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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The Best of Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit Pt-2

Monday, November 10, 2014

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 Patrick Lencioni bestselling author, Founder and President, The Table Group.

The Most Dangerous Mistakes a Leader Makes

#1 Becoming a Leader for the wrong reason

Fame, money, power, etc.
Why should someone want to become a leader? Because they want to sacrifice themselves for others even when they may not get anything in return.
There is no other kind of leadership other than servant leadership
If it’s not servant leadership then it’s just economics and measuring a Return on Investment

#2 Failing to Embrace Vulnerability

Destroys trust with the people that they lead
You can’t be too vulnerable as a leader
People have a right to expect you to be competent but they don’t expect you to be perfect
Vulnerable leaders are genuine, apologize, don’t cover up for themselves, and lean into others are better than themselves in particular areas

#3 Making Leadership too Important

Most of the time we’re thinking about leadership…we’re thinking about work
Our identity can get wrapped up in being a leader instead of other more important things like being a child of God, spouse, or parent
Are the people (family) who are our primary vocation getting ignored because our jobs and employees are more important than them?

Pride is what all 3 of these things have in common

When Jesus introduced humility as a virtue to society he perfected leadership.

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The Best of Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit 2014 Pt-1

Sunday, November 9, 2014

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.

Key Question: Are there some moments in our leadership that are disproportionate in influence, that matter more than any others?

Crucial Conversations: these 3 things cause these moments to become more crucial than others

High Stakes
Opposing Opinions
Strong Emotions

Principle #1 Any time you find yourself stuck in a relationship or team: There are always crucial conversations that we are not holding or not holding well

When it matters most you and I seem to do our worst

You have options when a crucial conversation comes

Talk it out
Act it out (if you don’t talk it out you will act it out…it will affect your behavior)

We buy into a lie early on and that is “We have to choose between telling the truth and keeping a friend.”
You can measure the health in a relationship or team by measuring how many undiscussables there are in the relationship or organization.
Progress in organizations begin when we as leaders discuss the undiscussables.
Our job as leaders is to model, teach, and measure these crucial conversations.
Crucial conversations are either a pit or a path – they can become an acceleration of intimacy – they become trust building accelerators
The Bible is a history of crucial conversations

“The vital behavior that enables most any positive organizational outcome is candor at moments of acute emotional and political risk”

7 Skills to Successfully Navigating Crucial Conversations:

Start with the Heart
Learn to Look
Make it Safe
Master my Stories
STATE MY Path
Explore Others’ Path
Move to Action

In the first 30 seconds of a crucial conversations there are 2 things that determine if you will be heard:

Mutual Purpose: Help them know that you care about their interest, concerns and interests
Mutual Respect: Help them know that you genuinely care about them.

Candor is never the problem: people never get defensive about what you’re saying. People become defensive because of why they think you’re saying it.

Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation, Staffing

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5 Articles to Help You Make Vision Real

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Craziest thing just happened. You helped make the month of August the highest trafficked month on Helping Churches Make Vision Real! If I haven’t said it lately, thank you! It’s fun to see the comments and interaction through social media each month about the content and articles that are posted here! It’s always good to hear that the content is 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. What the Church can Learn from Southwest Airlines about Volunteers

I was recently on a Southwest Airlines flight and witnessed one of the most amazing volunteer moments I’ve ever seen. When it came time for the midflight snack of pretzels and peanuts a woman on the flight stepped up and volunteered to pass out the snack. And here’s the amazing thing…they let her! No application, no waiver, and no complex training classes. They simply handed over the basket of snacks and said go for it! Watching this whole thing go down I couldn’t help but think about how difficult we make it for people in the church to volunteer. Here are a couple of observations from that moment that I think are worth the church considering.

2. A Large Multisite Church in Phoenix is Looking for a Campus Pastor

I’m pleased to announce a new Staff Search. Sun Valley Community Church, is beginning a search for a Campus Pastor to serve on our Tempe 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 5,500 people. Sun Valley was recently named by Outreach Magazine as one of the top 10 fastest growing churches in America. The Tempe Campus is the result of a merger in October of 2011 with Bethany Community Church. In the merger Sun Valley acquired a 16-acre, 8 building campus with over 100,000 sq. ft. under roof. Since the merger the campus has doubled in attendance and at present attendance is over 1,000. When fully utilized the campus capacity will accommodate 7,000 people. 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.

3. A Leadership Conversation with Larry Osborne

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in a post entitled “Making Small Groups the Hub of Your Ministry” that I recently had the opportunity to spend some time at NorthCoast Church with Larry Osborne and his team to talk about Leadership and Small Groups. If you don’t know already, NorthCoast is an outlier when it comes to small groups and you need to get to know these guys. While the norm across the nation is hovering at about 50% of weekend worship attendance in groups, NorthCoast is shattering that norm and boasts just over 90% of their weekend worship attendance in groups. That was enough for us to get on a plane and spend some time learning from these guys. While that original post focused on Small Groups these are some of my take aways from the conversation that had broader implications for pastors and leaders.

4. Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit

If you missed the 2013 Global Leadership Summit, then you missed some great content, great speakers, and incredible ideas that have the potential to shift your thinking when it comes to leadership. This really was one of the best Leadership Summits I can remember. But no worries! Now you’ve got all the notes to every session right here at your fingertips for free! Hope you enjoy!

5. Leadership Lessons from a Family Vacation

Like many families this summer, we did a family vacation. Lisa and I had the opportunity to take the kids (all 4 of them now) for an incredible week in the mountains! Like any leader, it’s tough for me to just “turn it off.” So…upon reminiscing, here are five leadership lessons that parallel our time together we had as a family this summer.

Posted in Leadership

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Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit 2013

Friday, August 16, 2013

If you missed the 2013 Global Leadership Summit, then you missed some great content, great speakers, and incredible ideas that have the potential to shift your thinking when it comes to leadership. This really was one of the best Leadership Summits I can remember. But no worries! Now you’ve got all the notes to every session right here at your fingertips for free! Hope you enjoy!

1. Bill Hybels

Willow Creek Community Church Founder and Senior Pastor Bill Hybels opened the Summit addressing the courage that leadership requires.

2. Colin Powell

One of the United States greatest leaders in recent history, General Colin Powell, gave a talk based on his recent book “It Worked for Me, in Life and Leadership.”

3. Patrick Lencioni

Patrick Lencioni, is the founder and president of The Table Group and author of 10 best selling books. He gave an incredible talk about “The 3 Signs of a Miserable Job”!

4. Liz Wiseman

Liz Wiseman is the President of the Wiseman Group, a Silicon Valley leadership development firm. She is a former executive at Oracle Corporation, a Fortune 100 company. She is also a Wall Street Journal Best-selling Author. She gave a talk based on her book Multipliers.

5. Chris Brown

Chris Brown serves as one of four Lead Pastors at North Coast Community Church in Southern California. Without question this was one of the best and most challenging talks for Church Leaders this year!

6. Bob Goff

Founder and CEO of Restore International, Attorney, and Author of the incredible book Love Does. In his unique style Bob talked about how love takes action.

7. Mark Burnett

It was incredible to sit and listen to Bill Hybles have a conversation with Mark Burnett, four-time Emmy Award Winner and Executive Producer of Survivor, The Voice and The Bible among other shows.

8. Joseph Grenny

Joseph Grenny is the Co-Founder of VitalSmarts and best-selling author. He spoke on mastering the skill of influence, the topic of his book: Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change.

9.Vijay Govindarajan

Vijay Govindarajan was interviewed by Jim Mellado about getting innovation right. Vijay is ranked #3 on Thinkers 50 and was named one of the Top 10 Business School Professors in the world by Business Week.

10. Dr. Brene Brown

Dr. Brene Brown, Research Professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work did an incredible job speaking about the vulnerability of a leader. Dr. Brown is a groundbreaking researcher into the topics of shame, worthiness, and courage. Check out her book Daring Greatly.

11.Oscar Muriu

Oscar Muriu who serves as the Senior Pastor at Nairobi Chapel in Kenya gave an inspiring talk about multiplying your impact exponentially. Under Oscar’s leadership Nairobi Chapel has grown from a 40 person local church to a network of 30 churches with more than 14,000 in weekly attendance!

12. Dr. Henry Cloud

Leadership expert, clinical psychologist, and best selling author Dr. Henry Cloud spoke on “Reversing the Death Spiral of a Leader.”

13. Andy Stanley

The closing session of the 2013 Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit was entrusted to Andy Stanley of North Point Ministries, and he delivered!

Posted in Leadership