Since our meeting last month, I've been asked a couple of times some variation of who is invited to The Huddle. As we have discussed in the past, leadership is influence. However, not everyone who has influence is in a leadership role at Harvest Church. In some cases this is because people do not know what their first step is to get in leadership, but statistics show (and believe me, Church Leaders are astute at knowing this kind of data!) that most people do not serve in leadership because they have not been personally invited.

Admittedly this can be frustrating at times from a staff perspective. Announcements (both in writing on weekly bulletins and on the web, and verbally from the pulpit), lobby tables, flyers, etc. ultimately serve to just elevate the noise in our communication. The most effective for someone to serve in leadership is the same (no surprise) as the most effective way for someone to attend church - someone invited them.

The Huddle is made up of those in the church who we (staff) can identify as leaders. This is anyone who carries responsibility for a task, team, schedule, must be in a time and place on the weekend, etc. The roster of these individuals was put together by the Harvest staff who submitted names of their individual ministry teams to ultimately build a master list from which invitations are made. Those names are then flagged in our database and invitations are then emailed out.

Now, some of you may know someone who's in leadership but did not get invited. There are a few reasons we have identified that may be the cause of that:

• Simple oversight. Their name should have been submitted and for whatever reason, was not.
• Lack of email address. They have in fact been identified but have never been invited. Our communication channel for this expects leaders to have access (and check) an email account. We are not trying to be exclusive in any way (other than being in leadership), but also are not allocating time to individually contact people. We just don't have the capacity to do so.

If you know anyone who should be attending, but is not, please encourage them to ask their pastoral contact (i.e. if they are in student ministry, ask Kyle, Worship, ask Todd, etc) so we can identify them for future communication and not repeat the oversight. The goal is clear and open communication within expectations. The more leaders who are empowered and informed, the better!

I'd be remiss if I also didn't connect the dots on the power of an invitation. You, as a leader, know people who probably should be in leadership. Invite them!

Can't wait for next Tuesday!

-cc.