Love God | Love Others | Make Disciples
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Church revitalization and a spirit of fear
You’ve seen this situation before: A beloved pastor of many years has gone and now there’s a new pastor. The congregation is finding it hard to readjust. Even small changes in direction feel threatening. There is uncertainty about where the church is going. What will...
Sustainability — in farming and in ministry
I often take long bike rides through the agricultural regions around Santa Rosa. The vineyards are beautiful, and I’ve noticed frequent signs stating, “This is a sustainable farm.” Not having farming roots myself, I wasn’t sure exactly what sustainable farming...
Drafting the values: creating behavioral descriptions and connecting to scripture
Drafting the values is the last stage in this five-part process of identifying core values for a church or ministry. To read the full series of blog entries, do a search for “identifying core values” on the Logan Leadership blog. Drawing from the exercises that have...
Reaching consensus: Affinity exercise
After engaging in listening prayer, identifying core behaviors, and sorting them into categories, it’s time for your team to begin reaching consensus on what your core values are. I find the affinity exercise helpful for this purpose. It allows all people to have an...
Reverse engineering into categories: The bin sort
After the team has brainstormed a long list of behaviors affirmed and practiced by the community, it’s time to reverse engineer those behaviors into value categories. I like to use the bin sort exercise. Each behavior is written on an index card. Looking at the list...
Identifying core behaviors
To help facilitate the identification of core values, it can be helpful to start with behaviors and then work backwards. This process results in actual values rather than desired values. Actual values are those lived out in behaviors, while desired values are those...
Listening prayer: Asking God questions
Determining core values needs to be a Spirit-led process. Although we borrow strategies and exercises from the secular world or businesses, we must never forget that we are part of the Kingdom of God. As such, God is leading, not us. We need to listen with an open...
Most church conflicts spring from differing values
At the beginning of a new ministry or a church plant, leaders often discuss the issue of core values: What are we about? What do we stand for? What makes us different? Yet for existing ministries, it can be helpful periodically to return to the question of core values...
Time management for church planters
Note: This blog entry is excerpted and adapted from my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Church Planting Journey. We'll be posting excerpts about once a month here and we'd love to hear feedback from you. We hope you are getting as excited about it as we are! And...
The seven actions of a church planter
When we talk about the church planting process, we often think about the various developmental stages: getting the core team gathered, starting groups, launching a worship service, etc. But there are certain core behavioral activities that all church planters need to...
Denominations and networks for church planters: To join or not to join?
Note: This blog entry is excerpted and adapted from my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Church Planting Journey. We'll be posting excerpts about once a month here and we'd love to hear feedback from you. We hope you are getting as excited about it as we are! And...
New edition of the Coaching 101 Handbook
As I look back on the 15 years since the Coaching 101 Handbook was first published, the main attribute I am struck by is its durability. The work Gary Reinecke and I did on the international qualitative research project to determine coaching competencies, micro-skills...