Tag Archive - win

1

Why I Love Working at Sun Valley Community Church

When I was a freshman in High School I prayed a prayer, begging God to let me to be a part of helping thousands of people meet Him. It’s crazy to think that all of these years later God is answering those prayers.

Every year at Sun Valley Community Church we share wins from the previous year of ministry and I thought I’d share them with you. I hope this is encouraging to you, inspires you, and prompts you to pray for the ministry of Sun Valley.

Ministry isn’t all about the numbers, it’s about life change. That’s why I’m excited about these numbers, because they represent lives that are being changed.  These numbers below represent stories of people who Sun Valley has helped meet, know and follow Jesus.

  • 1,034 people said yes to following Jesus
  • 799 people were baptized
  • 506 people strengthened their marriage through our marriage ministry
  • More than 3,800 people attended a Sun Valley Campus for the first time
  • More than 2,000 people are a part of a volunteer team
  • More than 3,300 people are a part of a small group where they’re building great friendships centered around Gods’ Word
  • We’ve ministered to more than 1,600 kids and students every week
  • More than 300 people went on a short-term mission trip
  • 76 families paid off more than $750,000 of debt through our financial ministry
  • More than 1.6 Million Dollars went outside the 4-walls of Sun Valley Community Church to help people all over the world meet, know and follow Jesus
  • We opened our 5th Campus on Christmas Eve with more than 1,900 people in attendance and 30 people said yes to following Jesus!

You’re allowed to celebrate right along with us. The Kingdom of God is taking ground through the ministry of Sun Valley! It’s humbling and exciting to see prayers I prayed years ago as a freshman in High School answered all of these years later. So pray big prayers and take big risks, because we have a big God, and He still does big things! I’d encourage you, if the Lord brings us to your mind, pray for us as we continue to help the thousands who don’t yet know Jesus meet, know, and follow Him.


Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation

0

Celebrating Wins from 2016

Every year at this time it’s common to look back and review the wins from the previous year. This is particularly timely as the leadership team for The Unstuck Group gathers in the coming days to refresh our vision and action plan for 2017 and beyond.

Here’s what we discovered in looking back at 2016. There’s a lot to celebrate and thank God for here:

  • We had the opportunity to serve over 75 churches by helping them through a health assessment, development of an action plan and reviewing their staffing and structure.
  • We added Blake Stanley, Lee Button, Gabe Kolstad and Jacinta Livingston to our team. That now helps position us to serve churches in the United Kingdom and the Northwest here in the United States.
  • We traveled to 30 states, Canada and the Costa Rica to help churches get unstuck.
  • The churches we served ranged in size from 65 to over 8,500 in attendance. In case you’re curious, the average size church we serve is 1,082 people.
  • We worked in 18 different denominations. That included extending our initiative supporting denominations that want to resource their healthiest churches.
  • We engaged 64 leaders in coaching networks to help them take their next steps in their leadership.
  • We rolled out a new multisite service to help churches that are “MultiStuck.” The service is designed to help these churches clarify their ministry model and their multisite strategy to effectively lead one church in multiple locations.
  • We launched The Leadership Unstuck Podcast where we share relatable stories to inspire hope and give practical steps to get your church unstuck.
  • We released a new edition of Vital Signs: Why Church Health Matters and 14 Ways to Measure It. This resource now includes benchmarks from the analysis of over 200 churches.

You are allowed to cheer along with the Unstuck team as we celebrate these wins. In addition to that, though, we would appreciate your prayers as we continue our mission to help churches experience health and growth. We continue to strive to help more churches get unstuck.

I encourage you to take some time yourself to thank God and celebrate the wins of the last year before you dive headfirst into everything ahead.


Posted in Leadership, Staffing

1

The Art of Execution

August kicks off a new ministry year at Sun Valley, the church I have the privilege of serving at, and that means it’s time to get the team in the room and talk about the new year. Through out the ministry year we get the entire staff team from all campuses together once a month to worship together, celebrate wins, communicate stuff that everyone needs to know and provide leadership training. This month Chad Moore, who serves as the Lead Pastor at Sun Valley, shared about bridging the gap between vision and reality. The art of execution. Here are some of the best highlights.

  • Leadership is one of the most talked about and least understood spiritual gifts in the Bible.
  • David submitted to the vision God had for his life not the vision he had for his life (the calling on David’s life wasn’t to build the temple, but to defeat the enemies of God).
  • Solomon didn’t dream up the idea he executed the idea and the idea wasn’t general or generic it was VERY VERY VERY specific.
  • Vision isn’t mystical it’s specific, it’s a dream with a deadline “build the temple.”
  • Define reality, Dream a preferred future, and Design a pathway to get there.
  • Any time you are serving God it is going to involve serving people.
  • Inspiration and motivation don’t actually make anything happen, discipline does.
  • People who actually do the least get celebrated the most (public figures).
  • You make touchdowns yard by yard, down by down as you move down the field.
  • Discipline is the missing art of leadership.
  • The only way to hike the Grand Canyon is to go do the bleachers again, and again, and again.
  • You don’t follow Jesus in the spotlight but in the everyday mundane stuff that nobody sees.
  • The more specific the plan the better the plan.
  • The “science side” of the plan = what is written down, budget, etc.
  • You have to “embrace the stupid” if you’re going to learn and grow…i.e. “I don’t want to look stupid to do something new I’ve never done or learned before.”
  • Effort = “Work as hard as we can”
  • Excellence = “Work as well as we can”

Posted in Leadership

0

10 Articles that will Help Your Church Make Vision Real

Thank you for making May another great month here at Helping Churches Make Vision Real! It’s great 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!

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.

How to get Guests to Come Back to your Church

Why is it that the one organization on the planet that should care the most about people, the church, seems to get a bad rap for the way it treats people?

How to Clear Up the Vision at your Church

In my experience working with churches “vision” seems to be one of the most talked about and least understood concepts in church leadership. Most church leaders have a tendency to over-complicate or over-spiritualize vision.

Insider Focuses Ministry Names

The language we choose to use is important because it both reflects and builds culture at the same time. And one of the most obvious ways to tell if a church is insider focused or outsider focused is the language that they choose to use. It either says that the church is “inclusive” or “exclusive.”

Why Good Leaders Shut Down New Ideas

There are countless examples of organizations and churches that fall in love with past success, become risk adverse over time, and refuse to change. But did you know that the most successful organizations and churches on the planet are just as adept at shooting down new ideas? Here’s why…

How to Leave your Church

No matter what style or size of church you serve in, no matter what title you have behind your name, there is one thing that every person in ministry has in common. At some point in the near or distant future, you will leave your current ministry position.

The 4-Phase Planning Process for Church Leaders

Few churches have a great planning process. Most don’t even have a good planning process, if they have a process at all. I’m not sure why this isn’t a bigger priority. Planning is certainly biblical. I don’t find many pastors who would really take aim at that fact. You’d have to throw out a lot of Proverbs, if you decided to.

Why some churches Win but most Lose

There are a lot of reasons why 80% of churches in America aren’t winning and there’s no “silver bullet” fix. But there are a couple of things that winning churches consistently do that losing churches don’t.

is your church Over-Thinking Discipleship?

At the Unstuck Group we’ve discovered an alarming trend in churches across America. When we lead a church through our strategic planning process we help them discover several “core issues” that that are holding them back from being the church that God has called them to be. In a study that we conducted more than any other issue churches identified creating a solid discipleship strategy as the most pressing issue they are facing.

10 Signs your church is Headed for Decline

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.

Photo Credit: justin fain via Compfight cc


Posted in Leadership

2

Why Some Churches Win But Most Lose

Not every church is winning. In fact Thom Rainer, President and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources has stated in his research that: “Eight out of ten of the approximately 400,000 churches in the United States are declining or have plateaued.”

There are a lot of reasons why 80% of churches in America aren’t winning and there’s no “silver bullet” fix. But there are a couple of things that winning churches consistently do that losing churches don’t.

1. They make Decisions based on Who they are trying to Reach Instead of Who they are trying to Keep

The primary filter for winning churches is “What can we do (short of sin) to reach people who are far from Jesus?” You may think that all these churches care about is evangelism and helping people meet Jesus (Is that so bad?), and that leads to the church being a mile wide and an inch deep. But surprisingly these churches are usually very sensitive to helping people who have recently said yes to following Jesus take their next steps in their spiritual journey with Him. If a church isn’t reaching new people then it’s already dying, it just hasn’t shown up yet.

2. They Embrace Change

Winning churches embrace change. They change their staff and organizational structure. They change their worship style. They change their strategies. They change what ministries they offer. They are incessantly tinkering to try and improve what they do to reach new people with the Gospel. They take big risks because they have a big God and they trust Him for big results. They are not afraid to try new things. They’re not afraid to fail.

3. They don’t just Shepherd People well they Lead People

While the staff at winning churches care deeply about people, they don’t view themselves as simply caretakers and they don’t view their role as simply taking care of people. They view themselves as leaders and feel a responsibility to lead people where Jesus wants them to go even if that means it’s going to be uncomfortable. After all, when was following Jesus ever comfortable?

4. They Help People take Steps not get into a Class

Most winning churches I’ve been around aren’t as interested in biblically educating people as they are challenging people to become obedient to the biblical knowledge they already have. They view discipleship as obedience not information. Winning churches have a clear plan to move people from guests to fully involved and people that say yes to Jesus to following Jesus. Their goal isn’t to simply get people into a class.


Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation, Staffing
Page 2 of 4«1234»