Ghost Twitterers

I sit on the board for Converge Worldwide (BGC). In the past month I have participated in a church planters assessment team, a board meeting, final interviews for five potential missionary candidates, and attended the ground-breaking for the new Converge/Vision 360 ministry training center in Orlando. In each of those situations I have had some exciting conversations with men and women who are following Jesus with abandon and who want to join with what God is already doing in our world through his people. These are exciting days!

Since I do not hold a leadership position on this board I have an opportunity to develop even more 'second chair' leadership skills. For example, I have noticed a reduction in communication between the board's leadership and board members the past six months. I first raised the matter with a friend who is part of the executive committee of the board hoping to catch up on what has been going on during a significant period of historic transition. To my surprise he knew nothing more than I did. So next I emailed one of our key leaders and followed up with him in person. I suggested a number of communication vehicles to address the perceived lack of communication. There can be passive communication through our website - even through a password-protected page for board members if there are sensitive items not ready for public consumption. More active pieces might include a periodic email (what organization doesn't have an e-newsletter these days?), a leadership blog, or even a Facebook page.

I lobbied pretty hard for Facebook and Twitter accounts for the president and other key leaders. Most of the next-generation leaders in our movement live on Facebook and Twitter. I already follow several of them and appreciate the training and mentoring I am receiving. The ability for these next-generation leaders to hear from the current leaders of our movement through FB & Twitter would begin to connect them more fully to the mission God has given us.

As a second chair leader you might find that an effective form of communicaiton between your key leader and those in your organization is through FB and Twitter. You may also find that your key leader is not inclined to agree and very likely would not use these social networking tools to their best advantage. That's where we come in. As second chair leaders we can become 'ghost twitterers' for our key leaders maintaining their status and friends/followers lists for them. It's not that difficult since we have lots of first-hand communication with them already that we could adapt for FB & Twitter.

Communication vehicles are changing rapidly. While we still have some people in our churches who do not own cell phones or have email accounts, we have others who communicate solely through their Blackberry or i phones. The challenge for us as second chair leaders is to is to find - and USE - all of the communication vehicles available to us to enhance the effectiveness of our key leader and the Gospel which we serve.