Considering the long-term impact of our decisions

Developing, Leadership

We need to regularly ask the questions: “What are the long-term effects of this decision?” and, “What might be the unintended consequences of this decision?” For example, if you try to solve your shortage of church planters by recruiting, it has the long-term (and...

Taking the long view

Leadership, Visionizing

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?

Leadership, Teambuilding

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 organic change leads to organizational change

Coaching

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

Missional

  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...

Maximize the vision, minimize the change

Leadership, Outreach, Visionizing

  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...

Schedule by the week or by the year?

Leadership, Prioritizing

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...

The value of strategic planning

Leadership

You know how working in the church goes… if you don’t set aside time for the truly important things, you end up spending your time putting out fires and running from urgent issue to urgent issue. Come plan with us. We have time set aside on June 13-14 in Chicago. You...