How ‘Scaling Up’ Was Used in Ministers Gathering 2024 (and Can Help Your Organization Too!)
One obstacle that can often impede explosive growth in organizations is limited resources. A great vision and growing momentum can easily be blocked by fixed access to time, money, and human resources. The re-arrangement of resources can make the difference between a growing vision or a stagnant one.
Using ‘Scaling Up’ to Break Through
Scaling up is an important strategy to use once you’ve reached a capacity where room for growth is blocked by an inability to execute. When you scale up your operations, you multiply your potential by finding strategies to overcome obstacles.
Scalability is the ability to improve outcomes without equally increasing the resources required to execute.
Scaling Up at Ministers Gathering
Over the past three years, Ministers Gathering has seen record-breaking growth. This remarkable growth has been seen in attendance, registration, marketing reach, volunteer participation, and programming.
In 2022, we reached our capacity in attendance, with 602 attendees. As exciting as this surge in attendance was, we faced limitations of resources.
This year, in 2024, tickets sold out within 3.5 weeks of registration launch.
Considering these markers of growth, we needed to implement scalable structures to overcome obstacles and make room for growth.
“To add growth, lead followers – to multiply, lead leaders.”
Part 1: Empowering Our Leaders
On an organizational level, we responded to these growth indicators by revising our event staffing structure. We clarified job roles, responsibilities, and reporting structure.
Staff responsibilities at the event moved away from accomplishing tasks and towards empowering leaders to achieve desired outcomes.
This strategic shift has fostered micro-environments that have helped multiply leadership. Instead of overseeing each administrative detail, our focus has become to empower multi-level teams of leaders to make capable decisions within departments to support the overall goals of the event.
Part 2: Adjusting Programming
The other ‘scaling-up’ strategy were programming changes made to the event. These programming changes aimed to help overcome limitations through new seating zones, volunteer opportunities, and leadership systems that were all better poised for multiplication.
Here are examples of changes made to the program to overcome obstacles:
New Seating Zones
Obstacle: Limited seating space.
Scalability: Including a “Family Room” overflow area to include more attendees than the physical structure of the meeting space can allow.
Self-Led Meetups
Obstacle: Limited administrative resources to plan affinity group meetings.
Scalability: The option for attendees to plan and execute their own meetups to allow for more opportunities for connections by volunteer leaders.
Creating a Connections Team
Obstacle: Limited human resources to help newcomers to make positive connections at the event.
Scalability: Implementing a system of small group leaders to oversee and encourage meaningful connections onsite.
A Sign of Success
The success of these changes struck me just days before the launch of the event, as I was tallying the number of volunteers. Of our nearly 500 adult attendees, 146 were involved in a leadership role in some capacity.
That means that over thirty percent of attendees were willing to give of their time and talent to make the event a success. This concerted group effort allowed our event to offer an experience that went way beyond what only a handful of paid staff could achieve alone.
This shift towards leadership multiplication has positively impacted our association and created an event experience that can leave a greater mark of connection and inspiration for everyone present.
“Tell me, and I forget; teach me, and I may remember; involve me, and I learn.”
How to Scale Up Your Ministry
So what does this mean for you? How does this apply to the church context?
Perhaps you’re the edge of your organization could be pushed further by implementing a scalable structure.
Here are the steps to making changes in an event or organization:
1. Determine Feasibility
All good planning begins with research. The first step in executing a plan is to look around, consider the facts, and determine feasibility.
Ask yourself, is there obvious room for growth at this time? When you analyze your key performance indicators, do you see an upward trendline? Do you feel strained by lack of resources? Is now the right time to scale up?
Exercises like the S.W.O.T. analysis can help build a clearer picture of where opportunities within your organization may be.
2. Assess Resources
The next step in scaling up is assessment. You will want to look at the availability of current resources and explore extra tools and resources that are available to you.
Ask yourself questions like:
What resources are currently being used?
What additional resources would be required to grow?
What additional resources are available?
3. Create a Plan
This is where you create a goal and write down what you're going to do next to achieve that goal. Ask yourself:
What changes will be made?
Where will resources be found?
Who will be involved?
What is each person's role and responsibilities?
How will this be communicated?
When will changes be implemented?
A project can be large or small. Sometimes, even just making the smallest changes can have a big impact. Make sure your plan stays realistic. Writing your goal using the S.M.A.R.T. guideline may be helpful.
4. Execute Your Plan
This is the part where you put 'the rubber to the road' and follow the roadmap in your plan. If the scope is large (i.e. High cost, over a long period of time, or requiring excellent quality), you may want to schedule periodic reviews to help keep your plan on track.
Some of the useful planning tools project and event planners use when the scope is large are things like Critical Paths, Organizational Charts, and Gantt Charts. Project management software, such as Asana (they have a free version), can help make the process more efficient.
5. Evaluate your Plan
The last step in the completion of every project is evaluation. Did you meet your goal? How did your outcomes increase? How were the resources affected? What was the buy-in from those involved?
Helpful tools for the evaluation of projects can be electronic surveys, one-on-one conversations, in-person forums, and digital analytics to help evaluate your outcomes.
Write what you find out down in a report and keep record. Your evaluation should inform what adjustments may be needed going forward.
A Tool to create Positive Change
Creating scalability within an organization creates the opportunity to enhance your potential by overcoming obstacles. These limitations may be in human resources, financial resources, or infrastructure.
In addition to benefiting the organization, these changes can benefit your team as well.
Interpersonal Benefits
Effectively empowering people and creating functional community are two of the roles of great leaders. Scalability not only has strategic benefit, but it also benefits people interpersonally, helping people feel empowered and inspired within their team.
Benefit 1: It Builds Your Team
• Working towards a goal together and accomplishing that goal is a proven way to create trust.
Benefit 2: It Empowers Your Staff
• Empowering people to achieve outcomes leads to more job satisfaction, fresh ideas, staff retention.
Benefit 3: It Helps Develop New Leaders
• Scalability creates new opportunities for up-and-coming leaders to work and build rapport within your team.
Benefit 4: It Fuels Personal Growth
• A successful leader will bear the fruit of multiplication, which is why mentoring and succession is an important part of leadership.
In the end, scalable structures will help improve team satisfaction and efficiency and sustain growth. Overcoming these barriers and empowering leaders through implementation creates forward motion and positive change.
In Closing
Growth is a value for us at the ABNWT District Resource Centre. Our influence as a network of churches across Alberta & Northwest Territories is growing.
We are thankful to see pastors and leaders from across Alberta and Northwest Territories growing in their involvement in Ministers Gathering. The willingness of attendees to help execute the event gives us the ability to achieve exponentially more than otherwise possible.
If you would like to volunteer at Ministers Gathering, let us know! We hope that you will plan to attend next year on February 10-13, 2025. We hope to see you there.
Carissa works as Events & Communications Specialist with the ABNWT District of the PAOC. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Theology from Vanguard College, Carissa started in the events industry at the Baptist General Conference of Canada in 2009. In 2012, she was hired at the PAOC ABNWT District, and in 2013, she earned her Event Management Certificate at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. Carissa is now a Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) with the Events Industry Council. She enjoys using her experience to help executive leaders accomplish their goals through events, marketing and top-notch administration.