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.
The starfish group
One woman in my church plant has started a new group. One of the members, new to both the group and the church, wanted to call the group “the starfish group,” after the book The Starfish and the Spider—with the idea being that the group is set up to multiply right...
When God’s people pray, God’s power is released
I remember the powerful impact of having an intercessor pray onsite during an entire church planter training. Having prayer coverage during the whole training made a huge difference. So when someone within my church context asked me how her specific gifts might be...
Follow the promptings of the Spirit
One of my friends went to the grocery store last week. As he was checking out, he had a strong impression to buy a rack of ribs. He didn't need ribs, but the sensation didn't go away. So he bought a rack of ribs anyway. As he drove home, he decided to give the...
Start with listening prayer
Yesterday, our house church spent time in listening prayer. We asked God questions and waited quietly to sense the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Questions raised included ones like: Lord, what should be be asking you? What have you already shown us? Where are...
Along-the-way-learning
Imagine being an expectant first-time mother or father taking a parenting class. The instructor starts out talking about early infancy, and all of the pregnant women and their husbands are nodding and taking notes. But then their expressions become increasingly...
Information overload
Why do we keep doing it? We try to cram everything someone could possibly someday need to know into their orientation or training. We overload them with information, and their practice doesn’t have a chance to catch up. Essentially, we are educating people beyond...
Is your church a family or a team?
Often in churches we use the language of family to describe our relationships with each other. And that description can be helpful in some ways. However in other ways a group of churches that is really moving forward is functioning more as a team than as a family....
Convoy Mentality
We tend to believe that for organizational change to take place, we must first get everyone on the same page, ready to move along in the same direction. We will all go together in a big convoy. Until everyone is ready to move, no one moves. While it would be nice to...
Corporate ADD
If you’re a leader and your people aren’t listening to you, it’s quite likely that you’ve trained them not to listen to you. We engage in a pattern of starting something, losing focus, starting something different, and so on. When we behave this way repeatedly, we are...
Leader watchers
Unless you as a leader personally live missionally, no one else will. People are leader-watchers. Whatever they see leaders doing is what they figure is important, so that’s what they will do. The best part is that you don’t actually have to be good at it. The simple...
Where do you find the time?
Living incarnationally, serving others, building relationships… that takes a lot of time. Where can we find it? It’s extremely difficult—if not impossible—to do so when our commitments in the existing church are too extensive. We try to hang onto the old too much,...
Measuring the fruit
When I posted last time about rethinking church subsidies, I mentioned investing in leaders that have fruit rather than just potential. Some readers wondered how I would define fruit. Many of us are rightly skeptical of a system that counts success as full pews and...