Off the Agenda: Conversations for Building Church Leaders

This week's featured download is an orientation guide (all of which are on sale this month) for children's ministry directors. One common challenge in that role is handling parental expectations, which often show up as suggestions—"try this curriculum" or "what about a Christmas program?". Below are some questions to ask of any ideas proposed for your children's ministry.

Does it fit with our mission statement? If the idea doesn't fit your mission statement, propose that a small group or other ministry incorporate the initiative.

Do we have gifted and called people to support the new idea? Someone must lead every initiative, and success depends upon God's gifting, not man's brainstorming.

Is our facility set up for this? The idea may not be feasible if it interferes with other ministries in terms of space, time, or leadership.

Continue reading "Responding to Suggestions with Discernment"...

One of the primary contributors to our newest resource, Ministry to College Students, is Benson Hines. Below he responds to some college ministry fears that he's encountered.

Why should we use greater means for college ministry when students will be with us for only a few years? And does it make sense to spend time developing strategy when the students we're targeting will soon be replaced by others?

First, the concern over only having a few years with students places undue focus on the length of the time period rather than the intensity of those college years. During those four or five years, students often see spiritual, academic, emotional, and social growth to a far greater degree than in the several years prior to or following college. Those who have been impacted by strong college ministries (like myself) can point to drastic growth in even one year's time—let alone four or five years.

This is also a hinge moment in a person's life, in which actions and decisions carry particular import for years or decades following college. So whether we encounter college students for a year or two or a bit longer, what we do during these years can affect them for a lifetime.

Notably, Christians rarely use this same concern as a reason to devalue high school ministry, though our students spend only four years in high school (which is shorter than many college careers).

Continue reading "Scared of College Ministry?"...

Benson Hines has spent several years in college ministry and blogs at Exploring College Ministry.

NOTE: This post is a part of the Sticky Church blog tour.

One key commitment of the church growth movement has been to create an appealing worship service to attract seekers and church shoppers. In his new book, Sticky Church, Larry Osborne points out a shortcoming in this approach. While churches have gone to great lengths to bring new people in the front door, they have done less to keep people from escaping out the back door. They've made their churches attractive, but, in Osborne's words, they haven't made them "sticky."

Osborne explains the problem with this illustration. Imagine two churches that both grow from 250 to 500 members in 10 years. The first church loses 7 of every 10 members it adds. The second loses only 3 of every 10 new members. That means Church 1 has to reach 834 new people to meet their goal, while Church 2 only has to reach 357.

Continue reading "Making Members Stick"...

Brandon O'Brien is a former pastor and regular contributor to Leadership journal and BuildingChurchLeaders.com.

In response to our latest resource on refugee and immigrant ministry, BCL reader Don Byers passed on this encouraging story from Jay Bell, director of Internationals USA, Grace Brethren International Missions:

Recently we conducted our workshop (on reaching other cultures in America) in the Community of Grace Church, Richmond, Virginia. The chairman of their Mission Commission is a police captain named Hal Moser. On the Monday after the workshop, Hal routinely stopped by his favorite up-scale grocery story to get a cup of his favorite up-scale coffee. But this time he walked into the store with a different set of lenses. For the first time he saw an Asian working behind the sushi counter. Hal thought, "I wonder if the material Jay and Jan shared really works?"

He decided to give it a try. He walked up to the sushi-maker, said good morning, and asked the gentleman his name and where he was from. Hal learned his name was Win, and that he was from Burma, and that he's been in the U.S. for three years. Hal proceeded to ask Win if anyone had welcomed him to America. Win looked at him with a quizzical look on his face and said, "No! Not at all. No one." Hal then reached his hand over the counter to shake Win's hand and said, "Then that gives me the privilege to be the first to welcome you to the United States. Welcome Win." And then Hal hurried off to work.

Continue reading "Reader's Story: Befriending Immigrants"...

from the Willow Creek Leadership Summit: Craig Groeschel, pastor of Lifechurch.tv, interviews Chip and Dan Heath, authors of best-selling book Made to Stick, about their just-releasing book, Switch: How to Change When Change Is Hard.

Continue reading "Chip and Dan Heath: How to Change When Change Is Hard"...

From the Willow Creek Leadership Summit, president and CEO of Compassion International, opened up about his painful past and how that has given him his deep compassion for the poor.

His book, Too Small to Ignore, tells his story, which was so painful to tell, "sometimes I could write only 1 sentence a day."

"My most courageous leadership moment came at age 10." At his missionary boarding school, the housemaster put him on a chair and lit a candle on both ends and put it in Wess's young hands to punish him and make the point that "you cannot serve both God and Satan."

Continue reading "Wess Stafford: Leveraging Your Past"...

Andrew Rugasira, founder and CEO of Good African coffee, argued passionately, and persuasively, that as aid to Africa has increased, GDP in Africa has declined. The answer is not aid ("handouts," as he calls them) but trade--empowering Africans by buying their products. To learn more, read his paper "Africa Needs Trade, Not Aid: A Case for a New Paradigm" at www.goodafrican.com

from the Willow Creek Leadership Summit:

Many of us have taken our mission statements from "Love God with all your heart, soul, mind" and "Love your neighbor as yourself." But there's a little interpretation problem: who is that neighbor? We act like it's "someone like us." It's the homogeneous principle that "likes attract" (Donald McGavran), which caused churches to grow, but developed a consumer church.

We're called to develop a church that is contrarian, abnormal, difficult--the path of a third-culture leader. What is a third-culture? Adaptation. Painful adaptation. The mindset and will to love, learn, and serve in any culture, even in the midst of pain and discomfort.

When Jesus told the Good Samaritan story, it's an Eastern way of telling the story, orbiting the point, not telling it directly, to let the listener discover the point. And the point is: Love someone who's not like you. The world will stop and say, "That's beautiful," when they see us loving someone we hate.

How do we become a third-culture leader?

Continue reading "Dave Gibbons: Thinking Forward--Third Culture Leadership"...

Tim Keller concludes his message with 5 things church leaders can do to help lead their people to the prodigal God:

Spiritual renewal has to happen in the heart by the Holy Spirit; it has to be happening now as we think of Jesus' love. That destroys the spiritual deadness of our elder-brotherism. We have to drill this gospel down into our hearts. Otherwise, people think that asking Jesus into their hearts means "Now we should try hard to live for Jesus."

Continue reading "Tim Keller: Leading People to the Prodigal God, Part 3"...

In the gospel, everything that a rational person could want is yours: eternal life, adoption in the family, guaranteed life in the new heavens and the new earth, and the knowledge that you are the joy and delight of God.

Continue reading "Tim Keller: Leading People to the Prodigal God, Part 2"...

from the Willow Creek Leadership Summit: Tim Keller, senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan and author of several insightful books, including The Reason for God. Our sister publication Christianity Today recently published a cover story on Keller.

Continue reading "Tim Keller: Leading People to the Prodigal God, Part 1"...

From the Willow Creek Leadership Summit: Gary Hamel. His bio from his website, www.GaryHamel.com:

The Wall Street Journal recently ranked Gary Hamel as the world's most influential business thinker, and Fortune magazine has called him "the world's leading expert on business strategy." For the last three years, Hamel has also topped Executive Excellence magazine's annual ranking of the most sought after management speakers.

Continue reading "Gary Hamel: 4 Imperatives for Outrunning Change"...

Henry Cloud, well-known psychologist and co-author of the best-seller Boundaries, gave a simple way for boards to increase trust:

At the end of each board meeting and take 10 minutes to discuss, "How did we do?" How was our process and how were our interactions with each other in the meeting we just finished?

At the Willow Creek Leadership Summit, Bill Hybels said that Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, has begun a relationship with Christ--about a year ago--and has a "growing faith." The two have been in email correspondence.

For more on Fiorina: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carly_Fiorina

Opening illustration: Ship captains will sail if waves are 3 feet, 6 feet, or even 9 feet high; but what they fear are rogue waves--the unexpected high wave.

All of us in organizational leadership this past 8 months have been hit by economic turmoil and difficulty and ferocious conditions. Yet for seasoned leaders, such conditions are perfect for leadership to emerge. They force new levels of courage and creativity. The Holy Spirit whispers, "This is why I gave you a leadership gift. You were born for this." These times create great memories and strongest bonds with our team members. A "rogue wave" draws something out of us.

Continue reading "Bill Hybels on "Leading in the New Reality""...

Continue reading "Mill-O at Willow: Liveblogging the Leadership Summit"...

The video above—assembled by World Relief—tells the story of the Dengs, a Sudanese refugee family that came to Chicago. It's a poignant glimpse into how refugee ministry can bless both the local church and the refugees themselves. If you're interested in learning more about this kind of work, take a look at our newest training tool, Ministry to Refugees and Immigrants.

Tim Avery is the associate editor of BuildingChurchLeaders.com.