Taking the long view
We’ve all heard the expression, “We overestimate what we can do in one year and significantly underestimate what can be accomplished in three years.” We tend to be overly ambitious for what can happen in a year. We raise expectations– our own and those of...Summers off for children’s ministry?
When I was a pastor, I would track our growth. Historically, the increase of adult attendance would track alongside the increase of children’s attendance. They would run in parallel to each other. Then I noticed that trend diverging. Children’s attendance...
How staffing two Sunday schools is easier than staffing one
If you are trying to staff your children’s programming concurrently with the worship service, it’s hard to get volunteers because they have to miss church to serve. So what to do? Some churches require parents to volunteer once a month. Yet that approach...
How organic change leads to organizational change
So we know from yesterday’s blog entry that trying to institute coaching from the top down most often doesn’t work. Implementation is spotty. You have some key people who won’t participate. Leaders don’t model the behavior. Quality suffers. People start...
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...
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...
Schedule by the week or by the year?
I find that when working with leaders who wear multiple hats and have a lot of different projects– especially if they are combining local hands-on ministry with regional ministry– that working with a weekly schedule doesn’t work well. The reason for that...