From the Editor

When Building the Right Team Pays Off
Brian Proffit

Let me give you a peek behind the scenes of Church Volunteer Central and The Inside Track. I had finished my editorial for June (you'll now see it in July), and it had gone through our editing and copyediting process. It was time for me to do the final review of all the articles for this issue and pass them on to the layout team to put into HTML form for Web formatting. As I was reviewing an article for final approval before sending it to layout, I had a stunning surprise: I was seeing the article for the first time.

I pride myself in paying close attention to the quality of articles that appear in The Inside Track. Of all my duties, it's probably the one I take most seriously. But the month preceding the time when this issue was put to bed was out of control for me personally. The church where I'm equipping ministry leader is launching a new campus, and the huge new demand for volunteers is taking a lot of my time. On top of that, my son graduated from college and we spent a lot of time out of town "on vacation" [ha!] for his graduation and visiting friends in the area, and friends at the church where I was senior pastor nearby. (In a blatant display of editor's privilege, I want all of you to know our son has been hired as a worship pastor in our area in Colorado! I've resisted the urge to include pictures of him.)

So as I'm doing the final editorial pass on the articles for this issue, I'm getting a great lesson on the value of building quality teams. Our regular columnists—people such as Steve Argue on youth ministry, Larry Shallenberger on children's ministry, Don Simmons on equipping ministry, Krista Petty on external ministry, and Bob D'Ambrosio on CVC—are people who have proven that they consistently provide quality information for our members. Our editor, Ann Douglass, has demonstrated that she will always give a deft—but light—touch to the words these great writers and our other contributors provide. Dena Twinem, our copyeditor, has consistently corrected our faulty understanding of proper English grammar into something suitable for publication.

As I write this, I'm facing the fact that this month I provided almost no input for parts of this issue. In other words, I'm not as necessary as I'd like to think. I'm embarrassed to admit that it took me a couple of minutes to realize that's good news. (And seeing this last-minute change to my editorial may not thrill our copyeditor—I really appreciate you, Dena!)

At Church Volunteer Central, we stress the value of building teams that can handle the ministry so the ministry leader doesn't have to worry about the details. In fact, the best leaders get out of the way so his or her people can handle the details on their own. That applies to Church Volunteer Central, too.

I spend a lot of time encouraging all of our member churches to focus on building their teams rather than being the doers themselves. But the truth is, I'm by nature a doer myself. Guess what: I can't do it all myself, and you can't either. And by the way…things are better if we don't try! The team of people that support Church Volunteer Central is incredible. Lots of things distracted me this past month, and yet this issue came out with the quality I expect because I'd taken the time to build a good team.

So let me ask... How are you doing at developing a quality team? If you took off for an extended vacation, what would happen to your ministry?

Brian Proffit is the equipping ministry leader at Grace Place in Berthoud, Colorado, and the senior editor for Church Volunteer Central.

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