Developing Christ-like Leadership (Part 1)

If you are a Christian, then your ultimate goal is to become like Jesus Christ. God has given us the Holy Spirit to live in us to help us grow to become more like him. If we want the Spirit to grow in us, we must join our life to his so we can […]

Why Most Church Consultations Don’t Make a Long-Term Difference

We at 21st Century Strategies have been doing church consultations for over twenty-three years and we’ve had the opportunity to study why some churches thrive after a consultant has done their job and why other churches fail. Conversations with other church consultants reveal a lot of the same data. Here’s the bottom line: for […]

Release Your Young Leaders

By Bill Easum
         Over the years the average age of the people who serve in leadership on the churches Boards I’ve worked with (over six hundred) is fifty-two years of age, whereas the average age of our country is 36.9. In addition, the average board member has been a member of the church for […]

Five Things I Wish Every Small Group Leader Knew

By Bill Tenny-Brittian

In the North American House Church Movement there are all kinds of small group and House Church leaders, but we can pretty well divide them into two groups: Those with formal training (Bible college or seminary) and those without.  So far, in my experience and study, the ones without have far less […]

Mission Statements

Five good books for creating a Mission Statement:

The Path, by Laurie Beth Jones, New York, NY, Hyperion, 1996Managing By Values, by Ken Blanchard and Michael O’Connor, San Francisco, Berrett- Koehler Publishers, 1997****Building A Shared Vision, C. Patrick Lewis, Portland, OR,     Productivity Press, 1997Built to Last, James Collins, and Jerry Porras, Harper     Business, 1997Clarifying our […]

What’s a Leader to Do?

It was a train wreck in the making. The senior pastor had been called when the church was averaging about 400 in worship and he led a growth initiative that took the church to nearly 1000. But between the 400 and the 1000 came a revelation to the church’s leadership, including the board. The senior […]

Three Hard Choices Effective Leaders Make

Effective church leadership is the most glamourless, thankless, and frustrating job on the planet.

I make that emphatic statement based on two observations. First, I’m unaware of any other sector, profit or non-profit, that is seeing 85 percent of all operation centers facing serious decline – and the leaders of course are shouldered with the […]

Five Books For The 21st Century

I’ve always been a voracious reader, so I encourage pastors to read a minimum of ten books a month. I was glad to read a blog from Rick Warren titled “To Be a Great Leader You Absolutely Must Be a Reader.” You can see the article here.

However, I remember when I was a pastor […]

Staff Disharmony: The Giant Killer

In the world of church, there are many different kinds of giants. Some are the kind we need to get our slings out to slay. But there are other giants who have earned our respect. For instance, there are giants of the faith: women and men who have already died to self and live […]