Tag Archive - growth

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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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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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6 Signs that You’re Leading a Healthy Church

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

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.

1. Baptisms

The Church isn’t a building that you come to, it’s a movement you chose to be a part of. The whole point of this thing called the Church is to join God in His mission to reach everyone on the planet with the Good News of Jesus. Healthy churches aren’t simply growing churches, they help new people meet Jesus and follow Him. The lead indicator of that is post-conversion baptism.

2. Divorce Rate

Is the divorce rate of the people in your church lower than that of the community your church is located in? Jesus said His people would be known by the quality of their relationships (love for one another). This is a simple and tangible way to get to the everyday effectiveness of your church.

3. Financial Strength

This is not just a question about the amount of money you have in savings, although I’m a big fan of churches having reserves and margin (I think the book of Proverbs is a big fan of that too). An often-overlooked indicator of financial strength in a church is its capacity to respond to opportunities that Jesus provides. Essentially healthy churches put themselves in a financial position to say yes to Jesus when He asks them to do something. The Scriptures clearly connect financial generosity to spiritual maturity.

4. Span of Care

It’s well documented that the best C-suite Executives of Fortune 500 Companies (i.e. some of the best leaders on the planet) manage around 7 direct reports. What’s the span of care at your church? If your staff team is directly managing more volunteers than that, you’re probably just filling volunteer spots, not developing people. Your span of care is a lead indicator of how well you’re doing as a church at developing people, not just using people.

5. Staff Restructures

You may have never thought of this before but staff promotions and restructures can be an indicator of a healthy church. Are the staff at your church growing in their roles and responsibility? Growing churches have to restructure their staff team to both respond to and catalyze healthy growth. Staff promotions are an indication of churches investing in, developing, and recognizing the growth of their staff team members. Churches that are plateaued or dying restructure to accommodate layoffs and decline.

6. Numerical Growth

So, I saved this one for last. But I couldn’t leave it off the list. Healthy things grow. But so does cancer, and nobody wants that. Just because it’s growing doesn’t mean it’s healthy, but…if it’s healthy it will grow.

Interested in discovering how healthy your church is? Take the step and engage the Unstuck Group in a comprehensive Ministry Health Assessment of your church!

Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation, Staffing

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10 Articles that will Help your Church Make Vision Real

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Thank you for making April 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!

5 Things that Make Good Staff Members Leave your Church

Good Church Staff Members leave churches for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes it’s because God has called them to something different. But more often than not it’s because of something very different.

7 Things All Growing Churches Have in Common

Once a month at Sun Valley Community Church (the church I have the privilege of serving at) we gather all of our staff from all of our campuses to have some fun, celebrate wins, keep everybody on the same page and often times do some leadership development training. Last week Chad Moore, who serves as the Lead Pastor at Sun Valley shared 7 Things that All Growing Churches have in Common…I thought these may be helpful to you in your local church context…

5 Proficiencies of Great Church Staff Teams

Great Church Staff Teams are full of team members who not only care deeply about people and are passionate about the ministry; they’re actually proficient in what they are doing. I actually believe you can fake passion for a while until your heart catches up. But you can’t fake proficiency. You’re either proficient or you’re not. That being said, I’ve been a part of Church Staff Teams for more than 20 years and the ones I’ve been on that are the best are always proficient in these 5 core areas:

7 Indicators 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.

Why Leading by Example doesn’t Work

Leading by example sounds like the right thing to do, doesn’t it? After all thousands of pages written on leadership, by leadership experts can’t be wrong can they? The problem is you can’t lead by example. Your example may inspire others, it may set behavioral standards for others, your example may even be a prerequisite for authentic leadership, but your example doesn’t actually lead others anywhere. Instead great leaders set the example and then hold the team accountable to the standard. The secret is in the accountability…not the example.

Trying Harder Won’t Fix Your Church

Conventional wisdom tells us that when things get difficult we just need to work harder, work smarter or somehow upgrade the quality of our work. But what do you do when trying harder doesn’t work? It may that it’s time for you to stop doing the same old thing with more effort with more efficiency or more quality. It might be time for you to stop trying harder and try different. It’s time to try something entirely new.

Avoidance: The Silent Killer of a Team

Great teams keep short accounts and normalize feedback, which allow them to make small degrees of change along the way. These behaviors allow great teams to create feedback loops, innovate, and test new solutions quickly. The problem? Most teams aren’t great teams.

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.

The Difference between a Shepherd and a Leader

I love helping churches and leaders get unstuck and make vision real. In fact out of all the stuff I get to do with churches and leaders one of the things I enjoy the most is Leadership Coaching. Recently I had the incredible opportunity to spend a day coaching a group of Pastors and Church Leaders from Australia (unfortunately their cool accent didn’t rub off). One of the topics we spent time digging into was the difference between shepherding and leading in relation to why some churches are stuck while others move forward. Here are couple of thoughts from the conversation.

The Difference between Preparation and Planning

Do great organizations prepare for the future or do they plan for it? The answer is, “yes.” To be clear preparation and planning are not the same thing, and great organizations become great by doing both.

Photo Credit: justin fain via Compfight cc

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