[Repost] Leadership Lessons I Learned from my Mom

Tag Archive - leadership

[Repost] Leadership Lessons I Learned from my Mom

Sunday, May 13, 2018

Back in 2012 I did a post about some leadership lessons that I learned from my mom. There’s 2 big reasons I want dust that off an and share it again with you today. First and most obvious, it’s Mother’s Day and I wanted to take a moment and give her some public credit. Second, and I’m not going to address this directly in this post, but I’ve been hearing from more and more female leaders in the Church that struggle with finding their place in ministry, a church that will validate their leadership gifts and other strong female leaders in the Church to look up to and learn from. So that being said, here are some leadership lessons I learned from my mom along the way. Thanks mom!

My mom has left an incredible legacy. She’s got two boys that are both married and following Jesus, a couple of great daughter in laws, and seven grandchildren. It’s a legacy that’s definitely worth reproducing. But it becomes more impressive when you understand where she came from. A single child born and raised on the west coast, tragedy struck young when both of her parents died at an early age. Raised by her grandparents she wasn’t exposed to the Gospel until her early 20’s when she followed Christ, married my father, and two unruly little boys entered her life. What follows are 5 leadership lessons that I learned along the way from my incredible mother…

1. The Art of a Unified Front

Mom & Dad were on the same team. As much as we tried, we couldn’t play them against each other. It’s okay for Senior Level Leadership Teams to disagree, in fact differing perspectives and ideas are healthy and beneficial to any organization…as long as it stays in the boardroom.

2. Hard Work is Worth it

When we went to school every day, mom went to work and I don’t know how she did it but she rushed home and made sure we ate dinner together every night as a family. From early in the morning until late at night, mom worked hard. Hard work seems to be a four-letter word in today’s world. Instead we talk about working smarter not harder, streamlining, process efficiency, and supply chain management. While I’m all for efficiency you can’t be afraid to simply roll up your sleeves and do some hard work.

3. Finish Strong

Mom didn’t do things half way. She didn’t leave things undone. She finished. Even if it meant staying up late or getting up early. Too many loose ends will do you in. Starting projects can be fun and exciting but people don’t pay for projects that get started, they pay for results.

4. People follow Leaders who have a Servants Heart

For years I actually thought my mom liked burnt toast. Moms always seem to be the last ones to get dressed, do her hair, eat dinner, and any other number of normal routines around the house. And it was usually due to taking care of everyone else! Young leaders in the workforce today want to know what you want for them, not from them. They want to follow someone who is authentic, vulnerable, and willing to serve. The moment you become too big to serve, you’re too big to lead.

5. Be Patient with Young Talent

Through all of the craziness of having two boys in the house that were…well…all boy. Mom was patient, kind and gentle through it all. Young talent needs time to develop, opportunities to stretch their leadership wings, and yes room to make mistakes like putting holes in walls and breaking things. They need to know that there is room to fail. If there isn’t, they’ll eventually rebel, or worse stop experimenting and stop dreaming all together.

Posted in Family, Leadership

Why Following Jesus is all Backwards

Sunday, May 6, 2018

I know that typically I’m cranking out a couple of blog posts a week that deal with Church Leadership and Making Vision Real. It’s usually something about building a great team, the art of execution, vision, structure, why policies will tank your church…or 15 reasons why your church is stuck and how to fix it. But this post is different. I hope you’ll give me some latitude…and I’ll get back to the 15 reasons why your church is stuck and how to fix it later.

I recently had a moment to rest and was reminded of a couple of ideas that, “I know,” but are really difficult for me to put into action. Even with more than 30 years into following Jesus I feel like there are some basic things I still struggle with. Maybe it’s just me, but this whole following Jesus thing seems so backwards sometimes (ok so all the time)…it just doesn’t come natural to me.

Anyway, here’s a few of the thoughts that I scribbled down that I thought I’d share…hope they’re helpful to you in some way.

To Win you have to be Last

This is tough for me. I like to win. I mean I really like to win. Competition is in my Strength Finders top 5. It’s part of why I think it’s unacceptable for people to die and go to hell…and why I think the church has got to be more aggressive in reaching outsiders instead of pandering to insiders. But…if you really want to win…Jesus said you’ve got to be willing to lose. Remember that whole first / last thing He talked about in that really famous sermon He preached?

To be able to truly Give you have to be able to Receive

You cannot give what you do not have. That makes sense…here’s the tough part though…in order to give you have to be able to receive. Another way to put this is you cannot give love if you don’t know how to receive love. This is tough…because receiving takes all kinds of humility…and if you’re human you get that humility doesn’t come natural to us.

You Work From Rest instead of Working to Rest

Most people are, “working for the weekend.” They work so they can save up enough time off and enough money to get away from work and take a break from it all. Jesus designed life differently than that. He worked from rest instead of resting from work. This one is super convicting for me.

To Gain Your Life you have to Lose it

This just seems super backwards to me…to gain life Jesus says I have to first lose it. I get that real life is found in Him and that in order to take hold of that life we have to let go of this one…but the implications for that statement are both simple and far reaching. This is why there is no leadership without loss. This is why when I got married I was hit square in the face with how selfish I was…and then again when I had a kid…and another…and another…and another. You can probably perceive that I’ve still got some room to grow here.

If you want to Find Wealth it’s start with Giving it away

So they key to building wealth isn’t getting as much as you can while you can, it’s not building up stock piles and hoarding things…it’s actually by giving it away. God’s design for money is that we give first, save second, and live on the rest. Giving first honors God, saving second builds wealth, and living on the rest teaches us contentment. We could probably all do with a little contentment.

I have to constantly remind myself (more like Jesus has to constantly remind me) that it’s not about being better, working harder, or doing more. Jesus is good enough, He worked enough, and He did enough. He really is enough…and I’m still figuring that all out. Hope you are too.

Posted in Spiritual Formation, Testimonial

10 Articles that will Help your Church Make Vision Real

Tuesday, May 1, 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!

#1 18 Churchy Things the Class of 2018 Won’t Get

This spring’s high school graduates were born in the year 2000. Here are some churchy things for which they have little to no context for…

#2 7 Ways Church Leaders Unknowingly Lead their Churches to be Stuck

While there are external reasons that churches begin to move the wrong direction the majority of time it’s much closer to home. Often “stuckness” is self-induced by intention or neglect on the part of the leaders of the church. So in no order, here are some things I’ve seen church leaders do to unknowingly lead their churches towards being stuck.

#3 What is a Campus Pastor?

In August, 2012, Leadership Network released a report stating that over 5,000 churches are now multi-site churches (churches that meet in more than one location for worship). It’s a growing trend that first began with mega-churches, but has now expanded to churches of all sizes. With this new trend a new staff role has emerged, that of “Campus Pastor.” While a lot churches are still trying to figure out this new role, here are 6 things that great Campus Pastors do:

#4 8Reasons 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.

#5 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.

#6 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.

#7 5 Ways Successful Church Leaders Think Differently

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.

#8 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.

#9 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.

#10 10 Keys to Managing Change in a Church

Many churches I talk with want different results; they actually want to see more people meet Jesus and follow Jesus this year than last year. Unfortunately, they just aren’t willing to change, let go of old tactics and take a different approach. Recently I had a conversation with a church staff team that is courageously leading their church through change. Here are a couple of things that came out of the conversation.

Posted in Leadership

How to know when the Systems at your Church are Broken

Sunday, April 29, 2018

The systems you build at your church can help move you towards your mission or keep you from it.

Building great systems in your church is the art of connecting the values, structures, strategies, goals, and vision to work in alignment that builds a culture that leans towards accomplishing the mission.

Systems are made up of complex independent parts that work together to perform a specific function. Think, for example, about the solar system, muscular system, or skeletal system.

In a church an example of a system is the weekend worship (all of the independent parts that work together to create a great weekend worship service), communications (all of the independent parts that work together to create a strong brand), or assimilation (all of the independent parts that work together to help people move from a guest to connected).

But sometimes systems don’t work, or you begin to outgrow them. Here’s a couple of indicators that may be happening at your church.

Work Arounds

When you staff team starts building their own work-arounds or implement their own supplemental solutions to your system the tendency is to believe that the staff is being obstinate. That may be the case. However, they may need more training, or the system you’re using may no longer work in your context.

Neat Freaks

The objective of a good system is not having a good system, it’s the mission. It’s possible to become hyper focused on a system instead of what the system is designed to do. If your system can’t tolerate a certain amount of chaos, then you’ve outgrown your system. A growing church has a certain level of chaos and mess to it and that’s okay.

Poor Returns

If things begin to slow down at your church one of the things you may want to look at are your systems. It’s possible for your systems to become a lid to growth.

Posted in Leadership

7 Ways Church Leaders Unknowingly Lead their Churches to be Stuck

Sunday, April 22, 2018

Churches get stuck for all kinds of reasons. Typically, when growth slows, and things begin to stall the first inclination many church leaders have is to look at external forces acting upon them to figure out why things are moving the wrong direction.

#1 Keeping Christians Happy

Many churches have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the church is for. Instead of being for people who have not yet said yes to following Jesus, many churches fall into the trap of believing they exist to provide nice safe programing for Christians for the purpose of biblical education. They eventually become insider focused and begin making decisions based on who they want to keep instead of who they want to reach.

#2 Hiring too Fast

Quick hires are usually hires based on convenience not vision. Every new hire you make either moves you closer to your vision or further away. It either helps you become more of who God wants you to be and further galvanizes your culture or erodes it. Sure, fire quickly. But hire slowly, because you put your culture at stake every time you make a new hire.

#3 Hiring Staff 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 average attenders), and you’re hiring staff to do ministry instead of lead ministry your church will end up in decline.

#4 Allergic to Strategy

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.

#5 Choosing Policies Over People

Policies shrink the box of creativity. They set the standard for how we do what we do every time we do it. Policies tell everybody in the organization what they can’t do, and leaders are solution oriented not excuse or problem oriented. A church with a lot of policies will consistently find it difficult to attract and keep good leaders. It’s very possible to policy your way right into decline

#6 Defending the Past

When a church is busy defending the past instead of building the future it is headed for decline. When a church becomes risk averse and starts making choices based on who they are going to keep as opposed to who they are going to reach, the church is in trouble. The real danger in playing defense is that it becomes a cultural mindset that actually stands in opposition to the Gospel. You see the Gospel was never meant to be or does it need to be defended it’s intended to be unleashed.

#7 Complexity

When the church is growing it’s exciting! Staff members are hired, ministries are started, buildings are built, and people are meeting Jesus! But it’s not as exciting when all of that growth and fun naturally lead to complexity. Growth naturally leads to complexity and complexity slows everything down.

Posted in Leadership

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