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Why Video Teaching Will Work in Your Town Too

When I consult with churches that are considering going multisite one of the key exercises I facilitate with their team centers around how they are going to approach preaching in their weekend worship services. It’s a big conversation and a decision that has significant implications to the model and approach that churches take when it comes to multisite.

Inevitably somewhere in the conversation someone challenges the idea of video teaching and says something like, “You don’t know our people, video teaching will never work with our people or in this community.” While I’d be the first to say that video teaching isn’t the right approach for every church to take it works better than you think, more often than you think, and in more locations than you think.

In fact the picture below is a video venue for a large multisite church that I recently took. This venue is their one traditional service that they do. The service has a choir and a more traditional physical space. It’s a very different vibe than the modern worship services they do in their auditoriums, but the video teaching is the same. The average age in this service is over 70. Video works. Even with an older demographic. Even in a traditional setting.

The World is not Engaging with Technology Less

People around the country and around the world are not engaging with technology less, they’re engaging with technology more. Content and information is increasingly being delivered to people over a screen. In fact on a recent trip to the Philippines, even in a poorer area, people had their smart phones. It’s time for churches to stop debating it and watching the world pass them by and start leveraging it.

I Never Saw Jesus Preach the Sermon on the Mount

Whenever this conversation comes up I routinely remind people that I never saw Jesus preach the best sermon in history (commonly referred to as the sermon on the mount) but it’s changed my life. It was written down for us to read because video technology didn’t exist yet. My hunch is if Steve Jobs was a contemporary to Jesus then someone would have pulled out their iPhone and stuck that sermon on YouTube so we could all see and hear it for ourselves.

Video Teaching Creates Greater Cultural Consistency between Campuses

I firmly believe that nothing else in your church has the power to build the unique culture of your church than preaching does. Video teaching provides churches the opportunity to allow teaching to be consistent across campuses and venues, and as a result keep culture more consistent. This is why the church pictured above has video teaching even in their “traditional service.” They wanted the people who attend the traditional service to feel like they were a part of the church not going to another church.

Most People are Against Video Teaching in Principle…until they try it

I’ve found that most “church-people” are against the idea of video teaching until they personally experience it. I say “church-people” on purpose because people who are new to your church have no idea what to expect because they’ve never been to church before. Everything is new to them so I’ve discovered that people who are new to church and Jesus don’t have the same hangups that “church-people” do.  Even in the traditional service pictured above I observed firsthand how people quickly forget that they’re watching video preaching and begin to interact with video by laughing, nodding their heads, raising their hands when asked to by the pastor, and even stand up and walk to a volunteer to say yes to following Jesus. All through video teaching.


Posted in Leadership

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How Can You Measure Church Health? This Report Can Help!

At The Unstuck Group, we work with hundreds of churches each year. We observe a lot of different types of leaders, teams, structures and methods. However, many of these leaders have something in common—something we find concerning.

Few church leaders track any metrics or data to inform their view of the church’s health. Because we find this so critical to church growth and health, we recently decided to start sharing some of the data we collect to give church leaders a snapshot of up-to-date church health trends.

Last quarter, we launched our first edition of The Unstuck Church Report: Benchmarks & Trends in U.S. Churches. From attendance to leadership to giving, this report gives church leaders insight into the key metrics of church health, including Ministry ReachStaffing and LeadershipConnection, and Finances.

The Q1 2018 edition is available today. This 4-page PDF reviews 20 updated metrics in key areas of church health, along with my observations on the numbers.

Download your copy today. It’s free!

Here’s a sample of some of the metrics you’ll find:

The average attendance of churches has increased by 3.3% over the last year

This demonstrates that in our post-Christian culture churches are still experiencing growth even as people attend church less frequently.

Student ministry attendance is declining

Currently the average student ministry is 8% of the overall attendance. This includes all students in sixth through twelfth grades. This percentage is down from 9.5% in previous reporting.

Staffing continues to climb.

The average church employs one full-time equivalent staff person for every 65 people in attendance. In previous reporting, churches employed one staff person for every 77 people in attendance.

Click to download the most up-to-date edition and opt-in to get each quarterly update for free.


Posted in Leadership

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How to Say No to Ministry Opportunities and Why You Should

As the ministry you’re a part of grows, you’re going to have more opportunities available to you. Good opportunities. Some of them great opportunities. But just because you’re given some great opportunities doesn’t mean they’re the right opportunities.

One of the more difficult things you’ll ever do as a leader of a growing church or organization is to learn to say no to good opportunities.

Does it get you Closer to the Vision?

The clearer your vision the easier it is to say yes…or no, to new opportunities. The first question you need to ask yourself when presented with a new opportunity is, “Does this get us closer to the vision that God has given us?”

Is it an Upgrade?

It’s not enough for it to simply be better. The real question is if you say yes to this opportunity will ti be significantly better? Is it a serious upgrade? Will everything get better if you say yes to this opportunity? Is the return much greater than the investment?

Does it Create Competition?

Would saying yes to this new opportunity create competition? Would you be creating competing systems that cannibalize resources and actually become a limiting factor to future success? If you say yes to this new opportunity what are you saying “no” to?

Does it Overextend You?

By saying yes to this opportunity will you overextend yourself? Will you overextend your HR capacity, facilities, volunteer teams, financial margin, or systems and structures? Are you willing to live with yourself if it all goes wrong? Is it worth it?

Is it Worth it?

As church leaders our job isn’t to keep shareholders happy or keep a strong bottom line. The ROI (return on investment) we’re tasked with is “life change.” Will more lives be changed through the Gospel if you say yes to this opportunity?


Posted in Leadership

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How to Break a (Big) Church Growth Barrier

 

One of the most obvious signs of stuckness in churches is declining or plateauing attendance. All churches hit growth barriers—even the large ones. The question is not if growth stalls, but how to respond when it does. The good news? You aren’t alone.

On Thursday March 1 at 1 p.m. EST, we will be hosting a webinar called “Breaking Barriers: Reach 2,000 & Beyond.” Tony Morgan, Amy Anderson (Director of Consulting at The Unstuck Group), Chad Moore (lead pastor of Sun Valley Community Church) and Matthew Cork (lead pastor of Friends Church) are digging into four reasons large churches hit growth barriers, and how pastors can lead their churches forward.

In this webinar, we’ll dive into topics like:

  •      How to Recognize a Toxic Culture & Turn It Around
  •      Overcoming a Leadership Void in Your Staff and Volunteer Teams
  •      Multisite Model Missteps & How They Set You Back
  •      Complexity Creep & Why It’s Undermining Your Vision

We invite you to join us to discuss the unique challenges of leading a large church—and how to get unstuck in the process.

Follow this link to REGISTER NOW and join in on the conversation


Posted in Leadership

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4 Ways Churches Misspend Money

Churches get funny when it comes to money. Generally, churches have a hard time talking about money publicly and few have a clear generosity strategy. When it comes to financial planning and actually spending money in a way that gets them to the vision God’s called them to, the majority of churches I’ve interacted with are all thumbs.

Here are 4 ways I’ve seen churches misspend money and a couple of ideas to hopefully challenge your thinking.

Budget on Hope

I’ve interacted with too many churches that build their budget based on hope. Instead of budgeting based on the previous year’s actual financial performance, they forecast future financial growth on their gut or their version of “faith.” Churches that budget this way often experience little financial margin, budget freezes, hiring freezes, and even layoffs. If this is your church, I’d challenge you to take a wiser approach to money and keep in mind that Proverbs is in the Bible too.

No Cash Reserves

Some churches live hand to mouth financially. There are a lot of reasons this happens. The real danger in living hand to mouth financially and having little cash reserves on hand is that churches unknowingly put themselves in a position that doesn’t allow them to follow Jesus. By not carrying 6-8 weeks of cash reserves on hand not only are you unnecessarily exposing your church to financial risk in lean moments, but you are also not positioning yourself to say yes to opportunity that Jesus may bring your way.

Too Much Cash Reserves

You may have just read that and thought to yourself, “This guy is crazy, I’m never reading this blog again!” How could a church possibly have too much cash in the bank? When churches choose financial security over taking risks and following Jesus…It may be time to take some of that money out of the bank and fuel somethings that could reach some new people for Jesus.

Build the Budget Based on the Past

I’ve found that many churches keep the same basic financial line items year over year with little change throughout the years. Carrying those line items forward consistently and allocating based on the past instead of aligning money to new vision can be dangerous. Great budgeting starts with vision clarity. Once you have clarity about where you’re going building a calendar that reflects your strategy about how you’re going to get there is next. Once that’s complete, budgeting becomes fairly easy because money is just the fuel that funds the strategy that gets you to your vision.


Posted in Leadership