Tag Archive - growth

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5 Core Issues that will Fuel Growth in your Church in 2018

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Stuckness is no respecter of the “brand” or “flavor” of a church. All kinds of churches across America are stuck. Large churches, small churches, old churches, new churches, Baptist churches, Methodist churches, Nazarene churches, Presbyterian church and even non-denominational churches are stuck.

At the Unstuck Group we’ve literally worked with hundreds of churches and one of the many things we’ve learned along the way is that there are 5 Core Issues that keep churches stuck.

The good news is that in 2018 your church doesn’t have to stay stuck.

This year your church can take a different approach. I’m not talking about trying harder, I’m talking about trying different. I’m also not talking about making some risk free small tweaks. If you want different results you’ve got to adopt a different strategy and employ different tactics.

What are you and your team willing to differently this year when it comes to your approach to these 5 Core Issues?

Discipleship Pathway

I’ve seen a lot of churches that offer a myriad of classes, small groups, and a grocery list of ministries that clutter people’s lives and compete for time, promotion, money and participation. But it’s rare to find a church that has a clear strategic pathway for people who are new to following Jesus to move towards knowing and following him. Is your church providing a menu of ministry offerings or clear next steps for people who connect with your church to become more fully devoted followers of Jesus?

Leadership Development

While many church leaders search for an off the shelf tool or some new content that is promised to produce leaders in their church they forget that the Church itself is the greatest leadership development engine that’s ever been designed. How deep is the leadership bench at your church? Most churches are struggling to identify their up and coming young leaders. Is your church attracting, identifying, and intentionally developing young leaders? Most are hopeful that it will somehow happen, but hope isn’t a strategy. Check out these 10 Articles that will Help your Church Develop Young Leaders. Developing people is different than offering a class. What are you going to do to invest in people differently this year?

Mission / Vision

Clarity is king. Without clarity churches are left to fumble around in a fog and hope for the best. However, the clearer become the better decisions can be made and the faster alignment can be accomplished. When everyone on the team has clarity, and knows where you’re going and who is supposed to do what next things can really get moving. Unfortunately, the majority of churches aren’t very clear about their mission (why they exist) or vision (where they are going), and so they stay stuck. Here’s a post that will help you and your team gain more clarity on your mission and vision.

Communications

It’s not uncommon in churches to find ministries competing for “air time” in the weekend worship services. Many church staff members mistakenly think that if “their” ministry offering isn’t announced on the weekend then it’s not important and it can’t be successful. As a result, churches end up relying on the weekend bulletin and announcements in their services as the extent of their communication strategy. They communicate everything to everyone, hoping to get someone involved. If it’s not announced from the stage then they spam people to death with constant emails that are just ignored or deleted. Interested in learning more about church communications? Check out these 10 Findings from New Research on Church Communications.

Volunteers

A simple but deep truth that seems to have been forgotten is that volunteering is discipleship. Volunteering is not just about roles that need to be filled anymore but people that need to be developed. The role of the Church Staff Member isn’t to do the ministry but to equip the church to do the ministry. While most church staff would generally agree to that statement, few are actually doing it. Want to learn more about developing an effective Volunteer Strategy at your Church? Check out these 10 Articles that will Help your Church Build a Stronger Volunteer Culture.

If you behave differently towards these 5 Core Issues this year, you’ll get different results. And if you need help getting unstuck then connect with us at the Unstuck Group, we can help this next year be the best year of ministry you’ve ever experienced!

Posted in Leadership

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Top Posts of 2017 #7 “Why Churches Decline and Die”

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Understanding why churches grow and decline is an annual topic of interest on my blog. While this post doesn’t cover all of the reasons a church declines, it’s a great overview of some of the major catalysts to church decline.

Years ago, a church started in the Phoenix east valley. This church plant grew rapidly. Helping new people meet Jesus, they became one of the first mega churches in the east valley. Eventually the pastor, under whose leadership this growth took place, left and the succession didn’t go very well. Neither did the next succession. Or the next. In fact, that church went through 18 straight years of decline until at the end of that decline they ended up merging with another church.

Today the new campus averages more than 1,000 people in weekend attendance and is helping new people meet, know and follow Jesus.

Unfortunately for most churches in decline there’s no great comeback story. Churches decline for all kinds of reasons and it’s usually more complicated than one simple decision that was made somewhere along the way.

However, church decline can be avoided and even turned around. If your church is stuck or in decline I’d encourage you to start a conversation with the Unstuck Group. They have proven track record of helping churches get unstuck. Here are a couple big reasons, in no particular order, why churches decline and die.

1. Fuzzy Vision

Vision answers the question, “Where are we going?” Vision provides everyone clarity and without clarity things slow down, or even worse people start doing what they think is right in their own eyes. One of the single most life-threatening indicators that a church is in trouble is a lack of clarity. Clarity provides a church with the power to make decisions efficiently and align the organizational components of the church to move forward. If you don’t know where you’re going, and can’t state it clearly, you’ve got no chance to get there.

2. Staff Hired to Do Ministry

When your church has a high staff to attendance ratio (at the Unstuck Group we encourage churches to staff 1:100 – that is 1 full time staff equivalent for every 100 attenders) and you’re hiring staff to do ministry instead of leading ministry by recruiting, developing and empowering volunteers to do and lead ministry your church will end up in decline.

3. No Strategic Plan

Strategy answers the question, “How are we going to get there?” Strategy fills the gap between where you are and where you want to be. It’s planning for tomorrow today. Little is more demoralizing to a church staff team than a bunch of empty inspirational talk that never materializes into real courageous action.

4. Over Reaching

My dad used to call this having, “Wine taste on a beer budget.” Over reaching and overextending the church with unsustainable decisions such as too much debt, offering too many ministry options, or starting too many things at once can cripple a church and set it back years, often times never recovering.  

5. Style Worship

No, not worship style (although those battles can be tough too), style worship. When churches begin to care more about ministry programs or a style and approach to ministry than the results of the ministry they’re on their way to decline.

6. Demographic Drift

Over time it’s not uncommon for the demographics around a church to shift. This can easily be observed most commonly through age and race. Many churches choose to ignore these changes and as a result never change their approach to ministry which leads to decline every time.

7. Insider Focus

I’ve said this many times before, the most dangerous place a church can be in their life cycle is when the ministry they are doing is having a big impact with insiders (people who already know Jesus and are inside the church) but a low impact with outsiders (people who don’t know Jesus yet). It’s dangerous because it’s comfortable. It feels like things are going well and you have momentum because people are happy, they’re regularly attending, and they seem to be “all in” with what you’re doing. But if you aren’t reaching new people, your church or ministry is already moving towards unhealthiness and decline.

Posted in Leadership

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6 Lessons I’ve Learned from 6 Years of Multisite Church Leadership

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Nearly 6 years ago Sun Valley Community Church (the church I have the honor of serving at) adopted a multisite strategy to deliver growth to new areas and reach new people with the Gospel. That one decision changed everything.

Since that time, we’ve grown from one campus to five (with more to come) and we’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way. Some of those lessons, as you would expect, we’ve learned the hard way. Here’s a few that stand out.

1. Starting is the Easy Part

Starting new multisite campuses is actually the easy part. Starting something new is usually exciting, attracts new people, and typically has some kind of momentum associated with it. Those are all things that make church leaders salivate. However, managing all of the complexities of inter-campus relationships, communication, decision making, reporting, influence, and building an effective central service team that serves the campuses is the more difficult part. It’s one thing to start a new multisite campus, it’s another thing all together to adopt a multisite mindset.

2. Communication is Complicated

The lines of communication can get really complicated in a multisite setting. Who needs to know what when and in what sequence are things communicated to which audience? Creating feedback loops from the campuses back to central services is key to help the central service team understand what’s working and what’s not and what the campus teams need from them to be successful. It’s also just as important to cascade communication through campus pastors to the campus teams. Add to that now you’ve got to figure out how all of the campus staff relate not only to central services but also to other campuses. As you can imagine it can get a little complicated.

3. Decision Rights can be Confusing

Knowing who makes what decision can become really confusing. When a campus begins making decisions that the central team believes they should be making or the central team makes decisions that affect every campus without fully understanding the impact at the individual campus level or getting the right campus level staff on board first, things can get tense. Clearly understanding who makes what decision and how decisions get made help dissolve the complexity of multisite.

4. Culture is King

One of the biggest questions that a church needs to answer before it goes multisite is, “Do we have a culture worth replicating?” In expanding and replicating your culture through a multisite strategy it’s not uncommon for churches to confuse policies and people. Here’s what I mean, your people (staff, leaders, volunteers, and attenders) transfer your culture to new locations. Policies, systems and structures may support your culture, they may even institutionalize it to a certain degree, but they don’t replicate it. Your people carry your culture.

5. Approach Matters

Yes, there are a lot of different ways to do multisite. There are a number of different approaches and models. But not all approaches are created equal. Some are more successful than others. For our purposes, I equate success with people saying yes to follow Jesus and life change…and I always figure more people meeting Jesus is better than less. There are some very concrete reasons why only 15% of churches that go multisite ever get past 3 campuses. There are also very concrete reasons why churches like LifeChurch.tv find so much success. Some approaches are more successful than others.

6. People Development is Difficult

The growth of your church has the potential to outpace the rate at which you can develop people. In other words, people don’t grow or develop as fast as your church, and multisite will expose that. One of the greatest challenges that multisite brings with it people development. So, as much as you may want to hire from the inside there are going to be times where you’re going to have to hire experienced talent from the outside to keep up with growth and new challenges that growth brings.

Posted in Leadership

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10 Articles that will Help your Church Make Vision Real

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Thank you for making October another great month here at Helping Churches Make Vision Real! It’s great staying 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!

Stop Hiring People to Work at your Church

Churches love to hire people. I mean they really love to hire people. Often times when churches are just starting off, staff members will raise their own salary until the church has the capacity to pay them. Then as they grow I’ve seen churches long for the day where the budget grows just a little bit more so they can make that next hire. They put so much hope into staffing. Many think that if they could just add one more special staff position to the team, the church would grow.

10 Things that Require Zero Talent

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” That’s a statement I talk to my son about all the time. He’s only 9 years old, but I want him to grow up to have a great work ethic and a positive attitude. I don’t expect him to be the great at everything he attempts, but I do expect him to give a great effort. There’s a lot of things he can’t control in life, but he’ll always be able to control his effort and his attitude.

What makes a Great Executive Pastor Great?

More and more I’m running into young church leaders that aspire to be an Executive Pastor and I’m fielding more and more questions about what young leaders can do to prepare for the role. With that in mind, while this is not an exhaustive list, here are a couple of recommendations I’d make to any young church leader who thinks they may serve as an Executive Pastor (XP) one day.

Can a Congregationally-Led Church be Healthy?

Why are the majority of small churches in America congregationally-led instead of being led by pastors and ministry staff?

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.

How do you know when it’s Time to Leave your Church?

There are all kinds of reasons why church staff leave the church they work at to go work another church. Some of those reasons are solid and make a lot of sense. Some of them as you could guess, not so much. If you’re a church staff member and you’re trying to figure out if you should stay or if it’s time to go, here are a couple of principles you should keep in mind.

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.

Casting Vision for the Next Chapter: Sun Valley Community Church

Sun Valley is a church with more than 7,000 people gathering in five locations in the Phoenix area. Many times, I don’t get the opportunity to see the vision move from the planning charts to reality. Because of that, I was encouraged to see this update. Check out the video below.

Why Knowledge isn’t the Key to Team Leadership

If you have to know everything or be the one with the greatest expert knowledge on the team then eventually you will become the lid to growth. While you don’t have to know everything, if you’re the leader you still need to be able to provide your team with the following 4 keys that unlock team success.

New FREE Resource on Trends in Church Growth and Health

Each quarter, we plan to release a new edition of The Unstuck Church Report: Benchmarks & Trends in U.S. Churches. It’s a 4-page PDF overviewing 20 updated metrics in key areas of church health, including Ministry Reach, Staffing and Leadership, Connection, and Finances. Tony Morgan shares his take on several of the more intriguing data points.

 

Posted in Leadership

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New FREE Resource on trends in Church Growth and Health

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

At The Unstuck Group, we serve hundreds of churches annually. As a part of the Ministry Health Assessment phase of our process, we’ve developed some key metrics to help church leaders get an objective snapshot of the health of their church. Because of that, we’ve had our eye on these metrics for years, and we’ve often shared them with the churches we serve.

We recently decided to give our wider network church leaders a consistent look at the trends we’re identifying through this data.

Each quarter, we plan to release a new edition of The Unstuck Church Report: Benchmarks & Trends in U.S. Churches. It’s a 4-page PDF overviewing 20 updated metrics in key areas of church health, including Ministry Reach, Staffing and Leadership, Connection, and Finances. Tony Morgan shares his take on several of the more intriguing data points.

The first edition is available now, and it’s free!

Here are just a few of the questions you can expect the report to answer:

  • Has average attendance increased or decreased overall?
  • What percentage of churches have gone multisite?
  • How many people are churches baptizing?
  • What percentage of the budget are churches spending on staffing?
  • What’s the average span of care for leaders?

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

We’ve found that few church leaders are actually tracking a comprehensive set of metrics to inform their view of their church’s health. We hope this report will equip you with a better understanding of the ones we think are important, and ultimately, help you lead an unstuck church.

Posted in Leadership
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