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3 leadership practices every young minister can do right now

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Church leadership, Leadership lessons, pastor growth, pastor leadership, pastor lessons, young pastors, youth pastors

May 21, 2015 at 3:47 pm.

I recently had coffee with a young(er) minister. He asked a great question: What can I do right now? The young minister (he’s around 20) wanted to know how he could lead better. Starting today. He caught me a bit off guard. After all, leadership is learned and refined over time. Pastors spend years growing. He knew that, but he also wanted to know what could be done immediately.

I’m not that far removed from being a “young” pastor (at 35, many might still categorize me in this way), but I have learned — some things the hard way — from pastoring for 10 years. There are a few practices young ministers can do right now that will help them grow immediately. Here are three leadership practices I shared with him.

Stop worrying about Millennials

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church generations, church youth, Engaging Millennials, Millennials church, millennials faith, millennials outreach

May 21, 2015 at 3:40 pm.

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.

Settling the annual review debate

Posted by admin

church compensation, church employee review, Church HR, church staff, church staff management, employee review, Staff management

May 11, 2015 at 1:29 pm.

In HR and management circles, there is a raging debate over whether or not to do annual reviews.

staffmanagementAll of Christ Community Church’s 120-plus employees are currently at the end of our fiscal year annual review season. Between now and June 30, each employee will receive a year-end review that takes place once a year at this time. It is a very systematic and organized process.

So, you can guess from our process that I am a believer in annual reviews. Well, I am — but you might be surprised at my answer to the annual review debate. Should an organization, business or church conduct annual reviews?

My answer is a resounding “maybe”. Let me explain.

4 reasons why connecting spaces trump cattle chutes

Posted by admin

church campus design, Church design, church facilities, connecting spaces, facilities management, third space, third space design

May 11, 2015 at 1:16 pm.

When I started my career in church facility development in 19XX (you venture a guess), the foyer/lobby/narthex (for my liturgical friends) was generally sized to be 1- to 2-square-feet per seat in the main worship space. In those days, this space was intended to be used as a place to funnel people from the worship space to the outside or down a series of narrow corridors that led to the education, administration or fellowship areas. There was often a small table for giving / tithing envelopes or general information, along with one or two uncomfortable high-back chairs … usually not ones you would enjoy sitting in for any length of time, nor were they arranged in a manner to encourage conversation or community.

For all practicality, the foyer was nothing more than a well-appointed cattle chute. (MOO)

Not any more.

The difference between commentary and leadership

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Church leadership, church management, church pastors, church sermon, church speaking, commentary

May 11, 2015 at 12:56 pm.

Both commentary and leadership are needed. Sometimes they overlap — a commentator may also be a leader. But here is how they are different.

How a healthy church can spiral — quickly — into dysfunction

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church crisis management, church decline, Church Growth, Church health, Church leadership, church sickness, church spiral

May 4, 2015 at 1:44 pm.

Churches are more like organisms than they are organizations. Like an organism, when church health declines, it typically does so slowly. But there are cases when an otherwise healthy person experiences a sudden deterioration. Healthy churches can also experience a sharp decline in health. There are cases of healthy churches quickly becoming dysfunctional. Below are five ways I’ve seen churches spiral downward quickly, almost overnight.

Top 5 necessary leadership skills

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Church leadership, executive pastor leadership, Leadership lessons, leadership traits, pastor leadership

April 17, 2015 at 1:22 pm.

Every leader has different skills that make that leader unique. However, at the core of every leader — a coach, a parent, a boss and a project manager — are at least 10 necessary foundational skills needed to thrive.

Performance bonds: beneficial or a waste of money?

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Church building, church building project, Church Construction, Church expansion, church facility management, Church Finance, church performance bond, construction financing, facility stewardship

April 17, 2015 at 1:03 pm.

For most of my professional career, I have been anti-performance and payment bond-oriented. To me, they seem like such a waste of money. In short, they’re just an insurance policy (although the Surety industry would say they are not “insurance” but rather a “guarantee” — semantics!) in the unlikely event the general contractor on a job is unable to complete the project (usually due to a bankruptcy or other major catastrophe related to the contractor). In theory, that sounds great. It almost feels like the proverbial “Get Out Of Jail” card. But is it really?

What makes a leader a Christian leader?

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Christian leaders, Christian Leadership, church leaders, Church leadership, Leadership lessons, pastor leadership

April 3, 2015 at 1:04 pm.

As a big fan of Major League Baseball and Christianity, I like to keep my ears open to hearing of Christian ballplayers. It’s not that their statistics are going to be any different or that they run faster or slower. I watch them to see how they live.

4 leadership lessons from March Madness

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Church leadership, church staff management, Leadership lessons, pastor leadership, Staff management, team leadership

March 19, 2015 at 4:09 pm.

It’s here — the bracket of glory, or the bracket of destruction. While we’re watching the games and reviewing our brackets, there are a few leadership lessons to learn from all the madness.