Tag Archive - strategy

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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.

Great organizations prepare for opportunity. Preparation is all about positioning. Making decisions today that position you for opportunities that may come tomorrow. The Roman philosopher Seneca is credited with saying, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” In other words luck favors the prepared. Lucky organizations are prepared organizations.

Great organizations plan for the future. In fact they plan their work and then they work their plan. Planning is all about inflicting your will on the future, and the best way to have a preferred future is to plan for a preferred future. Great organizations have an uncanny ability to build a clear strategy and exercise laser focused discipline as they execute the strategy.

So what is your church doing today to prepare for opportunities that may come your way tomorrow? What are you uniquely doing to position yourself to be able to say yes to opportunities that Jesus brings your way? At the same time what is your church doing to build a clear strategy that, coupled with disciplined execution, moves you towards the vision that Jesus has given you for the church you’re leading?

Fortunately the Unstuck Group has experience helping churches build a clear strategy that aligns the church and provides steps to move you towards the vision Jesus has called you to. You should really check it out!


Posted in Leadership

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10 Ways Your Church Can Leverage Periscope

Ever since my wife and I went to the U2 show in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago and saw Periscope used on screen during the concert I’ve been experimenting a little bit with this new social media tool. Surprisingly I’ve found that there are some great applications for the local church.

1. Put your Staff Culture on Display

Do a quick scope of a Staff Meeting, Strategy Session, Teaching Team meeting, or walk around the church office and interview various team members about why they love working at the church.

2. Celebrate Volunteerism

Everybody knows that what you celebrate gets repeated. So why not do a quick scope each week of the “Volunteer of the Week?” Show them live in action and do a quick interview about the ministry they volunteer with and what they love about volunteering at your church.

3. Offer a Sneak Peak into a Small Group

Sometimes joining a Small Group can be a big step, even intimidating. Do a quick scope of a group live in action in someone’s home. Take the intimidation factor away by allowing people to see what’s it’s like before they go.

4. Communicate with Leaders

You can do a private scope and include the leaders you want to in the conversation. This is way better than a group text (I hate group texting)! Bonus: it stays up & available for 24 hours for those who missed it!

5. Humanize your Church Staff

Interview your Church Staff about them and their story. Not about leadership, not about the church, but their story.

6. Preview the Weekend Worship Services

Show a bit of the weekend rehearsal so people know what to expect, what they’re inviting their friends to, and why they don’t want to miss out.

7. Devotion

The church I serve at does a daily written devotion on our church app. But a church could just as easily do a scope of a daily devotional thought that’s available for 24 hours for everyone to check out.

8. Introduce People to the Church Facility

Give people a quick tour of the campus so guests know what to expect before they come. Where should they park, where should they check in their kids, how do they navigate the facility for the first time?

9. Promotion

You can use a quick scope to promote what’s going on at the church that week. It’s a quick, easy, culturally relevant way for people to opt in to communication and not get spam in their email inbox.

10. Have Fun!

Show the crazy antics that happen backstage with the band during the service, or the office pranks that happen in the workplace, or just the fun stuff you do as a staff team together. If you don’t have fun together as a team…well…this can be an excuse to start having some fun together! People want to be a part of something that’s fun!

There are probably more applications for churches to use Periscope than this, but this is what came to mind. What else would you add to the list? Leave a comment!


Posted in Creative Arts, Leadership

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Discovering the Leadership Culture at Your Church

While many churches may have a list of Core Values that they’ve built, very few churches that I’ve come across have taken the time to do the hard work of defining and clearly articulating their Staff Values or Leadership Culture that they’re trying to build at their church.

Culture is tough to define. It’s the elusive, soft stuff in the organization that’s more on the art side than the science side of leadership. It takes hard work to articulate it. But it’s a must for any church that wants to actually be intentional about building a particular staff leadership culture. A clearly defined culture allows you to make decisions, hires, and take any number of other steps at a faster pace. After all as Peter Drucker famously said…

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
Peter Drucker –

Interested in discovering the Staff Leadership Culture at your Church? Start here. Gather your Sr. Leadership Team together and spend some time wrestling with the following two questions and build some lists together.

We Love when our Staff: fill in the blank

What are the stories of the hero’s on your Staff? What are the behaviors that you wish everyone on your Staff portrayed? What are the moments that make you the most proud of your team?

We Cringe when our Staff: fill in the blank

What the the stories that you hope never get repeated? What attitudes have you seen your staff adopt, behaviors have you seen your staff engage in, or things you’ve heard them say that simply makes you cringe?

Photo Credit: Luigi Mengato via Compfight cc


Posted in Leadership, Staffing

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10 Signs your Church is Headed for Decline

When I was young my Aunt purchased a brand new car. I didn’t have a car yet so even though it wasn’t red and it had 4 doors instead of 2 I thought it was really cool. And because she had a car and I didn’t she by default was cool too.

Everything was cool until she forgot to change the oil. Truth be told, she never changed the oil. From the day she drove the car off the lot to the day it died (which was much, much sooner than it should have), that car never experienced a single oil change. Routine maintenance wasn’t her strong suite. And most of us are just like her. We put off going to the doctor for our annual check-up, we postpone going to the dentist for our 6-month check up, and yes we put off routine maintenance on our automobiles.

We just keep going until it hurts enough that we are forced to stop and go in for a check up.

Unfortunately most church leadership teams operate the same way. They put off routine check ups and maintenance until it’s too late and decline starts to set in. What if there were early warning signs (flashing lights on the dashboard) that helped indicate that trouble was ahead? In my experience Coaching Church Leaders and Consulting with Churches across the country I’ve seen the following 10 indicators of an impending decline over and over again.

1. High Staff Turnover

When a church has trouble keeping staff, the church is in trouble. Some attrition is natural over time as the church grows, the staffing structures adjust, leaders hit lids, or vision shifts. But when turnover shifts from being a season to being the norm there is a cultural problem at play.

2. Fuzzy Vision

Without a doubt the single most life-threatening indicator that a church is in trouble is a lack of clarity. Clarity provides a church with the power to make decisions efficiently and align the organizational components of the church to move forward. If you don’t know where you’re going, and can’t state it clearly, you’ve got no chance to get there.

3. Complexity

When the church is growing it’s exciting! Staff members are hired, ministries are started, buildings are built and people are meeting Jesus! But it’s not as exciting when all of that growth and fun naturally lead to complexity. Growth naturally leads to complexity and complexity slows everything down.

4. Inward Focus

I’ve said this many times before, the most dangerous place a church can be in their life cycle is when the ministry they are doing is having a big impact with insiders (people who already know Jesus and are inside the church) but a low impact with outsiders (people who don’t know Jesus yet). It’s dangerous because it’s comfortable. It feels like things are going well and you have momentum because people are happy, they’re regularly attending, and they seem to be “all in” with what you’re doing. But if you aren’t reaching new people, your church or ministry is already moving towards unhealthiness and decline.

5. Defending the Past

When a church is busy defending the past instead of building the future it is headed for decline. When a church becomes risk averse and starts making choices based on who they are going to keep as opposed to who they are going to reach, the church is in trouble. The real danger in playing defense is that it becomes a cultural mindset that actually stands in opposition to the Gospel. You see the Gospel was never meant to be or does it need to be defended it’s intended to be unleashed.

6. No Strategic Plan

Strategy answers the question, “How are we going to get there?” It’s planning for tomorrow today. Little is more demoralizing to a church staff team than a bunch of empty inspirational talk that never materializes into real courageous action.

7. Leadership Void

There are a lot of challenges facing the modern church, but perhaps the greatest challenge is a leadership challenge. The modern church is simply an anti-leadership organization. It doesn’t attract, develop, or keep leaders. Leaders by their very nature are change agents. Because the unstated goal of most churches is to preserve the past, church leaders often times find themselves fighting the family instead of fighting the enemy.

8. No Spiritual Maturity Pathway

I’ve observed that some churches are stuck or declining not because they have a difficult time attracting or introducing new people to Jesus but because they have no plan in place to move people towards spiritual maturity or the plan they’re working is broken.

9. Policy Trumps People

Policies shrink the box of creativity. They set the standard for how we do what we do every time we do it. Policies tell everybody in the organization what they can’t do, and leaders are solution oriented not excuse or problem oriented. A church with a lot of policies will consistently find it difficult to attract and keep good leaders. It’s very possible to policy your way right into decline.

10. Volunteer Scarcity

One of the things we’ve learned through our research at the Unstuck Group is that the average church in America is mobilizing somewhere around 43% of their adult and student population in volunteer opportunities. The reason it is so critical for churches to address this and take steps to move their culture in the right direction is because volunteering is discipleship. It’s not about filling roles and getting ministry done through people. It’s not about what we want from people, but rather what we want for people. It is discipleship. Because volunteering and living an others first life is the very essence of what it means to live like Jesus.

It would probably be worth some time discussing this list with the Sr. Leadership Team at your church and evaluate where your church measures up in each of these 10 areas of health.

What can we do about it? Engage the Unstuck Group in a Ministry Health Assessment. Discover islands of strength to build on and areas of opportunity to work on before they become serious and decline sets in.

By the way…leave a comment; I’d love to hear about what you’d add to the list!


Posted in Leadership

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5 Common Hiring Mistakes that Churches Make

Recruiting and hiring a new team member can be exciting! Hire the right person and the whole team benefits. When you invite the right person to join your team not only is there an infusion of new talent, but also new ideas, fresh eyes, and a new well of experiences to go to. One new hire can literally improve the performance of the entire team. On the other hand, hire the wrong person and the ministry at your church could be set back for years.

Churches are notorious for making well-intentioned bad hires. At most churches the hiring process usually goes wrong for one of the following 5 reasons.

1. Poor Contact with Candidates

The number one mistake churches make is not staying in constant (weekly) contact with candidates. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the story that a candidate submitted a resume for a job and didn’t hear back from the church for more than a month. Not even a simple, “Thank you, we received your resume.” The candidate moves on, only to be contacted weeks later by the church asking them to move to the next step. Most candidates simply want to know where they stand in the process and what the next step is. When you don’t communicate regularly they perceive that as disinterest and they move on. The best candidates aren’t going to wait around.

2. Convenience Hires

Many times churches hire based on convenience, which leads to hiring too fast. Now they wouldn’t come out and say that, but that’s exactly what it is. Someone knows the “perfect candidate,” vouches for him or her and they’re quickly hired based on a recommendation without being properly vetted. I’ve also seen churches hire repeatedly from within, in fact some even pride themselves on this. Interestingly enough hiring repeatedly from the inside is a symptom of an organization that is stuck or in decline. They hire from the inside because, “You have to be in the organization to understand it,” they’re not open to new ideas or challenging the status quo. Now I’m not against hiring from within. But when hiring from within because we are comfortable with a known internal candidate trumps doing a search and hiring the best candidate, the mission of the church suffers.

3. No Process

Many churches simply don’t have the bandwidth or experience to build an effective recruiting and hiring process. At this point I’d recommend going with a search firm to help you in the process. Unfortunately far too many churches stumble along with no idea how to identify a proper profile and job description of what’s needed in the ideal candidate, no plan to build a candidate pool, no process to vet the candidates in a timely manner, and no clear process as to how to make a decision and offer the job to the winning candidate.

4. Staffing Void of Strategy

Before you start hiring people first think about what you’re trying to accomplish. Do you have a clear strategy in place to accomplish your mission, and are you staffing to that strategy? How are you reaching people outside of the church? How do you help people who are new to your church get connected? What’s your discipleship strategy? How do you help people new to the faith grow up in their relationship with Christ? You want your staffing structure to support your strategy because as the end of the day staffing should get you to your vision. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a staff member get hired and then only stay at a church for less than 2 years because the church hadn’t staffed to their strategy and it ends up being a bad fit.

5. No On-Boarding Process

Technically this happens after the official hire is made, but I just couldn’t leave it out. Churches are notorious for racing to the finish line of a hiring process, getting the newly hired candidate in the room and breathing a collective sigh of relief. The typical church essentially says, “Congratulations, you’re hired! Here are your keys. Now go figure it out.” Once the new hire is made you’re not done. If you don’t intentionally think through the first days of their employment it can leave a sour taste for the remainder of their employment relationship with you. While they may love working at your church in 5 years, they’ll always remember their first impression as being negative.


Posted in Leadership, Staffing
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