Tag Archive - multisite

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10 Articles that will Help your Church Make Vision Real

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Each month I curate the top 10 most popular blog posts I’ve shared. 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!

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 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.

4 Ways Churches Misspend Money

Churches get funny when it comes to money. Generally, churches have a hard time talking about money publicly and few have a clear generosity strategy. When it comes to financial planning and actually spending money in a way that gets them to the vision God’s called them to, the majority of churches I’ve interacted with are all thumbs.

4 Indicators your Church is Moving in the Wrong Direction

There are a lot of reasons why churches begin to decline and eventually die. Most don’t ever recognize it until they’re really stuck or worse it’s too late to even turn around. But there are some lead indicators that can be early warning signs that things are moving in the wrong direction.

Why Video Teaching Will Work in Your Town Too

When I consult with churches that are considering going multisite one of the key exercises I facilitate with their team centers around how they are going to approach preaching in their weekend worship services. It’s a big conversation and a decision that has significant implications to the model and approach that churches take when it comes to multisite.

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.

Why People Don’t Invite their Friends to your Church

If your church is serious about growing and reaching new people you’ve got to figure out what is keeping people from inviting their friends. While many church leaders blame their people for not inviting their friends because they’re not “spiritually mature enough” or don’t have a “deep burden” for the lost I’d suggest it may be less complicated than that. It may be your fault.

How to Say No to Ministry Opportunities and Why You Should

One of the more difficult things you’ll ever do as a leader of a growing church or organization is to learn to say no to good opportunities.

When to Add Another Worship Service at your Church

Many churches are stuck in attendance simply because they haven’t maximized their current facilities and campus. Thinking about adding another worship service at your church? Here are five strategic concepts to consider before you do.

Video Teaching Versus Live Teaching in a Multisite Church

Since those early days the multisite movement has begun to grow up a bit and today about 50% of the 8,000 (ballpark) multisite churches are delivering teaching via video while the other 50% are using live teaching in their locations. But what are the pros and cons? Which model is best for your church?

 

Posted in Leadership

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Why Video Teaching Will Work in Your Town Too

Sunday, March 4, 2018

When I consult with churches that are considering going multisite one of the key exercises I facilitate with their team centers around how they are going to approach preaching in their weekend worship services. It’s a big conversation and a decision that has significant implications to the model and approach that churches take when it comes to multisite.

Inevitably somewhere in the conversation someone challenges the idea of video teaching and says something like, “You don’t know our people, video teaching will never work with our people or in this community.” While I’d be the first to say that video teaching isn’t the right approach for every church to take it works better than you think, more often than you think, and in more locations than you think.

In fact the picture below is a video venue for a large multisite church that I recently took. This venue is their one traditional service that they do. The service has a choir and a more traditional physical space. It’s a very different vibe than the modern worship services they do in their auditoriums, but the video teaching is the same. The average age in this service is over 70. Video works. Even with an older demographic. Even in a traditional setting.

The World is not Engaging with Technology Less

People around the country and around the world are not engaging with technology less, they’re engaging with technology more. Content and information is increasingly being delivered to people over a screen. In fact on a recent trip to the Philippines, even in a poorer area, people had their smart phones. It’s time for churches to stop debating it and watching the world pass them by and start leveraging it.

I Never Saw Jesus Preach the Sermon on the Mount

Whenever this conversation comes up I routinely remind people that I never saw Jesus preach the best sermon in history (commonly referred to as the sermon on the mount) but it’s changed my life. It was written down for us to read because video technology didn’t exist yet. My hunch is if Steve Jobs was a contemporary to Jesus then someone would have pulled out their iPhone and stuck that sermon on YouTube so we could all see and hear it for ourselves.

Video Teaching Creates Greater Cultural Consistency between Campuses

I firmly believe that nothing else in your church has the power to build the unique culture of your church than preaching does. Video teaching provides churches the opportunity to allow teaching to be consistent across campuses and venues, and as a result keep culture more consistent. This is why the church pictured above has video teaching even in their “traditional service.” They wanted the people who attend the traditional service to feel like they were a part of the church not going to another church.

Most People are Against Video Teaching in Principle…until they try it

I’ve found that most “church-people” are against the idea of video teaching until they personally experience it. I say “church-people” on purpose because people who are new to your church have no idea what to expect because they’ve never been to church before. Everything is new to them so I’ve discovered that people who are new to church and Jesus don’t have the same hangups that “church-people” do.  Even in the traditional service pictured above I observed firsthand how people quickly forget that they’re watching video preaching and begin to interact with video by laughing, nodding their heads, raising their hands when asked to by the pastor, and even stand up and walk to a volunteer to say yes to following Jesus. All through video teaching.

Posted in Leadership

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New Coaching Networks with the Unstuck Group just Opened Up!

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Take Your Next Steps as a Leader

Leadership Coaching Networks with Tony Morgan and The Unstuck Group equip you with tools, systems, best practices and peer support to help you lead more effectively.

We are now accepting applications for Spring 2018 Coaching Networks

“Leading an Unstuck Church”
AND
“Leading Unstuck Multisite Church”
*Both networks are available in Atlanta and Dallas

 

This 7-month, collaborative coaching experience includes 3 group gatherings, 2 exclusive webinars, and 2 one-on-one coaching calls. This network is best suited for senior pastors, associate pastors and executive pastors. You will register a team of two and participate together.

Space is limited! We will only accept 7 churches in each group.
follow this link to apply

Note: The application deadline is April 11.
Apply now to take advantage of our early bird rate!

Posted in Leadership

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4 Questions to Shift your Thinking about Church Mergers

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Through my experience working with churches I’ve discovered that the idea of “Church Mergers” is met with a variety of emotions, many which are negative. I’ve found that some view it as a cannibalistic way for growing churches to gobble up smaller struggling churches to enlarge their own footprint and grow their brand, not the Kingdom of God. I’ve even seen some churches that would rather die and close their doors than merge with or gift their property to another church.

With all of this negative emotion around the idea of church mergers I thought I’d throw out a couple of questions that may open a more helpful conversation about mergers and maybe even shift some thinking.

What are you going to do with those Kingdom Assets?

There are churches that have a great story of growing and reaching people in the past but have declined and are on “life-support” today. Many of these Kingdom assets are in places like L.A., New York, Chicago, Washington D.C. and other areas where the cost of real-estate is a barrier to starting new churches. Why not gift those assets to a thriving and growing church in your state that has a proven and successful multisite model and turn that location into a campus?

Would a Merger Yield Greater Kingdom Results?

If you merged with another church would you experience a greater Kingdom impact together than you would individually? If each church would take more Kingdom ground as an individual autonomous church then by all means they should stay that way. But, if greater ground would be taken together it’s worth a serious conversation.

Do you want this person to be your Sr. Pastor?

Language is important. In a church merger, you’re often leading through a highly emotionally charged situation. Poorly wording things can stop things before they really get going. I’ve found one helpful way to discuss it is to ask the church that is potentially joining your church if they would want your Pastor to be their Pastor? This reframes the conversation and makes it a lot less threatening.

Would you want to adopt the Vision and Practices of the church you’re merging with?

It’s difficult to generate much traction in a church merger conversation if you lead early on with all of the stuff that the joining church is going to have to change. For instance, adopting a new vision, approach to ministry and different practices. That can feel overwhelming and threatening to the joining church. A more palatable way to get into that conversation may be to start with the stories of life-change, momentum and all of the great stuff that God is doing in and through the ministry of your church. Would the potentially joining church like to have that kind of a story and those kinds of results?

Posted in Leadership, Staffing

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10 Articles that will Help your Church Make Vision Real

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

It’s almost Christmas!!! Hope you have all of your shopping done (not likely) and I’m praying that Christmas Eve is an incredible moment at your churches and that your people take the step to invite their friends and many people “say yes” to following Jesus! Until then, let me say thanks for making November another great month here at Helping Churches Make Vision Real! It’s always good 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!

10 Insider Focused Ministry Names

This post came out of a conversation I had with a Leadership Coaching Network that I was facilitating back in 2013. So I wrote this post 4 years ago and it continues to be one of my top posts of all-time. Hope it’s helpful!

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

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.

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.

3 Shifts that Growing Multisite Churches Experience

The decision to adopt a multisite strategy to deliver growth may be a decision that your church is considering. While still young as a movement, multisite is proving to be an incredibly effective strategy for growing churches to deliver growth to new “markets” and reach new people with the Gospel. However, going multisite will make things more complicated and more difficult for you as a leader and for your church.

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.

Stop Hiring People you Like

A wrong hire can set a ministry back for years and unfortunately churches aren’t known for making great hires. Pastors have a tendency to hire people that they like, and value relational chemistry over production. I get it. Pastors are taught Greek, Theology and the Bible. Seminaries aren’t known for providing great courses on recruiting, hiring and team development.

Why at Teaching Team is a better approach to Teaching at your Church

Although the idea of a teaching team is not a new idea, I’m surprised at the amount of churches across the country that have not embraced this approach to preaching in their weekend worship services.

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.

Does your Church need to Sacrifice something Sacred?

Chances are your church has some “sacred cow” ministries that have been around for a long time, have a great history, have had a great impact in the past, but are on life support now. Does your church need to sacrifice some of these sacred cows?

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.

Posted in Leadership
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