Dear Rector:

 

These are some observations and suggestions from my experience as Rector of Hughes 8.  I will try to tell you what my mistakes were, as well as what I did that worked well.  As they say, take what you like, and leave the rest!  

1.       Pre-Kairos security issues gave me more heartburn than almost anything else before the weekend.  I won’t got into the reasons for it, other than confusion rained.  If I were doing it again, I would appoint someone, like the inside coordinator, to be in charge of all pre-Kairos security training issues.  Ask that person to be responsible for knowing who has not been trained by the state, and have him or her get as many trained before the weekend as possible, either on their own or as a group or whatever means works.

2.       While planning the weekend I scrupulously avoided all possible conflicts with other Kairos team meetings, weekends, spring break and holidays.  This resulted in some very early meetings, with a long break in between.  If I were doing it over, I would just have some conflicts and have the meetings closer to the weekend and closer to each other.

3.       I came very close to having the team meetings at a church 30 or so miles from my home church, because of convince of other team members.  Fortunately, I changed my mind and used my home church.  The ease of communication, familiarity with the facility and the convince for me, outweighed any other considerations by far.

4.       Various groups at my church served lunch at team meetings, for donations ranging from $3 to $5.  This was great… it took less time and the team bonded during meals more than they would have going out to restaurants.   Ask a team member from your church to invite groups to do lunch so you don’t have to do it yourself.

5.       I tried to use Email for all team communications.  This was a mistake.  Some team members didn’t get my emails, some didn’t read them, some used older email clients that couldn’t read them (they never told me they were getting blank emails, I found out after the fact from another team member).  Email was a lot easier for me but it shortchanged some of the team.

6.       I did a poor job of communicating how the overnight retreat works.  Up until a few days before the weekend, some people didn’t understand that they needed to be at the support church Wednesday night.  Some, to my surprise, didn’t understand that a room by themselves wasn’t covered by team fees, and that they would have to pay extra if they opted to room by themselves.  I suggest that you put information about the retreat in your initial letter to team members, and mention it at team meetings.

7.       My inside coordinator and I had a pre-meeting with the Warden, all of the Chaplains, and  what I believe was the senior Major on the security staff of Hughes.  This meeting took place about 2-3 weeks before the Kairos.  It was one of the best preparation things we did, and it made the weekend go much more smoothly.  DO IT!!

8.       On Friday of the weekend, we had the candidates and the team in the chapel before count started.  DO IT!!

9.       I suggest you instruct your team servant staff to spend at least half of their time physically with their Brother in White counterparts during the weekend.  In retrospect, I feel we took those Brothers too much for granted, and this is a very stressful time for them in some ways.  They are not used to taking direction from each other.  Our presence might help smooth things out for them.

10.    The attendance at closing was not good.  Several reasons:  I should have been sure everyone knew exactly when the registration deadline was, and I may have told people to get to the gate too early.  The arrival timing deterred at least some folks from my church.

11.    I worried a lot that we would arrive at the gate with team members who were not on the list provided to the front gate.  Same for outside team members getting into closing.  What a waste of energy!  I should have just called role from the lists at the church on Wednesday night to satisfy my anxiety.  If you think this whole concern is dumb, read number 12.

12.    The team makeup was more dynamic than I had imagined.  I had people adding and dropping right up to the last minute.  My attitude was that additions to the outside team were permissible right up to the last minute.  I had slightly tougher standards for additions to the inside team, but it was distressing to have last minute drop-offs from the inside team days before the weekend.  You should be prepared for that to happen. 

13.    In the beginning, it looked like the team was going to be much larger than it actually was.  I ‘stashed’ potential inside team members on the outside team, and pulled then to the inside team if needed.  One way of doing this and keeping everyone happy was to have more runner drivers than actually needed.   That worked well because it gave those men exposure, to some extent, to both the inside and outside teams.

14.    I strongly suggest you hold staff meetings with the inside coordinator, outside coordinator, treasure, hotel person and whom ever is handling security.  These meetings might be very short, and could take place right before or after team meetings.  I didn’t do this, but I think it would have been useful to me and informative for them as well.

15.    Former Rectors are going to be reluctant to give you advice.  Some will just tell you that ‘it is in the manual’.  While that may be true, in annoyed me no end, and I quickly stopped asking anything of those people (which, I think, was their goal in giving that answer anyway).  Some have apparently been burned by extremely critical people (by the way, if you run into that type of critic, I suggest you tell that person they are not needed on your team, and do it quickly.   You may need advice, but you don’t need to get picked apart.  Remember, there are only two persons on the team who you don’t have the authority to dismiss.  I didn’t run into this myself but heard a lot about it happening to others.)  Others view it as your weekend, and they don’t want to interfere for reasons you will never know.   I found this very annoying, but did manage to get some great help/advice from several former rectors.  The point is, you are going to have to seek those persons out by trial and error.  We agreed that I could feel free to not use the advice, and everyone was happy.  I suggest you work on cultivating those people right away.

16.    Look at the checklist at least twice a month.  Put it on your calendar so you will be sure to do it.

17.    I made a 3-ring notebook for myself to take in during the weekend.  In it, I had one clean, new manual, 5 new freedom guides, a full team list, steward list, front gate list, table assignments, candidate/sponsor list, detailed schedule, blank paper for notes, and copies of all the talks.  Everything was carefully tabbed by day or subject.  This was invaluable for me.  In addition to what I had, I recommend 5 extra copies of the schedule, table assignment, candidate and sponsor list.  Almost every day I ended up giving my copies away to another team member.

18.    I should have done the same as 17 for team meetings.  This was suggest to me by a former Rector, and I would have done well not to ignore it!

19.    You aren’t going to think of everything, and you aren’t going to do everything.  My weekend went very smoothly, but I sacrificed a lot by intensive  worry about things that never happened.  I suggest you relax and enjoy.  A big mistake is that I tried to control everything.  I have served on other teams, where things didn’t go smoothly, but the end result was just as good!  The Holy Spirit will be with you regardless of your mistakes.

20.    The weekend  took a lot more out of me than I realized.  It has taken a whole week of naps to feel like I am rested enough.  Part of this is that the last three weeks before the weekend took a big worry toll.

 

I don’t know what your personal experience has been with spiritual warfare, but you should be thinking about it.  I never believed in such things before Kairos, but I do now, even before becoming Rector.  About two months before the weekend, I began developing problem after problem, at work and home.  Some of these were there anyway, they just all ‘decided’ to come to a head at once.  There was only one set of footprints in the sand for the last two months, and they weren’t mine.  You should be in prayer about it, and you should have lots of other people praying about it too.   

I felt a tremendous sense of love and concern from the team throughout the whole Rector thing.  Their support during the weekend was fantastic.  No doubt everyone’s experience is different, but I felt much more bonded to the team than the residents during and after the weekend.  I have not heard any other Rectors say that, but it is very true in my case.

 The Kairos manual is a wonder.  But, when you get down to the point where it is ‘under your nails’, there are some problems.  Take a careful look at Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, well in advance, to make sure you know what is going on.  Note that the times on Sunday afternoon don’t make sense.   This is one area where some former Rectors were very helpful to me.

About assigning talks, meditations, table jobs and everything else.  What I did was to pray about it beforehand.  Then, just do the assignments.  My experience was that when I went with my gut reaction after prayer, everything was fine OR MUCH BETTER.  When I didn’t go with my gut after prayer, mistakes were made.  It is clear to me that the Holy Spirit was guiding me.

 God Bless.