Tag Archive - leadership

1

Why I Took a Month Off from Social Media

Sunday, August 4, 2019

It’s become a new normal for our family. For the past couple of years, each July, we take a step away from screens for the month. I don’t blog, we’re not on social media, the T.V. stays turned off, and my teenage daughters stay off their phones. They may not like it…at least for the first week or two, but they do it. And while this kind of move may not be for everyone, I’ve never regretted it. Here’s a couple of reasons why:

Distraction Free Family Time:

Instead of binge watching Netfilx or spending time on phones or tablets we actually interacted face to face with each other over family dinners, playing board games, going on walks, and other fun stuff on the family summer bucket list.

Turn down the Noise:

Screens can create a lot of added noise in our lives. Social media, texting, and video sound bites create a non-stop flurry of distractions and noise in our lives. Turning down that noise can help refocus our attention on things that have a higher priority in our lives.

Intentionality:

It’s a simple step/action that our family has decided to take each year to be intentional and place a stake in the ground, so to speak, about what’s important to us. We’ve learned that if we don’t take simple intentional steps like this we’ll end up just running through the motions and get lost in the business of 4 kids schedules.

I’m still not Convinced 24-7 Access to Screens is a good thing for my kids…

Yes, I’m that dad who has drug his feet as long as he could on getting his kids cell phones. Even though they have them (at least my High School daughters) I’m still not there. We have a consistent approach with it. No phones after dad gets home (I can’t stand phones at the dinner table) and no phones in rooms at night time. I may be a little old school, but I keep seeing articles on studies connecting cell phones to teen depression etc. I want my kids to grow up using technology not getting addicted to it.

…and if you want to know the real brains behind the idea, it was Lisa, not me who made the call on this a few years ago…glad God put her in my life…makes me a much better parent!

Posted in Family, Leadership, Spiritual Formation

1

FREE WEBINAR: “How to Increase Church Engagement”

Sunday, July 21, 2019


People in ministry have a lot of opinions about numbers. Many church leaders are strong believers that numbers can help give us a good snapshot of how we’ve been doing—that is if we’re looking at the right ones and looking at them the right way.

For example, we know that measuring weekend service attendance alone isn’t a true measure of church health. After all, what does the number of bodies in a building on a Sunday tell you about how well you’re…

  • reaching people outside your church’s walls?
  • encouraging people to grow as disciples? 
  • connecting with the next generation?

These are the things we really need to be talking about. Anyone can attend your service. But when people start to engage in your church, that’s when life change really starts to happen. If you’ve heard the word “church engagement” buzzing around, and you’re just not quite sure what it all means, you’re not alone. Truthfully, we’re seeing lots of pastors confused about what church engagement actually means. 

  • “How do we get more people plugged in?” 
  • “How do we get first, second and third-time guests to stay?” 
  • “Why are people leaving?” 
  • “Why are people connecting… or not?”

If you’ve found yourself thinking this way, you’re asking the right questions about church engagement. And just by asking these questions, you’re headed in the right direction. In the last 10 years, The Unstuck Group has helped nearly 400 churches assess ministry health and become more effective at reaching new people outside the walls of the church, as well as engaging the people they already have.

So, in an effort to bring some clarity to church leaders that are struggling here, our team is hosting a free conversation that we want you and your ministry friends to be apart of. 

Tony Morgan and some of our consulting team will share what we’re learning about church engagement in a free webinar—

How to Increase Church Engagement. 

For the first 45 minutes, we’ll walk you through what we’ve learned serving the churches we’ve served, and if you have specific questions that you’d like to talk through, we’ve set aside 15 minutes at the end to make sure you’re getting the answers you need.

By joining us, you can expect to learn—

  • The 2 types of church engagement you need to monitor
  • What the data tells us about the state of church engagement today
  • Why you need a digital engagement strategy for a healthy “front door”
  • How to know if you’re winning with engagement

Get a clear understanding on what church engagement really means and how to take steps to increase it. 

You’re not behind the curve just yet. 

Register now! It’s free.

Posted in Leadership

0

Introducing “Multisite Unstuck” the Newest Online Course from the Unstuck Group

Sunday, June 16, 2019

Without a Clear Strategy, Going Multisite Will Get You Multistuck.

When you originally went multisite, I know you started expanding campuses with the desire to reach more people for Jesus.

But, adding campuses adds complexity to your ministry. Strategies that are supposed to help you engage more people, maximize resources and eliminate space constraints can instead knot things up in multiple areas of the ministry.

This shouldn’t keep us from expanding, but if you want to effectively multiply your church’s impact, reaching more people in more places, we have to prepare to do multisite well.

If you find yourself feeling stuck, you’re not the only multisite church feeling like this. And the good news? There IS a way forward.

I am so excited to announce our newest online course
Multisite Unstuck.

Our team has 100+ years of combined experience leading in effective multisite churches. We wanted to leverage that experience and help churches across the country get unstuck through this online course.

In this course, you can expect to gain—

  • Tools for clarifying decision rights, choosing locations, and building volunteer strength for campus launches.
  • Clarity on the multisite mindset and gaps your church has in fully adopting it.
  • A plan to reduce the tension that tends to develop between central ministry and campus leaders.
  • A process to right-size staff and volunteer teams based on the size of your multisite campuses.
  • Tools for evaluating the campus pastor role and setting Campus Pastors up for success.
  • Best practices for multisite models and for structuring your team.
  • Strategies for improving internal and external communication… and more.

And the best part? It’s all on your own time. It’s all formatted to work with your busy schedule. It gives tangible next steps that help you implement your learnings in your unique context.

We’re seeing more and more multisite churches unintentionally find themselves at the point of “un-multisiting,” with senior pastors finding themselves thinking, “How did we get here?”

I want to encourage you to be proactive. Leaders see stuckness first—and they get things moving again.

Follow this link to learn more!

Posted in Leadership

2

5 Characteristics of Churches that Change

Sunday, February 10, 2019

Over the past 7 years working with the Unstuck Group I’ve consulted with all kinds of churches. Small churches, large churches, single site churches and multisite churches, churches that are denominationally entrenched and non-denominational churches, urban churches, rural churches and yes suburban churches.

Many of those churches have gone on to get unstuck and produce all kinds of great fruit, seeing many people meet Jesus and experiencing a reinvigorated season of ministry.

Unfortunately, not every church gets unstuck, but for those that do there are some common characteristics that I’ve observed.

Personal Ownership

Churches that change and get unstuck take personal ownership. They don’t blame previous leaders, they don’t blame the economy, they don’t blame what’s happening in their community, they don’t blame the people attending the church, and they don’t even blame the devil. Churches that change get to the point where they stop making excuses for not growing and reaching new people for Jesus. These churches don’t play the role of a victim. These church leaders intuitively know that you can’t change what you can’t control…and they know you can’t control much…but you can control your attitude, your effort, and your approach. These churches are willing to change all three of those things.

Justice Oriented

Somewhere along the line the leaders of churches that experience real genuine change acquire a holy discontent with the status quo. They begin to see that staying where they are and doing things the way they’ve been doing them would actually be wrong. Maybe even sinful. A sense of justice rises up in them prompting them forward to a new future with a different approach that produces different results.

Courage

Churches that actually change understand that change is going to be difficult. They know that it’s going to be painful. They know that not everyone is going to go with them on this new journey to reach people far from Jesus. They often times even admit that it’s going to be a bit scary. They simply have the courage to do it anyway.

Action Oriented

Often times these churches have gotten stuck because they’ve been risk adverse or more oriented towards keeping people they already have happy as opposed to doing new things to reach new people. Every church that I’ve seen change and get unstuck has adopted a new approach that has required them to take new action.

Strong Point Leadership

Something that I consistently see in churches that get unstuck and change is that they’re led by strong Sr. Pastors. Now don’t hear what I’m not saying. They’re not all led by dynamic communicators or incredibly gifted leaders. But they are led by Sr. Pastors who are strong and are willing to leverage whatever gifts God has given them to move the ball forward. Often times that simply means that they’ve accumulated relational trust over a long period of time and they’re willing to cash that trust in to move the church forward. Instead of riding off quietly into the sunset they’re willing to go out with their guns blazing so to speak.

Posted in Leadership

3

Avoiding My Multisite Mistakes

Monday, January 28, 2019

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
Page 4 of 87« First...«23456»102030...Last »