This is Bill Taylor’s brain child. Officially retired from Lifeway Christian Resources as their senior educational consultant–Southern Baptists’ Mr. Sunday School–Bill now works for the North American Mission Board as a “senior strategist.” On numerous occasions he has spent several days in our part of the world and with churches on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, looking for a key way to make a difference.

Out of that search came “Unlimited Partnerships.” Bill began to imagine a plan by which we could match a gifted and dedicated seminary student with one of our local needy churches to serve a year or more in the area of education and evangelism. He imagined large churches in the SBC led by consecrated pastors who would want to pay the salaries of these students. Then, he set out to make it happen.

“We couldn’t have done it without David Hankins,” Bill Taylor said, referring to the executive of Louisiana Baptists. “When he first heard of this, he told me, ‘Bill, this is the right thing to do. Even if you can’t find the sponsoring churches, we will back it.'” But it wasn’t necessary. “It wasn’t a matter of dollars,” Bill explained. “This was all about matching up enterprising students with responsive churches and successful sponsors who could teach them and mentor them.”

The program kicked off March 1, with 7 students working out of 7 of our churches. This is the pilot program, a test run by which we find out what works and what doesn’t. We’re finding our way.

For the record, here are the seven churches.

New Covenant, Thomas Glover pastor, has Bethany Hales as their student and Forest Hills Baptist Church (Charles Roesel, interim pastor) as their sponsor. Larry Ware is the educational minister for FHBC. Located in the largest neighborhood in the state (Woodmere), New Covenant has a small membership and a determined pastor.

New Salem, Warren Jones pastor, has Bobby Wood as their student and FBC Dallas (Bill Anderson, interim pastor) as their sponsor. Dillard Wilbanks is the educational minister and Mike Miller the executive pastor at Dallas. Located in the middle of the 9th Ward of New Orleans, New Salem is 3 blocks from the new homes being built by the Musicians Village/Baptist Crossroads.

Highland, Metairie, Scott Smith pastor, has Justin Woulard as its student and FBC Jacksonville (Mac Brunson, pastor) as its sponsor. Lewis Howard is the educational minister. Highland took a lot of damage from the hurricane, but has become a center for ministry teams working in the city.

FBC Norco, Rudy French pastor, has Jason Sampler as its student and FBC Allen, Texas (Chad Selph, pastor) as its sponsor. Jeff Humphrey is the educational minister. We’ve reported here on several occasions how Rudy led this church to revamp its entire focus to become a mission center.

Gentilly, Ken Taylor pastor, has John Sanders (possibly; I’m not sure of this) as its student and FBC Woodstock (Johnny Hunt, pastor) as its sponsor. Allan Taylor is the educational minister. After the demolition of his beloved Elysian Fields Avenue Baptist Church, Ken Taylor moved the remnants of his congregation to Gentilly and gathered the few remaining members from that church; they’re merging.

Edgewater, Kevin Lee pastor, has Matthew Middlecamp as its student and Evangeline Association (including FBC LaFayette; Steve Horn, pastor) as its sponsor. The DOM for Evangeline is Bert Langley and Gary Ruffin is the educational minister for the Lafayette church. Kevin moved to this devastated church after Katrina and has led in its rebuilding; they are having a great impact in that community.

Memorial, Metairie, Jackie Gestes pastor, has Jonathan Young as its student and Prestonwood, Dallas (Jack Graham, pastor) as its sponsor. Michael Fechner is the educational minister and Mike Buster is the executive pastor. Jackie arrived as pastor only last August, and is still working with insurance companies to get ready to rebuild the sanctuary for their greatly-decreased congregation.

The sponsoring church is available for guidance, counsel, and support to the local pastor, church, and student. And one fascinating aspect of the plan is that all the local pastors and students will devote one entire Monday each month to coming together to hear from one of the sponsoring pastors, a sponsoring educational minister, and some layperson selected by Bill Taylor. Today, Monday, March 19, was the first of these. Chad Selph and Allan Taylor were the ministers. Ralph Conwill was the layman. “He’s my Sunday School teacher,” Bill Taylor said, “and retired from Monsanto Chemical.”

What follows are my notes on today’s meeting.

Professor Joe Sherrer, NOBTS: The students get 9 hours credit for this project and pay no tuition whatsoever. “I’ve never seen Dr. Kelley sign off on free tuition ever! This shows his commitment to this project.” This seminary’s purpose is “to train leaders for healthy SBC churches.” NOBTS is becoming known as the Christian Education seminary.

Freddie Arnold: This has been a dream of mine for the past 5 years. I’m a church planter strategist but have been doing educational work in the association because there was no one else. I love educational work. God has ordained this project and is blessing it. We expect it will bless countless other churches in time.

Bill Taylor: A big part of what we will be doing is building relationships. Everyone has a story. We want to hear yours. (Note: we then spent the better part of the day telling our stories.) I’m going to run this like a staff meeting. Johnny Hunt says, “I don’t want reports; I want you to speak out of your passion.”

What I tell people who are interested in joining our staff: 1) are you lazy? 2) are you for the preacher? and 3) can you work without supervision? Because I’m going to assign you to an area where you will not get a lot of supervision. We’ll support you until you drop the ball.

Chad Selph (FBC Allen, TX): (Note: I was late coming back from lunch and missed the first part of his message.) We are constantly evaluating leadership in our church. A big issue is how to find staff-members with character. We interview 20 or more to fill one position, and we find many otherwise good people with major problems–financial problems, people lying to you, poor work ethics, a lack of drive, laziness, no personal growth going on, and no interest in building the ministry but only maintaining it. We look at their seminary grades to see if them know how to discipline themselves.

In visiting with prospective staffers, we put them in non-traditional settings. Take them to eat and notice how they treat the waiter. Tour a school with them and notice if they speak to people. These things matter.

Churches are always in transition. Change is a constant in every church. I’m always changing. As we minister to church members–counseling, weddings, funerals, a note, a visit–we build up credits. You cash in the credits when you have to take a stand on some unpopular issue. We had a failure of a beloved staff member whom we had to dismiss. This was not something we could stand in front of the church and discuss. It took every credit I had amassed, but the congregation supported us and we did not lose a single member over it. They trust you after you have earned it, and that allows you to lead them.

In considering staff additions to our church, we conduct criminal background checks and run credit reports. I want to know if the staffer is a tither, if he or she lives by what they teach.

Chad recommended the Bill Hybels book on leadership, “Good to Great.”

Allan Taylor (Woodstock Church, Georgia): When you’re new in the church, have lunch with a different leader every day. Spend time getting to know them. If you’re a staffer, get to know your pastor and to know his heart. If you’re going to play second fiddle, you should be in tune with the first fiddle. I tell my pastor I will support you, but I want to be heard by you. At the end of our talk, whatever he decides, I’ll support him.

You’re in the people business, and ought to love people. Relationships is the key. The first rule of winning (Allan used to be a coach) is: Don’t beat yourself. I’ve seen educational ministers with a great understanding of the Word and human nature, people who grasped the philosophy and had read all the important books, I’ve seen them beat themselves by poor people skills.

Every leader sets three things.

1) A leader sets the standards. For Sunday School teachers, we set high standards. We interview them, do background checks, and ask them to commit themselves to a monthly Sunday School leadership meeting. If they’re not willing to do that, they cannot teach. You can’t play on the team if you don’t come to practice. We require that our workers tithe and we forbid any use of alcohol. If you don’t set standards, you are not a leader. Every CEO sets the standards for the company. The coach sets them for the team. You set them for your church’s leaders.

2) A leader sets the directions. Where are we headed? The leader blazes the path, funneling the organizational energy toward the goal. If the leader does not set the direction, it dilutes the energy.

3) A leader sets the atmosphere. I tell our people there are three words they should keep uppermost in their minds at church: speak, smile, touch. Speak to everyone you see at church. Acknowledge them, even if it’s just with a wave of the hand. Smile at them, and if you can, shake their hand. Touch them.

It’s so easy to fail to live up to your own standards in the ministry. My accountant tells me he does the taxes for 600 pastors, of whom only 150 tithe their incomes to the church.

Make sure you emulate what you exhort.

(I regret not hearing Ralph Conwill’s presentation. Mondays, I have a mentoring group that meets in mid-afternoon and had to leave early to drive across the city.)

Bill Taylor’s goal is one day to have fifty churches in this part of the world involved in such a program. Across the Mississippi Gulf Coast there are so many wounded churches that could benefit from this.

“This is deserving of prayer,” Bill says.

We’re asking our friends to lift these 7 churches, 7 ministers, 7 students, and 7 sponsoring churches to the Father.

“So many opportunities, so many obstacles,” as Paul said in I Corinthians 16:9.