Multi-Site EPODs: Establishing the Essentials
Many moons ago I wrote a post called You Need an EPOD. It was an ode to one of the tried-and-true tools in our multi-site toolbox, a document called – you guessed it – an EPOD. The EPOD keeps us on the literal same page. It establishes understanding, goals, and accountability between our central resourcing teams and the campus staffs who are on the front lines.
Over the next few months, I’m going to revisit that post, talking about each part of our EPOD – essential, preferred, optional, and discouraged – in detail. In this post, we’re talking about the Essentials: how did we get them, what do we do with them, and just how essential is essential?
Agreeing on the Essentials
We define the E in EPOD as the practices that are necessary and required for your campus to live out the mission of The Summit Church in your ministry area. “Necessary” means that each essential makes up the building blocks for x ministry (Guest Services, Kids, Worship, etc.) to look, function, and feel like x ministry, no matter the campus. “Required” means that it’s the shorthand job description of the x ministry team, and therefore the x ministry team leader (more on that below).
In the original post, I said that we got to the Essentials in somewhat of a roundabout way. Our central Guest Services Team – at the time made up of me plus two half-time team members – drafted our version of the EPOD. Then we asked our campus Guest Services Directors – all with varying levels of longevity in their role – to draft their version of the EPOD. The overlap between the two was uncanny. What we discovered is that we were 98% aligned on what we all deemed essential, preferred, optional, and discouraged. (And the 2% could be chalked up to negligible nomenclature.)
So with that agreement, we marched forward. If we were unified on what went into each category, then it was easy to stand on that unity and hold each other to account. In the years since that original exercise, the EPOD gets put back on the table every two to three years, and a similar exercise is undertaken: are there areas of disagreement? Does this still define us? What is actual and what is aspirational?
Having that campus / central agreement is crucial for the new Guest Services Director on the campus level, because it allows us to stand firm with no stuttering: “This was not a document created in an ivory tower in a central cubicle. This was developed by your peers, and they’re going to hold you to this standard.”
Executing the Essentials
With the agreement in hand, the Essentials function as a de facto Sunday morning job description. Every time our Guest Services Director stares down a weekend service, every time one of their central counterparts shows up for a check in, every time the team serves in any capacity, the 17 things in the Essentials section defines our behavior and our tasks. It’s a no-surprises list that – again – keeps us all on the same literal page.
The Essentials should be known backwards and forwards by the Guest Services Director, a part- or full-time staff member. It should be shared with Service Leaders, who help the GSD execute tasks and lead the team each Sunday morning. And it should be reflected in the behavior of every team member.
But what happens when that reflection doesn’t happen?
Just how essential is an Essential?
Admittedly, there are a few Essentials that function as aspirational rather than actual. Take bullet point #2: “Attend one, serve one” for all volunteers. (Read more about A1S1 here.) For years, we’ve batted this one back and forth. We’ve let it live in the Essentials section, the Preferred section, and sometimes in the proverbial no-man’s-land in between.
The fact is, we can’t force a volunteer to attend one and serve one. I mean, we can, but we view it as much more a discipleship issue rather than a kick-you-to-the-curb issue.
It was one of our GSDs who finally said, “Hey, we keep saying that this is preferred. But if we really believe that it’s Essential for our overall team and our individual volunteers, why not just commit and move it to the E section?”
And so we did. Yes, it’s aspirational if not 100% of our volunteers are actually doing it. But it keeps the goal in front of us at all times, and reminds us to have those conversations with our vols on why A1S1 is good for them and good for the team.
Do you have questions about the Essentials section of our EPOD – or EPOD questions in general? Let me know below, or email me here. I’ll address as many as I can in future posts.
See all posts in this series:
- Multi-Site: You Need An EPOD
- Multi-Site EPODs: Establishing the Essentials
- Multi-Site EPODs: Promoting the Preferred
- Multi-Site EPODs: Opining the Optional
- More posts coming soon!
