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 Final Step of Redevelopment
By guest blogger Randy Lovejoy, part 1 of 2. "He must increase and I must decrease." -- John 3:30 NASB It is Sunday morning. I am at home. No pressure. No adrenaline. I have stepped down. Sunday mornings are usually a time of action. I would get up early, shower and...
Five good questions for focusing a ministry position
I was recently coaching someone who had a staff member leave their position. Instead of immediately looking for someone to fill the empty position, he took the opportunity to think through more clearly what was actually needed. These were the five questions I used to...
Effective leaders: What do they have in common?
I have privilege of coaching some really outstanding leaders. It's a wonderful experience for me to come alongside them to help increase their fruitfulness, deepen their capacity, and wrestle with them over the tough issues they face as they move forward. I recently...
Assum-a-side
An interesting concept from Jeff Norris: "assum-a-side" -- death by assumptions. Assuming we know what's going on rather than asking leads to a slow death (or sometimes instant martyrdom). Sometimes we think we know what people are thinking, what their concerns are,...
Water tank financial management
When I coach people in the area of their finances, I like to use the image of a water tank. Water comes in at the top and out at the bottom. The water level in the tank signifies cash in the bank. Positive cash flow means that the water level is rising: there is more...
What to do during that leaders meeting? VHS
If you want to cultivate a thriving church, you must make the care and feeding of your small groups and their ministry leaders a very high priority. The leadership community meeting is a regularly scheduled meeting for this purpose. I often refer to the three...
The Habits of Leaders
Today’s entry is from guest blogger Dr. Steven Goodwin. I love reading. It has been a lifetime passion of mine to read, read, and then read some more. I feel a great kinship to Erasmus who once said, “When I get a little money, I buy books. When I get a little more, I...
Reprogramming our self-talk
I've discovered not only in my coaching but through life in general that people often engage in negative self-talk. "I'm always X." "I struggle with Y." "I can't do Z." They spend a lot of mental energy rehearsing the wrong stuff, embedding it even more deeply into...
What I’ve been tempted to say….
Every once in a while during consultations, I've been tempted to tell churches to put up a banner out front saying, "Go to hell. We don't care." (Full disclosure-- I only actually said this once.) What circumstances might lead me to want to say this? A church that has...
The power of green
As an avid mountain biker who lives in the Los Angeles area, I've been thinking about green spaces lately and how the natural environment helps us connect with God. I read an interesting piece on Dave Daubert's blog that I think puts words to the way we as followers...
Worship strategy: Separating the creating planning from the implementation
One strategy I've found to be quite helpful-- particularly in the worship area-- is to separate the creative planning of the worship service from the actual implementation. You can get your creative thinkers to come up with ideas and the plan the services. They're...
The importance of planning as a process
So often in planning, people try to focus on the plan itself-- the end result. What's actually much more important is the engagement of people in the discernment process, seeking God, and walking together through the discovery of what God wants them to do. Below are...