Leadership
Holistic Leadership Development
You want to develop leaders who will do what Jesus called us to do, leaders who can take the church forward into the 21st century. You look to the fields and see them, as Jesus does, ready for harvest — and you know that’s where your ministry needs to concentrate.
What’s needed is holistic leadership development — the kind of leadership development that comes from the harvest and leads people back into the harvest, resulting in subsequent generations of new believers and new leaders living as Jesus called us to live.
We can help you develop leaders the kind of leaders you need in a way that is both relational and intentional… and ultimately effective in helping your church accomplish its mission.
Pruning comes first
Before you can begin delegating new tasks and developing new leaders, pruning must come first. The primary question of pruning is: What are you going to stop doing? If you don’t prune, you don’t have the bandwidth to develop others because you’re still carrying loads...
Why staff meetings are mostly a waste
Consider the average staff meeting: some catch up, coordinating of calendars, maybe a bit of support. Usually when you walk away, you haven’t accomplished much, and you’re generally you’re not in a place where the team had enough time for focused thinking about the...
Annual time budget
The questions have been asked before: What are the big rocks? The core contributions we’re supposed to be making? How do we allocate significant blocks of time to do those? The higher you are in leadership, the more important it is to look at your whole year. Most of...
Not defining success by outcomes
In many cases, the success of an endeavor is measured by whether it accomplishes the intended outcomes. And if the outcomes are something under your control, that’s a perfectly fine measurement to use. Yet I’ve found that in ministry, we often tie our success to...
The Missional Love Language
Today's entry is by guest blogger, Dr. Parnell Lovelace. I enjoy watching our local, predominantly African American, urban-centered congregation grow and embrace the beauty of missional communities. In the past, I often wrestled with how a growing congregation of our...
Light of the World? The Missional Church
The Missional Church You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine...
Missional is possible
Today’s entry is by guest blogger, Dr. Parnell Lovelace. I am an advocate of keeping things as simple as possible. One year ago, I observed a church leadership team discussing the perils of developing missional communities in a local congregation. The meeting...
City Seminary: in New York City
I recently met with some Vineyard leaders at City Seminary in Harlem. It was a great time as we talked about how to reach the diverse mosaic of neighborhoods in all the boroughs of NYC… with a multitude of missional communities and neighborhood churches. During one of...
¿Hablas español? Check out our Spanish-language resources
My own Spanish is a bit shaky (at best), but I’ve been working on improving it the last few years. I find that both in the US and abroad, a working knowledge of the Spanish-language is helpful for spreading the message of the gospel. Did you know we offer many of our...
Clarity on the destination of discipleship
Knowing your destination in the journey of discipleship is important. You need to have clarity in terms of where you're trying to go—it’s a necessary step for getting there. Like Alice, everyone ends up somewhere eventually if they keep walking, but not necessarily...
The Variables of Kingdom Impact
Today’s entry is by guest blogger, Dr. Parnell Lovelace. I will be the first to admit that I have never been very proficient in mathematics. As a youth, I gravitated towards the language arts and music. Now that I have two high school-age children living under my...
Individualizing our approach to discipleship
One thing I have noticed about discipleship is that we have a tendency to think about it assembly line style. We want to run everyone through the same program, have everyone take the same class or read the same book, treat everyone the same. But if you have raised...