5 Articles that will Help your Church Make Vision Real

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Thank you for making November one of the highest trafficked months of the year here at Helping Churches Make Vision Real! It’s great staying connected with you through social media and hearing about how helpful different articles have been. 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 6 Things I Bet You Don’t Know about your Pastors’ Wife

One of the least thought about people in the church today is a Pastor’s wife. While leaders get all the attention and accolades their families and private lives are thought of very little by the public. In fact in a moment in church history where we are inundated with volumes of leadership ideas and training very little is written about pastor’s wives. I recently sat down with Lisa, my wife, and asked her about her experience being married to a full-time pastor for the past 18+ years. Here is some of what she had to say…

#2 A Leadership Conversation with an Executive Pastor at a Church of 20,000+

One of the most incredible and successful churches in America is one you’ve probably never heard of. Like many churches Christ’s Church of the Valley started in the living room of the founding pastor, in this case Don Wilson. Now over 30 years later CCV has a weekly attendance of more than 20,000 people located across 6 campuses. Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Ashley Wooldridge who serves as the Executive Pastor at CCV and talk leadership and multisite. Here are a few of the highlights from the conversation.

#3 Replenish: Leading from a Health Soul

Lance Witt served 20 years as a senior pastor and five years as the executive pastor at Saddleback Church with Rick Warren. A couple of years ago Lance released his book Replenish: Leading from a Healthy Soul. It’s a great book for church leaders. It’s so good, in fact, that we have our Leadership Coaching Networks at the Unstuck Group read it for the conversation we have about personal health. If you’re in ministry, I strongly encourage you to order this book today, you won’t regret it. Here are a couple of key ideas that stood out to me.

#4 What Makes a Great Campus Pastor a Great Campus Pastor?

Leading in a multisite setting I’m often asked by other church leaders, “What makes a great Campus Pastor a great Campus Pastor?” Often times when a church is thinking about moving to a multisite model the last thing they’re thinking about is who is going to be their next Campus Pastor. They’re stuck on logistics and most just assume they’ll stick an existing up and coming staff member on the next campus and hope for the best. That’s great IF you have the right person on the team already, but this can also be a fatal flaw. Trust me, I know and I’ve lived it. So here are 7 things I’m looking for when I’m looking for a Campus Pastor.

#5 The Best of Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit Pt-1

In the past I’ve regularly taken a large team to the annual Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit, this year was a little different. Thankfully the Global Leadership Summit is available digitally even after the live event! We previewed the talks and selected the best two from this years event to share with our team. The first talk was from Joseph Grenny, Co-Founder, Vital Smarts: Social Scientist for Business Performance and New York Times bestselling author.

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Posted in Leadership

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Replenish: Leading from a Healthy Soul

Sunday, November 23, 2014

Lance Witt served 20 years as a senior pastor and five years as the executive pastor at Saddleback Church with Rick Warren. A couple of years ago Lance released his book Replenish: Leading from a Healthy Soul. It’s a great book for church leaders. It’s so good, in fact, that we have our Leadership Coaching Networks at the Unstuck Group read it for the conversation we have about personal health. If you’re in ministry, I strongly encourage you to order this book today, you won’t regret it. Here are a couple of key ideas that stood out to me.

“We have neglected the fact that a pastor’s greatest leadership tool is a healthy soul.”

#1 Outward Success

Outward success in a church is easy to measure. The number of first time guests, people who say yes to Jesus, baptisms, people in small group bible studies, people volunteering, giving, weekend attendance and so on can (and should be) be measured. When those numbers are up and to the right there is a perception of success. After all who doesn’t want to see all of those metrics I just mentioned growing in their church? These are good things. But while numbers tell a part of the story, they don’t tell the whole story.

#2 Self-Deception

When things are going well it’s easy to believe our press clippings and give ourselves more credit than we actually deserve. We’ve all seen this happen in superstar athletes, high-powered business leaders and yes-even pastors. While there is certainly some credit that should be given due to exceptional performance and results the temptation is to deceive ourselves into believing that we are the cause of the success; that without us, success would not be reached. Be careful of self-deception and pride, the Scriptures say it precedes a fall.

#3 Neglect your Soul

Let’s be honest, it feels good to succeed. It feels good to see progress. It feels good when you hear people telling you what a good sermon you preached or what a good job you’re going leading the church. It feels good. But it’s possible to chase that feeling at the neglect of your own soul. It’s possible to fall more in love with church growth than the church. It’s possible to run to the Scriptures more frequently to find a sermon to preach than to personally spend time with God and hear his voice. It’s possible to neglect your own soul while doing soul work.

#4 Relational Isolation

Relational isolation is a choice. You’re as lonely as you want to be.

In his book Leading on Empty author Wayne Cordiero puts it this way: “Solitude is a chosen separation for refining your soul. Isolation is what you crave when you neglect the first.”

When we experience numerical success in our church, chose to believe our press clippings, pursue more success in ministry at the neglect of our own souls, and get ourselves in a place where we are lonely we have followed a recipe that leads to the downfall of our lives and the ministry that the Lord has entrusted to us.

“Having talked to some whose ministry has come crashing down around them, I can tell you the convergence of outward success, self-deception, soul neglect, and relational isolation creates the perfect storm for disaster”

Posted in Spiritual Formation

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A Leadership Conversation with an Executive Pastor at a church of 20,000+

Sunday, November 2, 2014

One of the most incredible and successful churches in America is one you’ve probably never heard of. Like many churches Christ’s Church of the Valley started in the living room of the founding pastor, in this case Don Wilson. Now over 30 years later CCV has a weekly attendance of more than 20,000 people located across 6 campuses. Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Ashley Wooldridge who serves as the Executive Pastor at CCV and talk leadership and multisite. Here are a few of the highlights from the conversation.

If you want to be a church of 10 campuses, then start thinking like a church with 10 campuses now…
- What would have to change? Begin changing it now!
- What best practices are working right now? Go replicate it!
How consistent do you want all of your campuses to be? Have a “Consistency Continuum Conversation” with your Sr. Leadership Team about ministries and practices. On a scale of 1-10 (1 = variation) (10 = consistent)
- You can start as a 10 and move towards a 1. But you can’t start as a 1 and move towards a 10.
- You can give someone rope, but pulling on the rope is painful
The big difference between a Central Services Team and a Campus Team
- Central Services Team: Content, Consistency, Communication
- Campus Team: Execution
Breaking through Organizational Structural Lids:
- This is primarily about control. High control leads to structural lids
- It shows up in the pace of decision making…you know you’ve got a problem when decision making gets bogged down or when low level decisions get pushed to a high level in the organization
- A high level of delegation needs to take place
- Your organizational IQ goes down the higher you go
Sanctioned Incompetence:
- If someone on the team is incompetent and everyone knows it and you don’t do anything about it…
- It’s your fault as the leader. You are sanctioning their incompetence.
- You as the leader lose credibility with the team because you refuse to act.
The best and fastest way to improve guest services at your church is have a staff that invite their friends to church. They’ll begin to look at everything through the eyes of their lost friends.

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Posted in Leadership

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What every Executive Assistant wishes their Boss Knew

Monday, October 6, 2014

Fortunately I’ve had the opportunity to work with some incredible Executive Assistants through out the years. I recently asked my current Executive Assistant to do a bit of “market research” for me and have some conversations (a lot of conversations) with other administrative staff and come up with a list of top things they wish their bosses knew. Here’s some of the ideas that came back…

1. Consistency: Consistent weekly meetings are invaluable to me. Often the first and last of the week to touch base on tasks, projects, calendar, and objectives. This helps us effectively communicate and stay on the same page.

2. Trust: Don’t micromanage me. Help me understand the objectives and the playing field and then let me run.

3. Input: Let me have input into decisions that affect me. I see things from a different point of view than you, and you could be missing something.

4. Care: Care about me as a person, not just someone who gets things done for you. Ask me about my kids and my family and remember special days like my birthday and anniversary.

5. Clarity: Allow me to ask for clarity. When you give me a list of tasks to get accomplished on Tuesday and you already gave me a task list on Monday, allow me the freedom to push back and get clarity on what’s most important now, what can wait until next week, and what can wait until next month.

6. Boundaries: I’m your Administrative Assistant not your Personal Assistant. I’m not all that interested in picking up your laundry, scheduling hair appointments and the like.

7. Calendaring: If you want me to keep your schedule, then let me keep your schedule. 2 people trying to manage the same calendar just creates confusion and overlap. Help me know what kind of work routine and rhythm works best for your week, month, and year.

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Posted in Leadership, Staffing

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9 Big Decisions that will Change your Church

Sunday, July 27, 2014

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to sit down with a group of Executive Pastors who are serving in churches of 5,000+ and during the conversation I heard them talk about some of the best decisions they’ve made over the recent history of their churches that have made the greatest impact. I thought I’d share some of those thoughts here with you and give you the opportunity to learn from some incredible leaders that are in the trenches! Could it be that one of these decisions is the one that will make all the difference this year at your church?

1. Define our Staff Culture

Many churches have cultural values but haven’t taken the time to define what they’re looking for in a leadership or staff culture. While you can spend a lot of time and energy on this, a simple place to start is to simply make a list of your top 10 employees (regardless of role or seniority) and why they’re your top-10. That’s the culture you’re looking for. This is a great exercise to do as a Senior Leadership Team.

2. Bust up Ministry Silos

Many churches are more like a collection of different ministries operating under one roof competing for building space, staffing, volunteers, and budget resources than they are a singularly focused team aligned to take on a God-sized vision. Trying to cut through the ministry silos at your church? This blog series from my friend and teammate at the Unstuck Group, Tony Morgan, will help.

3. Participate in the “Best Christian Workplace” Survey

The Best Christian Workplaces Institute started with a question: “What makes an exceptional place to work?” Mentioned by Bill Hybles at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit, this survey will help you diagnose and improve the organizational health of your church.

4. Hire someone to Focus on Stewardship

Hire someone to put full-time attention on finances. Not a CFO but rather someone to develop revenue. Put them in charge of developing and implementing a holistic generosity strategy at your church. Chances are they’ll pay for themselves in the first 6 months – or less.

5. Move to a Teaching Team Model

Instead of relying on just one communicator develop a teaching team. This doesn’t mean using the weekend service to develop a young communicator or experiment on your people. There are plenty of other venues in the church to do that. When done well this allows your church to hear multiple voices, personalities, and approaches to the scriptures. When working together properly they strengthen the weekly message and one guy doesn’t have to shoulder the grind of hitting a home run every week!

6. Lean into the Lead Pastor

The Lead Pastor sets the culture, plain and simple. So as a Sr. Leadership Team take the time to figure out what makes the Lead Pastor tick. What’s most important to them, what’s least important to them? What’s their approach and style? Lean into that and build on it organizationally.

7. Expand the Sr. Leadership Team

Centralizing everything through one person slows things down. While someone has to lead the Sr. Leadership Team, a team needs to be built because you can’t know everything or make every decision – or you become the lid. But then again staffing models are only as good as the people that are on the team, the personalities that are at the top, and the culture of the church. Healthy churches hold onto their organizational structure loosely – because they’re growing and they know it’s going to require flexibility.

8. Develop a Residency Program

Great churches develop leaders. Intentionally charting out a clear path to develop future leaders including a volunteer leadership pipeline, an internship program, or residency. One church built a 2 year residency for degreed pastors in training to get the practical experience they need to lead a church. Not only do they send out equipped pastors but they get the opportunity to hire people who understand their culture because they’ve been in it for 2 years!

9. Hire a Consulting Firm

Having the fresh perspective of outside professionals who know what it means to lead in the trenches of the local church and bring years of experience of working with forward moving churches to the table is one of the best decisions a Sr. Leadership Team can make. I’m not biased or anything but I know a great Consulting Group that I’d recommend. Check out the Unstuck Group!

What’s the best decision you’ve made at your church this last year that’s made the greatest impact? What decision do you need to make this year that will make the greatest impact in the future? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Leave a comment!

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Posted in Leadership