hall

Message: "Every Beat Counts" — Mark Beeson, Senior Pastor, taught how God has a plan and purpose for our lives and confirmed that every life counts. Using an illustration from Ed Young at Fellowship Church, Mark talked about the various people that gather around the table to hear the teachings from God’s Word. He then encouraged us to push away from the table to serve rather than getting stuck in the "I-chair." You can pick up Ed’s original messages in "The Table" series at CreativePastors.com.

Service Highlights: The service included a video of a guy and a woman riding a bus together. The guy created some rhythms throughout the bus ride while the woman watches. At the conclusion of the video, the woman adds her own ending, though, to demonstrate that every beat counts. The live experience included three guys hanging from the rafters and creating fun beats using the items that have been hanging from the stage set.

Stats: 5,129 total attendance (4,117 adults + 1,012 kids); 13.4% increase from the same weekend last year

Percentage of weekend attendance by service:

1. Sun 10:15 am = 28%
2. Sun 11:45 am = 20%
3. Sat 7:30 pm = 19%
4. Sun 8:45 am = 16%
5. Sat 5:30 pm = 16%

Final Notes: This marked the first time in Granger history that we’ve had over 5,000 in attendance for four weekends in a row.

Jim over at Church Tech Matters has a funny story to share about the Simply Strategic series, rain and Amish delicacies. Thanks for the endorsement, Jim!

I have to say; though, it’s still a bit bizarre for me to believe people are giving my books as gifts. Brad (see his comment following Jim’s post), I’m concerned about your marriage relationship if your wife thinks giving my books is the best she can do to express her love to you. That’s a little like getting underwear and socks as gifts.

Then again, there’s really nothing like getting lots of good socks for your birthday…