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

1

7 Articles that will Help Your Church become More Generous

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Building a generous culture in your church isn’t easy. In fact generosity goes against every natural bone in our bodies, because what comes natural to us is us. That’s why both Jesus and the Apostle Paul connect spiritual maturity with generosity and living an others oriented life. Money in particular is a tough topic for most pastors to talk about with their church. Over the years I’ve written a bit about building a generous culture in your church and below are some of the more popular posts. Enjoy and I hope they’re helpful!

20 Ways Church Leaders can Help their Churches become More Generous

I’ve been around very few church leaders that didn’t wish their people would become more generous. But very few church leaders have defined a strategy to help their people take steps to become more generous.

3 Reasons People don’t Give to your Church

Just like there are real actionable steps that churches can take to engage givers, there are also things that churches do to repel givers. More often than not they’re doing these things and they don’t even know it.

5 Characteristics of Generous Churches

Generosity stands in direct opposition to our sin nature. After all most of us don’t wake up thinking about someone else’s day…

Engaging the Givers in your Church

When it comes to engaging major givers in the church a majority pastors feel uncomfortable at best. Many pastors don’t know how to approach the subject and are afraid of saying the wrong thing. While churches have often built elaborate strategies to help people take steps in their spiritual journey and grow in their relationship with Jesus; they usually resort to a “just preach the Word and hope things work out” approach to giving. The problem is hope isn’t a strategy. It doesn’t have to be this way.

5 Indicators that your Church is Financially Overextended

Earlier this fall in a post entitled “Breaking Through your Capacity Lid,” I wrote that financial shortfalls at churches can limit opportunities. I suggested that there are two sides to finances in a church setting. One is building a culture of generosity in your church and then the other is managing that generosity so you position yourself organizationally to say yes to Jesus when He provides clear vision and opportunity. Immature organizations over extend themselves financially and self impose artificial lids as a result.

Why People don’t Financially Invest in your Church

I recently read Not Your Parents’ Offering Plate by Clif Christopher. It’s a quick read that you can get through in one sitting, but it’s full of principles that you’ll come back to over and over again. There are a lot of reasons why people don’t give to churches as much as they used to.

6 Simple Steps to Help your Church become More Generous

Generosity is not something that Jesus wants from you. It’s something He wants for you. Generous churches and church leaders who understand the generous nature of the God that we serve help the people in their churches become more generous.

Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation

1

5 Indicators that your Church is Financially Overextended

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Earlier this fall in a post entitled “Breaking Through your Capacity Lid,” I wrote that financial shortfalls at churches can limit opportunities. I suggested that there are two sides to finances in a church setting. One is building a culture of generosity in your church and then the other is managing that generosity so you position yourself organizationally to say yes to Jesus when He provides clear vision and opportunity

Immature organizations over extend themselves financially and self impose artificial lids as a result.

In a time of year where most churches are finalizing budgets I thought it might be helpful to share some indicators that I’ve observed in churches that are financially overextended.

#1 Your Staff Salaries are not Competitive

If you’re not able to be competitive with your salaries you’re not going to able to attract and keep the talent you’re hoping to have on your team. This is an indicator that you’re financially overreaching somewhere. Not sure how much you should be paying your staff? This post will help.

#2 You’re spending more that 50% of your income of Staff Salaries

As strange as it may seem, if more than 50% of your income is being spent on Staff salaries then you’re staffing costs are beginning to constrict other ministry areas of the church.

#3 Low Cash Reserves

In my work with churches across the country I’ve discovered that if you have less than 8 weeks of undesignated cash reserves available at any given time you probably have too little financial margin to deal with unforeseen obstacles and set backs.

#4 High Debt Levels

Again, in my work with churches through the Unstuck Group I’ve discovered that if your church is carrying more than 2x your annual budget in debt than your debt load is beginning to constrict ministry opportunities.

#5 You Can’t Say Yes to the Opportunity Jesus is Giving You

If you can’t say yes to the vision Jesus has given you then your church is financially overextended. The bottom line is fairly simple. If Jesus has given you a clear vision to lead the church towards then part of your responsibility as a steward of that vision is to build (or enlist others to help you build) a financial strategy that will get you to that vision.

Posted in Leadership

3

Breaking Through Your Capacity Lid

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

If you lead long enough eventually every leader and every organization will hit a leadership lid. You are going to outgrow your leadership skills and your organizational structures at some point. But what do you do when the lid at your church is a capacity lid? Capacity lids show up all over the place.

Facilities: If you build it they won’t always come.

Too many churches acquiesce to the pressure to build too soon and as a result they don’t maximize their current space. Instead of building try running multiple weekend services, try multiple venues on the same campus, park off campus, or move to a multisite strategy.

Volunteers: Volunteers are more important than the ministries.

Most churches run short on volunteers because they use volunteers to do the ministry instead of realizing that the volunteers are the ministry. Volunteering is discipleship. Take care of, invest in, and lead your volunteers and they’ll take care of the ministry.

Finances: Financial shortfalls can limit opportunities.

The two sides to finances in a church setting are building a culture of generosity in your church and then managing those finances so you position yourself to say yes to Jesus when He provides clear vision and opportunity. Immature organizations over extend themselves financially and self impose artificial lids as a result.

Staffing: The team outperforms the individual every time.

Scouting, attracting, developing and keeping talented team members are essentials to a growing church. But before you think paid staff think volunteer leaders. Paying people to do ministry should be the last resort.

Leadership: Leadership is a spiritual gift, but you can develop your leadership skills.

Leading a church of 100, 500, 1,000 and 10,000 are not the same thing. The higher you go you move from the science side of leadership to the art side of managing the momentum and emotion of the room. Get outside your tribe and start listening to and learning from successful people and organizations in other industries.

Character: Your talent can take you further than you character can sustain.

Character is the lowest leadership lid. No level of competency will ever make up for a fatal flaw in character because ministry and leadership run on trust. Character flaws erode trust every time.

Posted in Leadership

0

5 Articles that will Help Your Church Make Vision Real

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Thank you for making March an incredible 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 5 Posts from this last month. If you missed out on any of them, here they are all in one place for your convenience!

#1 How Many People should your Church have on Staff?

Before you buy into the idea that you need another staff person at your church, think again. That just may be the worst decision you make at your church this year.

#2 5 Reasons People don’t Sing at your Church

I’ve been hearing a lot of concern about the fact that people are singing less and not engaging in the corporate time of worship at church. Most of the talk I hear seems to be finger pointing and critiquing the current culture of American churches rather than providing solutions that are within our control. We all want people engaging in worship, but what is really in our control and how can we help people connect through the music? Here is a list of factors that contribute to how people respond and engage during worship in our churches.

#3 How Many People should be Volunteering at your Church?

Did you know that there is a direct connection between the amount of money a church invests in staffing and the number of people who volunteer? What we’ve discovered in our research at the Unstuck Group is that the as a church increases its spending on staffing the number of people volunteering decreases.

#4 Why People don’t Financially Invest in your Church

I recently read Not Your Parents’ Offering Plate by Clif Christopher. It’s a quick read that you can get through in one sitting, but it’s full of principles that you’ll come back to over and over again. There are a lot of reasons why people don’t give to churches as much as they used to. This book does a great job of helping to identify those reasons but it also gives pastors and church leaders steps they can take to move things in the right direction. If you’re a church leader and you haven’t read this book…you should. Here are some of the key ideas that stood out to me from my reading:

#5 7 Multisite Church Myths

The church I lead at has been multisite now for more than 3 years and we’re currently working on opening up our 4^th campus. I also work with churches across the country with the Unstuck Group and often field questions from church leaders about going multisite. In those discussions I’ve come to realize there are a whole list of misconceptions floating around out there about the multisite movement. Here are a couple of the more popular ones I get.

Photo Credit: justin fain via Compfight cc

Posted in Leadership