Half a loaf vs. half a baby

Leadership

When is compromise appropriate and when is it not appropriate? I first learned a helpful rule of thumb from Carl George. There are times when half of something is better than none of it: half a loaf of bread is better than no loaf of bread. It may not be all you...
Working on your ministry, not in it

Working on your ministry, not in it

Leadership

There’s a book by Michael Gerber called The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It. One of the points he makes, which is equally applicable to church planting, is that many entrepreneurs get caught up working in the...

Repentance and responsibility

Leadership

What does it really mean to repent? If you are in ministry, how do you respond to people who say that they are sorry but then don’t take action to change? What do you do when people express words of repentance, but then mix them with words of blame for others and not...

Geese or golden eggs?

Leadership

I was on an international flight flipping through business magazine when I saw an ad that caught my attention. It was a plain white page with a golden egg at the bottom and a single caption that read, “What you really need is the goose.”  It was a great ad. In...

Ministry teams vs. Mission teams

Leadership, Missional, Teambuilding

This blog entry is by guest blogger Steve Ogne, church planter coach and consultant with CRM. Steve and I worked together for a decade and collaborated on several projects together, including The Church Planter’s Toolkit. Steve’s most recent publication is...