By Tim Spivey The most overlooked and underrated trait of people who serve in healthy, growing churches is a positive attitude. This isn’t to be mistaken for blindness to obstacles or a “yes man/woman” posture. I’m talking about one’s primary attitude, and whether it is oriented toward self/others and criticism/encouragement. What weather do they produce […]
Read More >The simple implementation of the Monday rule can change the climate of your church for the better significantly.
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Both of us were considered “up-and-comers.” We were close in age, and even among well-meaning men who love the Lord, competition can crop up subtly.
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There’s an old saying, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” I don’t know who coined the phrase or what the circumstances were, but they were wrong for the most part — at least with regards to leadership.
From nearly entry vantage point of church leadership, I’ve found familiarity to be an asset.
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There are many good races, but only one matters most.
It doesn’t matter if you win a race if it’s the wrong race. We can’t declare ourselves winners of a marathon for winning a boat race.
It’s winning. It’s just winning at the wrong thing.
Which is a form of losing.
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Calm is the “unicorn” of virtues in a world gone mad.
all-is-calmSomewhere along the line, it became cool to be loud and bitter.
It became an expectation that, for us to change the world (our job, apparently), we had to become social activists. Not the good kind — the Rosa Parks type of social activist. I mean the other kind. The abrasive, snarky, shaming, Jesus-juking, share-button-hitting, constantly outraged kind of social activists.
Read More >There are certain ministry roles have more conflict between them than others. Senior Pastors and Youth Pastors, Church Administrators and Youth Ministers, for example. There is also sometimes significant tension between the Worship Leader and the one preaching Sunday. This is obviously not the case in every church, but it is in many churches.
Read More >I’ve consulted with dozens of churches formally, and perhaps hundreds informally. However, many churches never evaluate their ministry with any rigor.
The reason, these churches say, is because they don’t see the need for the effort, expense and potentially difficult season (emotionally) inaugurated by bringing in someone from the outside or going through an evaluation process. In my experience, those who refuse to evaluate themselves are either trying to avoid seeing empirically what they already know to be true through experience (painful), or are deferring pain in hopes it can be avoided by grasping for quick-fix solutions in the present (“We got this”).
Such mindsets betray feelings of, We could fix this if we really wanted to or really thought there was a problem. The words of the late Dr. Charles Siburt come to mind here: “Then why haven’t you?”
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Everyone is buzzing over the new Pew Research study that suggests Millennials are continuing to leave Christianity for the ranks of the “nones” (the religiously unaffiliated). A closer look at the data shows the bulk of the slide has occurred within Mainline Christian denominations and Catholicism, with Evangelical Protestants essentially holding the fort. While the bulk of the study didn’t isolate Millennials, its implications aim toward them. This means of course, the obligatory freak-out among some Christians who are afraid we are losing the next generation.
Here are some brief thoughts of my own.
Read More >Pastors are unusually dependent on “the well.” All people are to one degree or another, but pastors are more dependent on “the well” than others — in part because they participate first-hand in helping replenish the wells of others. When we dry up, the results are felt by others.
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