Off the Agenda: Conversations for Building Church Leaders

About this time last year, our outreach committee (of which I am a member) began planning our church’s participation in the community’s Fourth of July parade. It’s a big deal. Literally everyone in town shows up. Consequently, it has been a priority event for our church for years—a chance to connect with the community and tell them about church ministries.

So, after all our planning, a record breaking four people showed up to build the float. Three of us were on the committee. Complete disaster.

Continue reading "Outreach After Programs"...

I remembered the value of cleaning the office desk recently as I happened upon my notes from Willow Creek's 2007 Leadership Summit. During the conference, I made a specific point not to capture every single word possible, which I am prone to do, thanks to my background as a journalist. Instead, I attempted to listen and soak up what I could from the summit's impressive list of speakers.

But I broke that self-prescribed rule when I listened to Pastor Bill Hybels' pre-recorded interview with General Colin Powell. Looking back on those notes, I'm glad I did.

Powell, the former U.S. Secretary of State for President George W. Bush, provided his thoughts on leadership. I counted no less than 15 tips he offered, some of the obvious nature, some not. And while I recall feeling somewhat disappointed at the time that the interview didn't cover any leadership lessons Powell drew from his experiences in the events leading up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, I was pleased with the rest of the ground he and Hybels covered.

In particular, Powell emphasized the power and importance of conflict done well. In a culture where conflict often gets viewed in negative terms, I found this advice particularly wise for leaders. Some of his other tips can be a bit unnerving--"Be prepared to disappoint and/or anger some people," and "Prepare to be lonely." Others were of the refreshing variety ("Check your ego at the door," and "Remember that perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.")

So, in the order Powell gave them, here's a quick summary of leadership principles through his eyes:

Continue reading "Colin Powell: 15 Tips on Leadership"...

Leaders operating from a sense of mission care not only about what they do, but how they do it. They pursue excellence, not for its own sake but for the sake of the mission that orders their lives.

Pursuing excellence with this motive is not a burden; it is a privilege. It is not a pursuit of excellence born out of an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist pathology. Great leaders feel profound gratitude to God for the opportunity to give their lives to the mission he has chosen for them. For them, practicing excellence is part of a grateful response to him. Their commitment to excellence shows up in as many ways as there are for leaders to pursue mission. It may be apparent in organizing a meal for people in community centers, in training small-group leaders at church, or in maximizing the efficiency of operational costs for a global missions enterprise.

Continue reading "Excellence"...

I have this cartoon strip coming together in my mind. It has three frames: Frame 1: A well-dressed man—your stereotypical church leader—is taking in a worship service. His wife is sitting next to him. The congregation is standing, hands raised, praising with all their might. A guitarist is on the platform leading the singing. The only people sitting are the man and his spouse. As she looks on, he leans over and says, “I hear you can induce a trance if you sing repetitive phrases over and over…” She ignores him.

Frame 2: The sermon. With a Bible in one hand, the pastor proclaims, “…and we know this is true because God said it to us in his Word!” Again, the churchgoing man whispers to his wife, “You know, we can’t even be sure that exact line was in Paul’s original letter.” Her face shows the beginnings of a frown.

Frame 3: The churchgoing man now is in heaven. He is touring the New Jerusalem Museum of Original Manuscripts. A placard on the wall tells us he is reading the original text of Romans. His finger traces the words of chapter 1, verse 29—“They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, cynicism, skepticism, and malice.”

“Cynicism… skepticism,” he thinks with a guilty look on his face, “I’m sure glad those got lost in translation!”

Off to the side, his (former) wife is talking to Paul. “Why did that not make it into our Bibles?” she asks.

“Something about not testing us beyond what we could bear,” the apostle replies.

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I’ll admit that all blog posts are slightly autobiographical if you’ll admit that this is one of the constant struggles of serving in the church. We spend so much time around the work of God that we risk losing the wonder and a sense of the holiness of it all.

There are myriad ways to combat cynicism. I think we need to recover the ability to laugh about it (note: I did not say we should laugh at each other). Cynicism is pitiful—a bad attitude masquerading as thoughtful elitism. But it’s a poisonous defense mechanism. It gives Satan a huge foothold at the highest levels of church leadership.

If laughing at it will help us to admit the truth—that we’re tempted to deny the holiness of the things we deal in, and even though we continue to struggle, we know that cynicism is ridiculous—then may our churches be filled with laughter.

How do you combat cynicism and skepticism?

Any church attempting to run a small-groups ministry will inevitably encounter a stiff obstacle to growth: the need for more leaders. This is actually a turning point in many respects—find a way to surmount this barrier, and there’s a good shot your groups will thrive and your church will be blessed by a “culture of discipleship.” Fall short, and your small-groups ministry will likely fall flat.

Of course, there is no shortage of recommendations on how churches can succeed in cultivating and training legions of group leaders (we are in the information age, after all). But recently I heard something new on this subject that makes a lot of sense.
I was interviewing Larry Osborne—pastor of North Coast church in Vista, California—on the subject of integrating church members into small groups.

One of the keys he mentioned was making sure that your best people are involved in the ministry as leaders (including, he added, pastors and staff…). Naturally, I was curious to know how North Coast surmounted the obstacle mentioned above, so I asked him about it.
Here is his response:

“Cut the competition. If a church has so much programming going on that people are stretched too thin—Adult Bible Fellowships, Sunday schools, midweek programs, large community outreaches, and so on—small groups inevitably will fall to the back of the priority list. You end up not having your key leaders with you because they’re already overwhelmed. So you get your non-leaders in it, and it’s amazing—when non-leaders are in things, people don’t go.”

I liked that idea. I liked it a lot, in fact. But it did spark another question in the interview: “Don’t you have people who want to start up new programs all the time? How do you process that without overwhelming people again?”
You can listen to Larry’s response below.

That sounds like good advice for all churches—even beyond the small-groups world.

I recently joined the leadership team for my church's small-groups ministry. During a recent Saturday breakfast, one of the church's longtime small-groups leaders (we'll call him Tim for this post) shared an unusual, and uncomfortable, predicament.

For several reasons I'll explain in a moment, Tim's group of eight years--one so close that members actually stood bedside with him a few years ago as his wife passed away from a difficult illness--decelerated during the past six months, basically to the point of becoming defunct.

But no one was willing to officially call it quits.

"I honestly don't know what to do," Tim said. His eyes screamed with frustration and disappointment. How could he pull the plug on a group that meant so much to him and its members?

The demise stemmed from a few factors. One couple valued the group's closeness to the point of insisting no new members get added. Another couple didn't want to study the Bible or read a book as a group--only social activities were acceptable. And another couple felt spurned when other members didn't provide the support they needed during the deaths of two parents and the developing health issues of the other two.

In time, the twice-monthly gatherings didn't attract full attendance, or they got postponed due to scheduling conflicts. By midway through last year, postponements grew in frequency.

Which led to Tim's question: How do I end it?

Continue reading "The Long Goodbye: Can Small Groups Break Up Well?"...