Tag Archive - multisite

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Top Posts of 2014 #5: “Ministry Trends for 2014”

Saturday, December 27, 2014

We’re halfway through our Top 10 countdown of the most popular posts here at Helping Churches Make Vision Real! I’d be interested to know how many of these trends you experienced in 2014.

Recently Carey Nieuwof, who serves as the Lead Pastor at Connexus Church north of Toronto, Canada, released this info-graphic about trends he’s seeing in ministry as we head into 2014. With his permission, I’m happy to share this here with you. Carey speaks to leaders and audiences across North American and around the world on leadership, change, parenting and personal renewal. You can follow this link to keep up with Carey at his blog!

Which of these trends have you seen? Which ones do you disagree with? Anything surprising to you? Or is there anything you would add? What trends are you observing as we head into 2014? Leave a comment!

Posted in Leadership

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5 Articles that will Help your Church Make Vision Real

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Thank you for making November one of the highest trafficked months of the year here at Helping Churches Make Vision Real! It’s great staying connected with you through social media and hearing about how helpful different articles have been. 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 6 Things I Bet You Don’t Know about your Pastors’ Wife

One of the least thought about people in the church today is a Pastor’s wife. While leaders get all the attention and accolades their families and private lives are thought of very little by the public. In fact in a moment in church history where we are inundated with volumes of leadership ideas and training very little is written about pastor’s wives. I recently sat down with Lisa, my wife, and asked her about her experience being married to a full-time pastor for the past 18+ years. Here is some of what she had to say…

#2 A Leadership Conversation with an Executive Pastor at a Church of 20,000+

One of the most incredible and successful churches in America is one you’ve probably never heard of. Like many churches Christ’s Church of the Valley started in the living room of the founding pastor, in this case Don Wilson. Now over 30 years later CCV has a weekly attendance of more than 20,000 people located across 6 campuses. Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Ashley Wooldridge who serves as the Executive Pastor at CCV and talk leadership and multisite. Here are a few of the highlights from the conversation.

#3 Replenish: Leading from a Health Soul

Lance Witt served 20 years as a senior pastor and five years as the executive pastor at Saddleback Church with Rick Warren. A couple of years ago Lance released his book Replenish: Leading from a Healthy Soul. It’s a great book for church leaders. It’s so good, in fact, that we have our Leadership Coaching Networks at the Unstuck Group read it for the conversation we have about personal health. If you’re in ministry, I strongly encourage you to order this book today, you won’t regret it. Here are a couple of key ideas that stood out to me.

#4 What Makes a Great Campus Pastor a Great Campus Pastor?

Leading in a multisite setting I’m often asked by other church leaders, “What makes a great Campus Pastor a great Campus Pastor?” Often times when a church is thinking about moving to a multisite model the last thing they’re thinking about is who is going to be their next Campus Pastor. They’re stuck on logistics and most just assume they’ll stick an existing up and coming staff member on the next campus and hope for the best. That’s great IF you have the right person on the team already, but this can also be a fatal flaw. Trust me, I know and I’ve lived it. So here are 7 things I’m looking for when I’m looking for a Campus Pastor.

#5 The Best of Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit Pt-1

In the past I’ve regularly taken a large team to the annual Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit, this year was a little different. Thankfully the Global Leadership Summit is available digitally even after the live event! We previewed the talks and selected the best two from this years event to share with our team. The first talk was from Joseph Grenny, Co-Founder, Vital Smarts: Social Scientist for Business Performance and New York Times bestselling author.

Photo Credit: justin fain via Compfight cc

Posted in Leadership

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What makes a Great Campus Pastor a Great Campus Pastor?

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Leading in a multisite setting I’m often asked by other church leaders, “What makes a great Campus Pastor a great Campus Pastor?” Often times when a church is thinking about moving to a multisite model the last thing they’re thinking about is who is going to be their next Campus Pastor. They’re stuck on logistics and most just assume they’ll stick an existing up and coming staff member on the next campus and hope for the best. That’s great IF you have the right person on the team already, but this can also be a fatal flaw. Trust me, I know and I’ve lived it. So here are 7 things I’m looking for when I’m looking for a Campus Pastor.

1. Relational Skills

They can influence people. They can influence people younger than themselves, they can influence their peers, and they can influence people older than themselves. Influence comes through trust and trust is given in the context of relationship. If they don’t have the relational skills to build trust with the congregation they’ll never be able to influence the congregation to move forward in a particular direction.

 2. Communication

They’re a good communicator. I’m not saying they have to be a good preacher, unless that’s how you are planning on handling the weekend teaching in your multisite model. But they have to be an effective communicator on stage, in large groups, in smaller groups, and one-on-one. A litmus test you can use to discover this is can they connect the mission/vision to funding? Can they talk about money from the stage and have people respond?

3. Lead Through Others

Great Campus Pastors don’t just delegate tasks they empower people. They don’t do everything themselves rather they get things done through other people. They know how to manage large multifaceted projects through robust teams and accomplish the stated goals. They know the team outperforms the individual every time.

4. Development

They don’t just lead through relationship they lead through development. In other words people don’t follow them just because they like them and enjoy them relationally but because they are developed into better leaders and better people by following them. They don’t just attract talent they develop talent.

5. Driven

They have a bias towards action. They are movement oriented and wake up every day thinking about moving things towards the vision.

6. They Deliver

They’ve already demonstrated the ability to deliver. They’ve built something from concept to completion; they’re not a novice. They’ve already done, what you want them to do. They know how to execute decisions and implement strategies.

 7. Culture

They don’t just know the mission, vision and values of the church but they live them out in their own lives. It’s not that they can simply repeat these things, but they deeply understand them, leading by making decisions through the lens of the core and unique identity of the church.

Interested in learning more about the role of a Campus Pastor? Check out this post: What is a Campus Pastor? Also you can take a look at a sample job description for a Campus Pastor here.

Photo Credit: kevin dooley via Compfight cc

Posted in Leadership

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A Leadership Conversation with an Executive Pastor at a church of 20,000+

Sunday, November 2, 2014

One of the most incredible and successful churches in America is one you’ve probably never heard of. Like many churches Christ’s Church of the Valley started in the living room of the founding pastor, in this case Don Wilson. Now over 30 years later CCV has a weekly attendance of more than 20,000 people located across 6 campuses. Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Ashley Wooldridge who serves as the Executive Pastor at CCV and talk leadership and multisite. Here are a few of the highlights from the conversation.

  • If you want to be a church of 10 campuses, then start thinking like a church with 10 campuses now…
    • What would have to change? Begin changing it now!
    • What best practices are working right now? Go replicate it!
  • How consistent do you want all of your campuses to be? Have a “Consistency Continuum Conversation” with your Sr. Leadership Team about ministries and practices. On a scale of 1-10 (1 = variation) (10 = consistent)
    • You can start as a 10 and move towards a 1. But you can’t start as a 1 and move towards a 10.
    • You can give someone rope, but pulling on the rope is painful
  • The big difference between a Central Services Team and a Campus Team
    • Central Services Team: Content, Consistency, Communication
    • Campus Team: Execution
  • Breaking through Organizational Structural Lids:
    • This is primarily about control. High control leads to structural lids
    • It shows up in the pace of decision making…you know you’ve got a problem when decision making gets bogged down or when low level decisions get pushed to a high level in the organization
    • A high level of delegation needs to take place
    • Your organizational IQ goes down the higher you go
  • Sanctioned Incompetence:
    • If someone on the team is incompetent and everyone knows it and you don’t do anything about it…
    • It’s your fault as the leader. You are sanctioning their incompetence.
    • You as the leader lose credibility with the team because you refuse to act.
  • The best and fastest way to improve guest services at your church is have a staff that invite their friends to church. They’ll begin to look at everything through the eyes of their lost friends.

Photo Credit: Prayitno / Thank you for visiting ! (3 millions ) via Compfight cc

Posted in Leadership

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5 Articles that will Help Your Church Make Vision Real

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Thank you for making August a great month here at Helping Churches Make Vision Real! It’s great staying connected with you through social media and hearing about how helpful different articles have been. 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. A Large Multisite Church in Phoenix is Hiring a Preteen Pastor

I’m pleased to announce a new Staff Search. Sun Valley Community Church, the church I have the honor of serving at, is beginning a national search for a Preteen Pastor to lead the ministry to 5th & 6th grade students on our Gilbert Campus. Sun Valley began as a church plant in 1990 in Chandler, Arizona. Over the years Sun Valley has grown into a large mult-site church in the Phoenix metro area. Currently there are three campuses located in Gilbert, Tempe and Casa Grande with a total weekend attendance of over 5,000 people. Sun Valley was recently named by Outreach Magazine as one of the top 10 fastest growing churches in America. The Gilbert Campus is the original and largest campus with well over 3,500 in weekly average attendance. Sun Valley was recently featured in a new book by Leadership Network about church mergers: Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work. To learn more about that story click here Part-1 and Part-2.

2. 5 Reasons I Would Never Hire You

Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to hire a lot of people. Student Ministry Pastors, Campus Pastors, Children’s Pastors, Worship Pastors, Executive level roles and Administrative roles. I’ve run the searches myself and used an Executive Search Firm. I’ve even had the opportunity as a consultant to help other churches find their right next hire. Hire the right person and the whole team benefits. When you invite the right person to join your team not only is there is an infusion of new talent, but also new ideas, fresh eyes, and a new well of experiences to go to. One new hire can make the entire team better. On the other hand, hire the wrong person and you can pay a price you weren’t prepared to pay. While at first pass this post may come off as negative, the goal I can assure you, is to be helpful. I’ve had to say no to more people than I’ve said yes to. My hope is that this post will help move you in the direction where you’d hear me, or someone else, say yes to you in the near future.

3. How to Identify Young Leaders in the Church

Do a quick Google Search and you’ll find volumes written about this next generation entering the workforce. Much of it is written from a negative perspective. The search will tell you that this generation is entitled, lazy, they don’t follow through and they can’t be trusted with real responsibility. This trend has great implications for the modern day church. And while the researchers might be right, I still believe that there are great up and coming leaders in the next generation taking their place in the church today. Two reasons stand out and have convinced me.

4. The Art of Difficult Conversations

If you lead a team long enough, eventually there are going to be some difficult conversations that are going to happen. No one wants to have difficult conversations, there’s nothing fun about them. But if you care about the team and if you care about your teammates then eventually someone is going to need to be confronted. It could be poor work ethic, breaking organizational values, underperformance, misrepresenting the organization, or it could even be a moral or ethical problem just to name a few. But who is the right person to have that difficult conversation when it needs to happen?

5. Leading Through Change: What Game is Your Church Playing?

On a regular basis at Sun Valley Community Church (the church I have the honor of serving at) we get the staff together from all three campuses for leadership development and training. This past week one of our Lead Pastors, Chad Moore, shared about the different games that churches play. I thought I’d share with you some of the key take-aways and learnings. Do you know what game your church is playing? Follow this link to learn more about the “4 Stages of a Church Staff Team.”

Posted in Leadership
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