Craziest thing just happened. You helped make the month of August the highest trafficked month on Helping Churches Make Vision Real! If I haven’t said it lately, thank you! It’s fun to see the comments and interaction through social media each month about the content and articles that are posted here! It’s always good to hear that the content is helpful! So thank you for connecting with me through the content on this blog! You made these the top 5 Posts from this last month. If you missed out on any of them, here they are all in one place for your convenience!
1. What the Church can Learn from Southwest Airlines about Volunteers
I was recently on a Southwest Airlines flight and witnessed one of the most amazing volunteer moments I’ve ever seen. When it came time for the midflight snack of pretzels and peanuts a woman on the flight stepped up and volunteered to pass out the snack. And here’s the amazing thing…they let her! No application, no waiver, and no complex training classes. They simply handed over the basket of snacks and said go for it! Watching this whole thing go down I couldn’t help but think about how difficult we make it for people in the church to volunteer. Here are a couple of observations from that moment that I think are worth the church considering.
2. A Large Multisite Church in Phoenix is Looking for a Campus Pastor
I’m pleased to announce a new Staff Search. Sun Valley Community Church, is beginning a search for a Campus Pastor to serve on our Tempe Campus. Sun Valley began as a church plant in 1990 in Chandler, Arizona. Over the years Sun Valley has grown into a large mult-site church in the Phoenix metro area. Currently there are three campuses located in Gilbert, Tempe and Casa Grande with a total weekend attendance of over 5,500 people. Sun Valley was recently named by Outreach Magazine as one of the top 10 fastest growing churches in America. The Tempe Campus is the result of a merger in October of 2011 with Bethany Community Church. In the merger Sun Valley acquired a 16-acre, 8 building campus with over 100,000 sq. ft. under roof. Since the merger the campus has doubled in attendance and at present attendance is over 1,000. When fully utilized the campus capacity will accommodate 7,000 people. Sun Valley was recently featured in a new book by Leadership Network about church mergers: Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work. To learn more about that story click here Part-1 and Part-2.
3. A Leadership Conversation with Larry Osborne
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in a post entitled “Making Small Groups the Hub of Your Ministry” that I recently had the opportunity to spend some time at NorthCoast Church with Larry Osborne and his team to talk about Leadership and Small Groups. If you don’t know already, NorthCoast is an outlier when it comes to small groups and you need to get to know these guys. While the norm across the nation is hovering at about 50% of weekend worship attendance in groups, NorthCoast is shattering that norm and boasts just over 90% of their weekend worship attendance in groups. That was enough for us to get on a plane and spend some time learning from these guys. While that original post focused on Small Groups these are some of my take aways from the conversation that had broader implications for pastors and leaders.
4. Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit
If you missed the 2013 Global Leadership Summit, then you missed some great content, great speakers, and incredible ideas that have the potential to shift your thinking when it comes to leadership. This really was one of the best Leadership Summits I can remember. But no worries! Now you’ve got all the notes to every session right here at your fingertips for free! Hope you enjoy!
5. Leadership Lessons from a Family Vacation
Like many families this summer, we did a family vacation. Lisa and I had the opportunity to take the kids (all 4 of them now) for an incredible week in the mountains! Like any leader, it’s tough for me to just “turn it off.” So…upon reminiscing, here are five leadership lessons that parallel our time together we had as a family this summer.
Posted in Leadership
