Next Level Church (NLC) in Yorktown, Virginia was founded with the mission to “love Jesus, love people, and make a difference.” Now ten years old, NLC wants to be sure that their staff members feel just as loved as their community.
Scott Rutter joined Next Level Church as the Executive Pastor in October 2017. He left a megachurch in Illinois and began working at NLC, a smaller church without the same budget or staff that larger churches could sustain. Scott’s challenge was to love, develop, and maximize his staff of six people.
He started holding one-on-one meetings as a way to personalize staff development. The time that Scott invested was a great way to catch-up, but the meetings were never very productive. The first half of the meeting was spent trying to remember what had been talked about the week before. Then, at the end of the current week’s meeting, there were no clear steps about what needed to happen next.
Scott thought a better system of organization would be helpful. So, he began using a system of notebooks for each of his meetings. Each person had a notebook dedicated to them. He would jot down helpful information in the notebooks: personality traits, likes, dislikes, and topics for each meeting. But the person he was going to meet with had no access to the notebook and no idea what was going to be discussed. This meant discussions could not progress if the other person needed time to reflect or find an answer.
“It felt like we were just constantly spinning our wheels and not really making any headway.”
Streamlining Meetings For Better Care and Development
Leadr was the organizational solution that Scott was looking for. The Meetings feature facilitated the collaboration and accountability that his meetings were missing. The Care Card was a quick reference for all of the personality information that helped Scott to individualize his meetings.
After implementing Leadr, the productivity of Scott’s meetings increased. Agendas were collaboratively created ahead of time, allowing his staff to show up prepared for a meeting with no surprises.
The creation of action items means that everyone always knows what they should be working on. It has been a great benefit for some of Scott’s less detail-oriented staff members.
As the staff in Scott’s charge responded well, other teams began to use Leadr to organize and streamline their meetings too.
“Now [my meetings are] all in one place and it’s glorious. I love it when things are streamlined and integrated. When all the things work together, I don’t have to go to 300 different places to find something.”
Leadr is a one-stop shop for everything that Scott needed to develop and pour into his staff. When asked what he would say to Executive Pastors at churches with a small staff, he said,
"We have six staff members. You might think ‘Is this really worth it? Do I really need it?’ [Leadr] has been a huge asset, a huge benefit. Even being a smaller staff, it is a great tool. You won’t regret your decision to sign up and use it. We are reaping the benefits and I can’t imagine our life without a tool like Leadr. Go ahead, take that jump, dive in.”
-Scott Rutter,
Executive Pastor, NLC
If you’re looking for a tool that helps you develop and care for every member of your team within one simple, intuitive place, we’d love to show you how Leadr does just that. Request a demo with our team today.
