5 Characteristics of Churches that Change

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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

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

2 Fatal Church Leadership Mistakes

Monday, January 21, 2019

When it comes to leading a church, there a lot of things that can go wrong that are outside of a pastor’s control. However, the other side of that coin is also true. There are a lot of wrong things that pastors do that are well within their control.

This isn’t an exhaustive list by any stretch of the imagination. There are all kinds of things I’ve seen church leaders do to sabotage themselves. But the following two mistakes are so common and so easy to solve that I couldn’t help identifying them.

Choosing Availability over Competency

Churches are notorious for choosing the available person over taking the time to search for or develop a competent person. Just because someone shows up doesn’t mean they’ll show out. I’ve seen churches choose staff too many times based on convenience. They’ll elevate a volunteer to a staff role because they’re a faithful volunteer and great at doing ministry or delivering tasks on time. I hope you don’t mishear me, I am all for developing internal talent, in fact about 75% of the staff who work at Sun Valley (the church I have the privilege of serving at) have been developed and hired internally. Unfortunately, just because someone can deliver tasks on time doesn’t mean they can build a team and lead others to do the tasks of ministry. It’s one thing to lead by doing, it’s a completely other thing to be able to delegate tasks to others or empower them to make decisions. Churches are also guilty of over promoting young talent too quickly because they see “something special” in them instead of developing that young talent. Promoting and developing aren’t the same thing. While it’s certainly more convenient to choose someone who’s already around and available it doesn’t always prove to be the right move.

Being a Discourager instead of an Encourager

When a good team member does something wrong, nine times out of ten they already know it. Every once in a while, (that 1 time in 10) you may need to point it out. You may need to check in with them to make sure you’re both seeing the same thing the same way, but good team members don’t need over coaching. They don’t need someone to be harsh with them or pick and point out every little thing they did wrong. They need encouragement. They need someone to believe in them and help lift their attitude, because when you lift someone’s attitude you lift their performance. You can’t play a good game with a bad attitude. Here’s the thing, even a mediocre performing team member doesn’t get any better when you rub their nose in a mistake they made. Taking an over critical or harsh approach discourages people, lowers their performance, and it demotivates. Do that long enough and all you’ll have left on your team are low performers. As a leader your words carry incredible power and weight. Use them to build people up and move them in the right direction.

If you’re a church leader and you struggle with either of these two pitfalls the first step you need to take is be honest with yourself, then be honest with your team and apologize to them. Own it. Then change your approach. It’s within your power to change. You can do this!

Posted in Leadership

Why Holiness isn’t what most Churches think it is

Sunday, January 13, 2019

At Sun Valley, the church I have the honor of serving at, once a month we gather our team together from all of our campuses. We spend time worshiping together, we share wins with each other, we communicate some stuff that we everyone needs to know, we share a meal together and we do some leadership training with everyone. From time to time I share some of those thought here with you when they may be helpful. This month Chad Moore, who serves as the Lead Pastor at Sun Valley kicked off the new year with our team with a talk that may challenge you to think differently about holiness and following Jesus.

Big Question: How do you know when you’re growing in holiness?

What does Jesus mean when He says, “By holy as I am holy?”
Technically the word holy means “set apart,” but what does that practically and daily mean for us?
For most of us growing up in church, holiness was more about what we don’t do…it was behavior oriented. If that’s accurate then holiness is all about following the rules.
But Jesus says holiness = loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and loving your neighbor as yourself…functionally speaking holiness is relational in nature.

Big Answer: You know you’re growing in holiness when you’re growing in relationship with God and people.

Everything that God wants to do in our lives this year is relational.
If you can’t be holy you have nothing else left but to be weird by trying to follow a bunch of rules.
Jesus said that the world will know us by our love for one another = by the quality of our relationships.
Ask most people in church about holy living and they’ll go to a list of what they have done and haven’t done this past week.
So many churches leave the relational component out of following Jesus when relationships are the beginning and end of what holiness actually is.
The reason the Church is irritating to so many people around the world isn’t because we don’t have the truth or good theology but because we don’t have love. This is why the bible describes love in terms and phrases like, “if I have everything right and together and don’t have love I’m still irritating to everyone around me,”…even if I’m right.
Holiness is relational.
You cannot be following Jesus in a real way and be a jerk.
Relational health is spiritual health.
The reason heaven is heaven is because relationships are perfect there.
Holiness is relational…that is the Christian life.
The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationships.

Posted in Leadership

5 Keys to Growing your Church in 2019

Sunday, January 6, 2019

I’ve never met a church leader that didn’t want things at their church to to change for the better. They want more people to say yes to following Jesus, they want people to become better friends with God, and they want their churches to think more about people outside of the church than those already in it.

The trouble is while most church leaders want this year to be better than the last, they don’t want to do anything different.

I’ve said this many times before, people (including you…and me) always want to change their circumstances, but they never want to change their lives. But everything gets better when we get better. Families get better when fathers and mothers get better. Students get better when educators get better. Organizations get better when leaders get better. And churches get better when church leaders get better. But better doesn’t happen by trying harder, it happens by trying different. It happens through change…but change is painful. Don’t let anyone tell you any different. It’s always easier and more comfortable to stay where you are than to change and move forward. But if you want to grow at some point you’ve got to stop doing what’s easy and start doing what’s right.

So, to that end, here are a couple ideas that will help you create change this year at your church…and maybe even in you.

Create Accessibility

One of the greatest changes you can make in your church to get different results is to make Jesus and His teachings more accessible to people who don’t know Him. Another way to think about this is to ask yourself or your team, “How accessible is everything at your church to people who are unfamiliar with Jesus and the Church?” How accessible is your website, signage, language, parking lot, building, kids and student ministries, worship services, and teaching to people who are unfamiliar with Jesus and His Church? Most churches simply make it too hard for people to meet and follow Jesus. They don’t do it on purpose, they’ve just forgotten what it is like to be unfamiliar with Jesus. And guess what will happen when you create more accessibility to Jesus? More people will meet Jesus…and isn’t that kinda the point?

Lean into Constraints

You probably have a list of reasons (or excuses) why you can’t grow. Barriers to the future or anchors to the past that are keeping you from getting to the future. Make a list of your top 5 constraints and figure a way through them or around them. You constraints may even be the thing that help you innovate and come up with a solution you would have never otherwise come up with on your own. To that point, one of the top 3 reasons the church I serve at went multisite 6 years ago is because the original location was nearing a point where it would be fully maximized. Today we’re reaching more people for Jesus than ever because we had a facility constraint that forced us into a new solution (multisite) that is helping us reach new people for Jesus than we ever would have or could have at that one original location. Your biggest constraints may just turn out to be your best friend.

Allow Hope to Die

Stop hoping things are going to change at your church. Hope doesn’t change or produce new results at your church. Action does. Specifically, new action. Hope is not a strategy. Too many church boards and church leaders are sitting around praying and hoping that Jesus would do something new and powerful in their church this year when He already did something new and powerful 2,000 years ago on the cross. He’s simply waiting for those same church boards and church leaders to have the same kind of courage He did and lead things forward.

Draft some new Players

If you want new results at your church, then it may be time to shake up the team a bit. New team members bring new experiences, expertise, ideas, and questions with them that aren’t currently on your team. You become who you hire and sometimes one or two new team members can help shift the entire locker room on a team.

Listen to Fresh Eyes

Sometimes you simply need fresh eyes, someone from the outside to help you see things differently. Sometimes you need an outside voice to say some things that you want to say but can’t. And sometimes you’re just stuck and need help. If that’s your church, then maybe the best step you can take to change things at your church is to engage the Unstuck Group. We help churches grow their impact through church consulting and coaching experiences designed to focus vision, strategy and action.

Taking new and different action will get you different results. And if you need a little help getting unstuck then connect with us at the Unstuck Group, we can help this next year be the best year of ministry you’ve ever experienced!

Posted in Leadership

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