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.
Listening with different ears
It used to make me so angry when-- after I’d spent hours helping someone process whether or not they wanted to embark on a particular journey-- they’d show up at the orientation only to say, “Now where is it exactly that we’re going again?” Outwardly I’d keep my cool,...
Do you want to get well?
Remember the story where Jesus approaches a man in need of healing and asks him, “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6) I used to think that was such a strange question. Of course he wants to get well! What invalid wouldn’t want to get well? Yet one of the observations...
Portrait of a bi-vocational ministry leader
Today’s blog entry is by Jeff Logsdon, who is currently transitioning from pastor at The Flipside in Rancho Cucamonga, California to bi-vocational ministry leader in Tucson, Arizona. Another pastor who left his previous employment at Google in order to work for the...
When are you a supervisor and when are you a coach?
In many cases where you are the supervisor, you may want to take a coaching posture as much as possible. However, a coaching posture requires that the person you’re coaching is the one who sets the agenda. The agenda they set may or not be most strategic for...
Permission vs. ownership
A critical mistake many pastors make is they assume that if they get their governing board to give permission or approval, they’ve won the battle. It’s true that governing board permission is needed for certain initiatives, but the more critical issue isn’t approval--...
MyCoachLog as a record of growth
I was in Madison, Wisconsin recently doing a training event. While there, pastor Christina Roberts of Madison Vineyard Church told me about new use she found for MyCoachLog: We have an apprenticeship program run out of our church. It’s a nine-month process designed...
Great TED Talk on Grit
I ran across this TED Talk by Angela Lee Duckworth recently about the value of “grit”-- what followers of Jesus might term “perseverance.” It was a great talk, geared mainly toward educational settings, about how important this quality of “grit” is to success. At...
Maximize the vision, minimize the change
There’s a young guy who lives in the inner city. He works outside the city most of the week, but on Sundays he plays basketball to relax and exercise. His vision is to reach inner city youth, but he felt he didn’t have much time to invest in any official type of...
Tent-making discipleship
When we look at the way the Apostle Paul discipled others, we see him capitalizing on what people are already doing. He shows up where they are: in the temple courts, where the philosophers are debating, in the ports where people are coming and going, where the work...
On-the-way-discipleship: Deuteronomy 6
Yesterday’s blog entry-- about doing discipleship in the course of daily life rather than as a set-aside meeting-- made me think of Deuteronomy 6:6-9. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and...
Discipling on the go
I am coaching a man named Phillip who is serving among the poor in Mexico City. He’s been struggling with finding time to invest in discipling relationships, partly because most of the people there are already working long hours just to support their families. One man...
When the golden rule does not apply
I was coaching someone recently about getting along with a coworker and she said, “What I would like if I were in their shoes would be direct communication-- just bottom-lining it.” But in fact, that is not what the other person would prefer. His style and preferences...