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5 Foundational Leadership Lessons I Learned from my Dad

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Father’s Day always provides a great opportunity to reflect on the kind of Father you had growing up and of course the kind of Father you would like to be yourself. In thinking about my Dad this weekend there were so many lessons that he taught me that came to mind, and fortunately, many things I still have to learn from my Dad. And while every father and man has their deficiencies to be sure, my dad has been an accelerant in my life and leadership by consistently allowing me to stand on his shoulders. Dad, I love you, and I’m so grateful that you’re in my life! So here are a handful of leadership principles that I learned from my Dad.

1. Great Leaders make themselves Available to the Right People

Even though he worked for the Department of Defense with the Joint Chiefs, the Pentagon etc. etc. he wasn’t an absentee father. Dad was always there. Even if it meant getting up at 4:00am to commute into D.C. to get to work early so he could be home in the evenings. He was at the soccer games, the wrestling matches, and we always sat down for a family dinner. Dad proved his love for us with his presence.

2. Great Leaders know that Failure doesn’t have to be Final

When my girlfriend and I made some poor choices in High School instead of blowing up and sacrificing me to Jesus, he took me in his room opened up the Bible and we walked through the story of David and Bathsheba. He spoke hope into me by sharing with me that God still called King David a man after his own heart, and that God wasn’t done with me either.

3. Great Leaders Strategically Target Their Audience

Some of the most memorable moments I have of my father are of fishing trips that we took together. It was there that I learned that a leader needs to learn to read the subtle nuances of the environment he is in, understand his audience, and use the right method, tools, and techniques to get the desired results.

4. Great Leaders Admit Their Mistakes

In the early years of our marriage, like many couples, Lisa and I really struggled and had to face down some pretty hurtful issues in our lives and relationship. In that process we had a conversation with my Mom and Dad where we told them about our struggles and how some of it was rooted in some behaviors I learned growing up in our home. With tears in his eyes he looked at my wife and me and apologized to us both. How many guys ever get that kind of gift from their father?

5. Great Leaders Empower people by Believing in them

My dad isn’t a perfect man, who is? But one thing I have never once questioned about my father is if he believed in me or not. I always knew, and know today that he is proud of me. That kind of belief breaths a safety and security into people that frees them up to risk and attempt great things. It’s amazing to have someone in your corner cheering you on in life.

Posted in Family, Leadership, Testimonial

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It would be Easier if your Church didn’t Grow

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Ministry would be a lot easier if your church didn’t grow. I know that most church leadership books, blogs, and conferences are designed to give you the inspiration, principles, training, and tools to help your church grow; but If you really knew the truth about how hard it is to actually grow a church, you probably wouldn’t want to do it. Just think about how much easier it would be if your church didn’t grow. There’s all kinds of difficult things you wouldn’t have to do.

Don’t have to Change

You wouldn’t have to have arguments about changing the style of the worship. You wouldn’t have to worry about people being upset that you’re changing the way things have always been done because you would just keep doing things the way they’ve always been done.

Don’t have to Give up Control

Things could be done exactly the way you want them to because you’d be doing them. It would be nice, and neat, and tidy. No mess. You wouldn’t have to worry about staff members or volunteers challenging your ideas as the pastor because everyone would be executing your ideas they way you want them done.

Don’t have to Ask People for Money

You wouldn’t have to deal with the pressure of talking to people about money. Just think, no building or expansion programs or worries about expanding budgets! People would be happy at your church because you’d never talk about money, they wouldn’t have to be generous and they could live totally self-absorbed lives.

Don’t have to Restructure

You’d never have to fire a staff member. You’d never have to deal with the pressure of potentially making the wrong hire. You’d never have to restructure and reposition a staff member who used to lead close to you but now the growth of the church has outgrown their capacity.

Don’t have to Disappoint People

By not doing any of the previous four items on this list you could actually keep everyone happy. You’d never have to disappoint anyone in your church ever again. And best of all, everyone would like you.

You don’t have to do any of these things if you don’t want your church to grow. But then again you don’t have to obey Jesus either I suppose.

Posted in Leadership

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[Webinar Replay] The Unstuck Church – Why Churches Grow, Thrive, Decline & Die

Sunday, June 11, 2017

Recently, The Unstuck Team had a conversation about something we are really passionate about: The Unstuck Church. Every church has the potential to go through a very similar life cycle. Over time, most start, grow, thrive, decline, and eventually end. Through this webinar, we unpacked the stages of the church life cycle and answered questions like:

  • Do all churches hit all phases?
  • Where do growing churches typically get stuck moving toward sustained health?
  • What does sustained health look like?
  • What are the early warning signs a church has entered the maintenance season and started to decline?

If you missed out on our conversation about The Unstuck Church, you can check it out here:

Looking for resources to learn more?

Take our free Unstuck Church Assessment. You can take it individually or invite your team members to participate. This online tool is designed to help you best determine where your church sits today in its life cycle and your next steps.

Order The Unstuck Church. As we mentioned on the webinar, Tony Morgan’s new book, The Unstuck Church: Equipping Churches to Experience Sustained Health, goes in-depth on all seven stages of the typical life cycle of a church.

Posted in Leadership

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10 Articles that will Help your Church Make Vision Real

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Thank you for making May another great month here at Helping Churches Make Vision Real! It’s fun to stay connected with you through social media and hearing that these articles have been helpful. So, thank you for connecting with me through the content on this blog! You made these the top posts from this last month. If you missed out on any of them, here they are all in one place for your convenience!

By the way…if you look closely you’ll notice that 3 out of the 10 most popular posts this month have to do with volunteering…hopefully churches are catching onto the fact that volunteering is their “leadership development program” at their church.

What Volunteers Want from your Church

If you’ve ever read anything I’ve written on developing effective volunteer teams at your church then you’ve probably heard me say that I’ve never met a church leader who said that they had enough volunteers. In fact, the opposite is typically true. Having too few volunteers is one of the most frequent complaints and pressure points I hear from church leaders. Most of the time it’s not due to a lack of effort or trying. It’s usually due to taking the wrong approach with volunteerism in the church.

2 Big Leadership Questions you Probably Aren’t Asking

…I was once asked to work for the Under Secretary of The Navy for Research and Development for a few months in order to help with the work load. While there I worked for the Deputy Under Secretary, Rear Admiral Dave Oliver. My first assignment was to give a briefing about our lab facilities on the west coast to the new Under Secretary who was a new appointee under the Clinton Administration…

6 Signs that you’re Leading a Healthy Church

Jesus is into results. I know I’m going to lose a lot of readers at those 4 little words. But I really believe it’s true. Read the scriptures and Jesus actually has a plan that He’s working to make everything new and fix what we broke. Both Jesus and the Apostle Paul talk about it in terms of producing “fruit.” That’s the Biblical language ascribed to producing results. Healthy churches produce results and you can know if your church is healthy by the results it’s producing. And while I’d quickly admit that none of the items on this list guarantee a healthy church, you probably can’t lead a healthy church without these things.

Why Your Church is Thinking about Volunteers the Wrong Way

  • Most churches think they need more volunteers to accomplish the ministry…they don’t.
  • Most churches think they need more talented and experienced volunteers to accomplish the ministry…they don’t.
  • Most churches think they need volunteers to do the tasks of the ministry so the church staff can lead the ministry…they don’t.

10 Keys to Managing Change in a Church

Leading through change can be difficult. Leading a church through change can be near impossible. Churches in particular have a tendency to resist change because they get trapped by the comfort of past success, practices and traditions. It takes an incredible amount of wisdom, the art of timing, and plain old courage and grit. Recently I had a conversation with a church staff team that is courageously leading their church through change. Here are a couple of things that came out of the conversation.

3 Pressure Points Millennial Church Leaders are Facing

I recently had the opportunity to spend some significant time with 10 talented young millennial church leaders and had a blast! If these leaders are any indication of what the future leaders of the church look like then rest assured, the church is in great hands. That being said there were a couple of pressure points that came up over and over again in the conversations from different angles.

8 Reasons Why People Don’t Volunteer at your Church

I’ve never worked with a church that has said they don’t need more volunteers. But I’ve worked with a bunch of churches that have trouble getting people to volunteer and stay engaged volunteering.

What Growing Churches do Differently

It’s not faith, it’s not luck, and it’s not some leadership secret. Growing churches are actually doing something differently than the other 80% of churches in America that are stuck or declining. At the Unstuck Group we work with 100’s of churches every year and we’ve discovered that growing churches are actually doing some very tangible things differently than other churches. Below are just a few of them.

4 Reasons Why Multisite Costs More Than Church Planting

It would be easy to think that a multisite church is more cost-efficient than church planting. However, there’s more to consider than meets the eye. For the past 6 years I’ve had the opportunity to serve at Sun Valley Community Church in Arizona and see the church grow from one site to five during that time. As we’ve gotten those campuses launched and running, one of the things that I’ve learned is that multisite is usually the more costly option of the two.

7 Indicators that you’ve Found the Ideal Ministry Spouse

In ministry your spouse can make you or break you. It may be cliché but it’s true, behind every great Ministry Staff Member is a great ministry spouse…and you can’t have one without the other. So whether you’re already married or you’re still searching for the right person, here are a couple traits you should be looking for in the ideal ministry spouse.

Photo Credit: justin fain via Compfight cc

Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation, Volunteers

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The Unstuck Church: An Interview with Tony Morgan

Sunday, June 4, 2017

UnstuckBookInterview from Paul Alexander on Vimeo.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Tony Morgan, the Founder and Lead Strategist at the Unstuck Group, to talk about his new book The Unstuck Church.

In the conversation we discussed:

  • The 7 Phases of a Church Life-Cycle
  • Do all churches go through all 7 phases?
  • What does it take for a church to reach “Sustained Health?”
  • What are some early warning signs that a church has entered into the “Maintenance Phase” and is getting ready to decline?
  • It it possible for a church to get stuck in the “Momentum Growth,” or “Strategic Growth,” phases, and what does that look like?
  • Is it possible for a church to recover once its entered the “Preservation,” or “Life Support” phases?

Follow this link to pick up your own copy of The Unstuck Church!

Tony is founder and chief strategic officer of The Unstuck Group, a company that helps churches get unstuck through consulting and coaching experiences designed to focus vision, strategy and action. For 14 years, Tony served on the senior leadership teams at West Ridge Church in Dallas, Georgia, NewSpring Church in South Carolina, and Granger Community Church in Indiana. He’s written several books, as well as articles that have been featured with the Willow Creek Association, Catalyst and Pastors.com. He writes about leadership regularly at tonymorganlive.com. His next book, The Unstuck Church: Equipping Churches to Experience Sustained Health, from Thomas Nelson is now available.

Posted in Leadership
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