Discerning and Developing Core Values
Over the years, there has been a good bit of conversation amongst church leaders, consultants, and coaches about congregational values – as in, every church needs to identify their core values. All that’s fine and good, but far too often I’ve come upon churches that spout their values as if they’re water springing from a […]
Two Underlying Views of Christianity
Over the years of consulting I’ve noticed two basic views of Christianity. One view understands Christianity to be a way of life that has eternal consequences. The other view understands it to be a way of life that has no eternal consequences. Obviously a huge gulf lies between these two views of Christianity. I’ve often […]
A New but Old Metric
I just finished a book called Gaining By Losing: Why the Future Belongs to Churches that Send by J.D. Greear. The premise is basically that the more people you send or give away for whatever reason, the more likely the church is to thrive because that is God’s plan for all churches as seen in […]
Making a Difference
The U.S. is full of clergy who go from day to day with no plan for how to make their world a better place. They do what others want them to do as if that is why God put them here. Well, I don’t think that’s God’s plan. I think when God calls us, he gives […]
Developing a Membership Covenant
I’m a big “DNA” fan; that is, I believe that, before a church can be effectively planted, grown, or transformed (pick whichever category you find yourself in), its leaders, and ultimately its congregation, have to wrestle with this question: “Why do we exist and what does it matter?” Once the grappling is over and the leaders emerge from […]
Do You Measure Up?
How you measure up as a leader is largely determined by what it is you measure. It turns out, one of the differences between an average leader and a great leader can be found by looking at what they put on their spreadsheets. Actually, that’s a bit misleading. Most of the important measurements don’t actually fit […]