Tag Archive - growth

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It’s Time for the Church to take a Different Approach to Leadership Development

Sunday, August 12, 2018

There are three prevailing thoughts about leadership development that I’ve been noticing in churches across the country.

First, churches are complaining that their leadership bench has become pretty thin. If God gave them a new opportunity they’re not sure they’ve got the leadership depth to say yes. I get this, I’ve also observed that the leadership bench in the American Church is becoming pretty thin. It really concerns me.

Second, churches are scouring the landscape for an off-the-shelf solution like a class or some curriculum that they can use to magically build a deeper leadership bench at their church. This one is frustrating for me. Yes, there are leadership principles that can be learned and content that can support leadership development but, when are churches going to wake up and learn that leadership development doesn’t happen in a classroom?

Finally, I’m seeing more and more churches hire young, inexperienced, and untrained staff members who attend and love their church but have no bible training or ministry experience. Then they basically throw them to the wolves and hope they’re going to somehow magically work out.

I think it’s time for churches to take a different approach to leadership development.

Optimism

You can’t play a good game with a bad attitude. It’s a true statement when I encourage my 10-year-old son with those words before a practice or game and it’s a true statement in church leadership. Your attitude is a small thing that makes a big difference and when it comes to leadership development in the church it can be the difference between you developing a deep bench or starving your church of good leadership. You’ll always find what you’re looking for and if you’re looking for deficiencies you’ll find them. A critical spirit is a guaranteed way to discourage and put a lid on growth in others. Leadership development is optimistic by its very nature, because you’re helping someone become something that they’ve never been before, and while blind belief won’t make them become a leader they’ll never become a leader if you don’t believe they will.

Encouragement

You’ve probably read about social experiments that have been done to test the correlation between expectations and performance. In one such study teachers were told that a group of students they had in their classroom had tested incredibly high at the beginning of the year. However, these teachers were duped. These students weren’t gifted, but the fact that the teachers believed they were influenced the way the teachers viewed and behaved towards the group of students. When tested at the end of the year the students that the teachers believed were gifted actually outperformed the rest of the class. Sometimes people behave the way you treat them. If you want to build leaders, then start treating them like leaders. Encourage them through your words, actions, attitude, and approach to become what they’re not.

Opportunity

The thing about leadership is you can’t learn it in a classroom. Leadership development is an immersive, hands on learning experience. To get better at it you’ve got to get reps. The first ministry leadership opportunity I ever had scared me to death. As a freshman in college my pastor asked me to teach a Jr. High Sunday School Class. He saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself and took a risk on a young guy. It paid off, and the next opportunity came along, and the next. That’s leadership development. You throw a young promising leader in the deep end of the pool and see if they can swim. If they don’t make it, you jump in, make sure they don’t drown, coach them up and give them another shot. If they do make it, you coach them up and throw them into a bigger pool.

Coaching

So, what do you do after you give a young promising leader an opportunity to have some responsibility? You coach them up. Coaching involves turning on the game tape and reviewing how things went. Great coaches reinforce what went well and redirect what didn’t. They start with reinforcement because they know that’s how consistent culture is built. What gets noticed and celebrated gets repeated. Then when it comes to parts of the project that didn’t go as well good coaches assume the best intent and redirect what went wrong.

Posted in Leadership

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Stop Starting New Stuff at your Church

Sunday, June 24, 2018

Some churches and church leaders I’ve met are addicted to new. I get it, I like new stuff too. In fact, I can get bored quick when it comes to maintenance and routine. Like a lot of church leaders, I need fresh new challenges routinely.

New can be fun, it can be catalytic to momentum and it can attract and involve new people. New can be great! But pacing with new stuff matters…like, a lot.

Starting a new multisite campus, launching a new worship service time, beginning a new ministry approach, or hiring a new staff member may be the next right thing for your church, but then again it may be the worst thing you could do.

Don’t Reach to Grow…Reach because you’re Growing

Overreaching and overextending yourself past your capacity to keep up with your reach will lead to decline and death not growth and life. When beginning something new be sure to be sober minded about overreaching past your financial, staff, volunteer, facility or a number of other limiting factors.

The Best Reason to do something New is because you Have To

If you don’t’ get anything else from this post…make sure you write that thought down and give it some serious thought. The best reason to start a new worship service is because you are growing, and you need to create more space. The best reason to hire more staff is because you have to in order to keep up with growth. The best reason to start a new multisite campus is to respond to demand and reach that community.

Everything you Start you have to Sustain

While starting new stuff may be fun, keeping that new stuff going can be a drag. Remember everything new that you start you need to keep in motion. It’s going to take time, money, volunteers, and other resources that will have to be diverted from other things you already have going on.

Starting New Stuff won’t cover up a Fatal Flaw for long

Churches are notorious for starting a myriad of new things when the momentum of the church begins to wane. It’s a desperate attempt to prop things up and keep things moving in the right direction and growing. While that may mask a loss of momentum for a little while it won’t address the fatal flaws of why things are slowing down. In fact it will make things worse because it will cause you to overextend yourself instead of deal with root issues.

Posted in Leadership

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Leading an Unstuck Church Online Course

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

The last few years at the Unstuck Group we’ve served 100’s of churches and over that time we’ve been tracking the “Core Issues” that emerge during strategic planning—the things teams identify as the reasons they felt stuck.

There were 12 common challenges that kept coming up over and over again—things like finding the best ways to close the “back door,”  building a plan to develop more leaders, increasing volunteer engagement, staffing for growth, etc.

We started thinking, “We need to create something to equip more church leaders to win in these areas.”

So, we’ve been writing and shooting video and creating an online space for church leaders to learn and process next steps around those core issues together.

We’re calling it the Leading an Unstuck Church Course, and it’s available now!

This new resource, the Leading an Unstuck Church Course, challenges you with lessons, exercises and discussion that will grow your ability to lead an unstuck church. Whether you lead a large church, a small church or somewhere in between, my friend Tony Morgan equips you with biblical wisdom and practical know-how to lead your church towards sustained health.

Through this course you will gain the ability to help your church:

  • Find clarity around mission, vision, values and strategy
  • Discover practical ways to enhance the weekend services
  • Build a plan to develop more leaders
  • Learn to build teams & increase volunteer engagement
  • Learn how to staff for growth
  • Improve communications both internally and externally
  • Learn how to establish healthier finances
  • And more

That’s just a sample. Learn about all 12 lessons and enroll by clicking this link. The Leading an Unstuck Church Course will only be open for enrollment for a few weeks, since we want to keep the group small so we can engage personally and facilitate a strong community. We hope to see you there!

Posted in Leadership, Staffing

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20 Helpful Metrics for Measuring Church Health

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Our team at the Unstuck Group is passionate about providing resources for church leaders to help them succeed.

Everyone has opinions, speculations and ideas around the current trends and why they are happening. But, it’s tough to defy numbers. When deciding to publish The Unstuck Church Report a few months back, our team felt strongly about taking common questions and producing an objective resource that church leaders can apply to their ministry. We find this so critical to church growth and health and we are excited to share the data we collect to give church leaders a snapshot of up-to-date church health trends.

The third edition of The Unstuck Church Report: Benchmarks & Trends in U.S. Churches is out! From attendance to leadership to giving, this report gives church leaders insight into the key metrics of church health, including Ministry Reach, Staffing and Leadership, Connection, and Finances.

The Q2 2018 edition is available today. This 4-page PDF reviews 20 updated metrics in key areas of church health, with Tony Morgan sharing his take on the numbers.

Download your copy today. It’s free:

Get the Report

Here are a few insights you can expect to find:

  • One in five churches has gone multisite. Of the churches surveyed, 80% are in one location and 20% have committed to a multisite strategy and are meeting in multiple locations. That’s an increase from previous reporting periods of churches that are using a multisite strategy.
  • About 3 of every 5 adults and students participate in some kind of small group. Churches are seeing 58% of their adults and students participate in a group.
  • Giving is increasing for churches. The per capita giving was $46 per week. That’s up from $42 in prior reporting. To calculate this number, children’s attendance is removed so that per capita giving is measured against adult and student attendance.

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

Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation

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10 Articles that will Help your Church Make Vision Real

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Each month I curate the top 10 most popular blog posts I’ve shared recently. These are the articles that got had the greatest engagement in the past month. They were the most visited, shared, helpful or disagreed with. At any rate, thanks for staying in contact with me through engaging in the content on this site, I hope it’s been helpful to you! In case you missed any of them here they are all in one nice tidy place for you!

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.

How to Make Guests Feel Uncomfortable at your Church

It’s uncomfortable for a person who’s unfamiliar with God and church to go to church for the first time. Often times they feel as though they’re taking a huge risk by even showing up. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things that churches do to make guests feel even more uncomfortable when they go to church for the first time. Here are just a few…

[Repost] How to get Easter Guests to Come Back to your Church

A couple of years ago I wrote a post on how to get guests who come to Easter services at your church to come back to your church. It went on to be one of the top 10 most popular posts on my blog that year. With Easter weekend coming up I thought I’d share it with you again in an effort to help you think through any last minute opportunities to leverage Easter to its fullest at your church and help guests come back.

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.

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.

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.

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.

How to Choose the Next Board Members at your Church

If you’ve led in a church for any length of time you can probably tell some stories of experiences you’ve had with dysfunctional Church Boards. Church Board become dysfunctional for a variety of reasons and there are some basic steps you can take to avoid a dysfunctional Board. The first step is to avoid inviting the wrong people to the Board. In writing this post I’m assuming that you’re already vetting potential Board Members based on the letters the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy and Titus about selecting church leaders. 

What do you do when you Don’t Agree with your Pastor?

If you work on staff at a church, chances are at some point you’re going to disagree with your pastor. That’s okay, you’re human, it would be naive to think you’re always going to agree with your pastor. But what you do with that disagreement is where things can get really messy. Messy for you, and messy for the church.

Building a Winning Culture at your Church

In a day where everyone gets participation trophies the idea of winning or losing when it comes to church has become a foreign concept. In fact, I think most churches have become afraid to win. I’m not talking about a game. Church isn’t a game. It’s about something far bigger than that. Much more is on the line. It’s about heaven and hell. The fact is people are dying and going to hell and that’s simply unacceptable.

Posted in Leadership
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