Tag Archive - failure

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Top Posts of 2019 #10: “Avoiding My Multisite Mistakes”

Wednesday, December 25, 2019

As we close out 2019 I’m counting down the top 10 posts from this year. These are the posts that were clicked the most, commented on the most and shared the most. The “winning themes” this year tackled church growth, multisite, team culture and of course church leadership. Thank you for engaging with me through this content, it’s always fun to hear how these posts have been encouraging, challenging and helpful to others! I’m looking forward to another great year in 2020!

For the past seven years I’ve been serving as an Executive Pastor in a large multisite church in the Phoenix metro area…before that it was a single site megachurch in the Phoenix metro area…but adopting a multisite strategy changed everything. If you’d have asked me back in High School when I was called into ministry if I ever wanted to be an Executive Pastor at a Mega-Multisite church I probably would have replied, “What’s an Executive Pastor and what does Multisite mean?”

Recently I’ve been hearing stories of churches that went multisite somewhere along the way as a strategy to reach more people and deliver growth to a new community that are now releasing those campuses to be their own independent churches, shutting campuses down, or abandoning their multisite approach altogether.

I’m a firm believer in multisite as a strong and successful strategy to deliver growth into new communities for the right churches. I believe in it so strongly because I’ve seen so many people get to meet, know and follow Jesus that otherwise would not have been reached. But not every church is ready to go multisite.

The statistic still holds true that only 15% of multisite churches ever get past 3 campuses. It doesn’t have to be that way for you and your church. Here’s a few mistakes that I’ve made along the way that I hope you can learn from.

The Campus Pastor

Unfortunately, every time we’ve hired a Campus Pastor from the outside it hasn’t worked, every time. However, every time we’ve promoted someone from the inside, even if they’d only been on the team for a year, it’s been a win. One of the worst mistakes I made was hiring in a Campus Pastor from the outside and putting him on a campus that was the furthest away with the least visibility to coaching and the Central Team. He wasn’t a bad guy by any stretch of the imagination, we just didn’t put him in a situation to succeed.

Location, Location, Location!

We’ve started one campus in a set up and tear down situation. It met in the biggest, newest high school in the community. The room they met in had a pitched floor, theatre seating and a great stage. It was nicer than most churches! The problem was it was in the wrong location, it was buried in a neighborhood. As soon as we relocated that campus to their own facility on a major road with the right volume of drive by traffic, parking and accessibility it grew by nearly 50%.

Give Rope Don’t Take It

Multisite provides the opportunity to come up with all kinds of new solutions. Those new solutions 9 times out of 10 don’t come from central team that serves all of the campuses, they come from the campuses, because they’re the ones closest to the people. The trouble is when every campus is coming up with their own solutions it can make for not only complexity but straight up conflict between campuses and the central team. I’m all for innovation, but we’ve learned that there’s no innovation without first communication…and we’ve learned it’s much easier to give a little rope along the way and margin to contextualize and innovate than have to corral the horses and take that rope back once it’s already out there.

It Cost More Than You Think

Going multisite forced us to change our entire financial approach. We had church planted for years, and honestly church planting was a pretty low financial investment compared to starting a new campus. When you plant a church, you may send out a leader or two, you may send some families to go with them, you financially invest in it for a season and you may provide coaching for a while. But then once it’s birthed it’s pretty much on its own. When you launch a multisite campus you’re on the financial hook for the whole thing. If finances get tight you have to figure it out. You can count on multisite costing more than you think.

Need some help with the multisite journey at your church? The Unstuck Group has a unique process designed specifically for multisite churches. Follow this link to learn more!

Posted in Leadership

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5 Ways Successful Church Leaders Think Differently

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Successful church leaders naturally think differently than the majority of church leaders. It’s one of the things that set them apart. The good news is you can learn to think just like them.

#1 They think about who they’re trying to Reach instead of who they’re trying to Keep

Another way to say this, is that they’re consumed with the mission that Jesus gave the church. To reach the nations. They make decisions based on who they are trying to reach not who they’re trying to keep.

#2 They think about Solutions instead of Problems

They don’t focus on problems and everything that could or does go wrong. Instead they focus on solutions and figuring things out. You could even say they’re optimistic in their thinking (either by nature or by choice).

#3 They’re Strategic Thinkers

They’re not just satisfied with having a clear picture of the future (vision), they want to act on it and build a roadmap to get there (strategy). They plan their work and work their plan. Which consequently their preparation allows them to be flexible when new opportunity arrives, or they meet unforeseen roadblocks.

#4 They Involve the Team

They’re not obsessed with coming up with the best idea. They’d rather be able to execute the best idea than get credit for it. They know the team out performs the individual, so they involve their team in great thinking.

#5 They Don’t Dwell on Failure

It’s not that they completely ignore failure, they don’t. They learn from failure. It’s just they don’t dwell on it. They pivot away from what didn’t work and move on quickly to the next thing.

Posted in Leadership

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Is your Church Designed to get Stuck?

Monday, January 29, 2018

Your church is perfectly designed to get the results you’re currently getting. You’ve probably heard that said before. That means if your church is stuck it’s probably because it’s been designed to be stuck. Now I know you didn’t do that on purpose, I know you want to reach as many people with the Gospel as you possibly can. But churches get stuck because they’re designed, by intention or neglect, to be stuck.

All kinds of churches are designed to be stuck. It happens when they execute a plan that leads them to become stuck. You could say that they purposely do it on accident. They’ve planned their work and successfully worked their plan, it just hasn’t resulted in success that they thought it would, instead it results in being stuck. There are a lot of ways churches are successfully designed to get stuck…here are a few:

#1 Over-Controlling

Okay, so that’s not really a word. I just couldn’t think of another way to say it. But it doesn’t matter, it’s true. Sometimes the reason a church is stuck is because they are led by a controlling leader. Every decision must go through them, they always have the best ideas, and it always has to be their way. That always leads to things slowing down and getting stuck.

#2 Over-Structuring

When structure begins to out pace growth, churches end up getting stuck. You may end up with a great, efficient, and stable structure but your church will only grow to the capacity of the structure you’ve created. Great structure is designed to chase growth not the other way around.

#3 Over-Staffing

When churches hire staff to do ministry instead of develop people and lead teams (you know the whole equip the saints to do the work of the ministry thing that the Apostle Paul talks about in his letter to the Ephesians) it leads to churches getting stuck.

#4 Over-Extending

Some churches are very eager to take ground, so much so that they actually over-extend themselves. It’s ironic that in their intention to take new Kingdom ground that they actually can lead themselves to becoming stuck. You see sometimes they stretch themselves too thin through taking on too much debt, running too many ministry programs, or hiring too many people that they actually prevent themselves from moving forward.

#5 Over-Educating

When churches confuse discipleship with education they get stuck. They may successfully educate people about the bible but that just leads to greater biblical knowledge, not action. If information changed people’s lives, then no one would ever smoke and the cigarette industry would go bankrupt.

Have you inadvertently designed your church to get stuck? Need a little help changing things up and getting unstuck? Contact the Unstuck Group. We’ve been helping hundreds of churches get unstuck for the last couple of years. We could help your church too.

Posted in Leadership

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How Success can be your Worst Enemy

Sunday, December 10, 2017

When faced with the choice between failure and success I’d take success every time. You would too. It’s way more fun to win than to lose. But what if I told you that your past and current success may be the very thing holding you back from future success?

Success Tempts us to Settle

Success tempts us to settle instead of spread. We cling to the success that we have achieved with both hands and fail to grasp new opportunities.

Success makes you Conservative

The greatest enemy of your future success is your current success. Current success turns into past success and the past has a nostalgia that the future never will.

Success can Hide Motive

It’s easy to hide our motivation and heart in the apparent external success of the churches we’re building. I’m not saying every church leader has poor motives, far from it! But it’s easy to ignore motive when you’re experiencing success.

Success Creates an Avoidance of Risk

Success can keep us from taking risk. It’s easy to trust God and take big risk when you don’t have much to trust to God. But when you’ve found success and there is perceivably more on the line it’s not as easy.

Success brings Resources

Too many resources can be an innovation killer. A lack of resources teaches resourcefulness and tenacity. God can guide by what He withholds just as easily as by what He gives.

Success keeps you from Innovation

If you haven’t failed in a while, you’re probably playing it too safe and too small.

Is there Success without Succession?

Is what started with you going to end with you? You’ve got to move from “it can’t happen without you,” to “it happens with you,” to “it grows without you.”

Posted in Leadership

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Overcoming Leadership Lids of Competency and Character

Sunday, January 22, 2017

If you lead long enough, eventually you’re going to hit a leadership lid. It happens when you reach your capacity in a particular area. But what you do next has the potential to make or break your leadership future. Ignore it, deny it, make excuses about it, or refuse to acknowledge and deal with it and you’ll undermine your impact. Face reality and you’ll create a window of opportunity to grow and break through your leadership lid.

Two common leadership lids that leaders run into are the lids of competency and character. To be an effective leader it takes both and if you’re in a growing church or organization at some point you will be seriously challenged by both of these lids. 

Your Competency has the Potential to outpace your Character

  • If you’re highly competent, at some point your competency will lead you to a place where your character is tested. You’ll be tempted to take a short cut or lead out of a skill set instead out of who you are. If you are a church leader, you’ll be tempted to rely on your experience and your gifts instead of the One who gave you those gifts.
  • No amount of competency can compensate for a fatal flaw in character.
  • Competency may get you somewhere, but character will keep you there.
  • This always leads to a spiritually empty, powerless leader who ends up compromising and failing to accomplish what Jesus could have done through them.
  • People will only follow you because of who you are for so long. At some point you have to deliver, you have to lead them somewhere.

When your Character is Challenged

  • Pretending you know something you don’t or you can do something you can’t is a character issue. Pretending is rooted in pride, and God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.
  • Your character can be measured by the degree to which your public life (the you everyone sees), personal life (the you only those closest to you see), and private life (the you only you see) align. That’s the real authentic you. The more you can align your public, personal and private life the more authentic leader you will be and the more character you’ll lead with.

Character is no Substitute for Competency

  • People aren’t going to follow you just because you’re a good moral person; and just because you’re a high character person doesn’t mean you’re a leader. They may respect you as a person but they won’t follow you. Those are two different things.
  • You have to actually be really good at what you do. You’ve got to have the ability to, get stuff done, produce results and get people from where they are to where God wants them to be.
  • People didn’t follow Jesus simply because He’s a high character guy, they followed Him because He’s a brilliant leader. He started the greatest movement in history. He was and is leading people somewhere.
  • People will only follow you because you’re good at what you do for so long, if they discover you’re not a person worth following, they’ll bail.

When your Competency is Challenged

  • Don’t be afraid to get the brutal facts and define reality.
  • Listen to new voices outside of your tribe.
  • Get coaching by those ahead of you.
  • Learn new methods, don’t just try harder.
Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation, Staffing
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