Go King's!

I was just checking out Steve Tibbert's church blog and came upon this post from a couple of weeks back:

I am meeting with the elders for two days this week to cover a range of topics - all relevant to life at King's. Top of our agenda will be planning towards a 4th Sunday meeting. Please pray for us as we consider this and other important issues that will impact the future of our church.

King's Church is building on momentum! I remember being in conversations with Steve before they went to two meetings, and the agonies of organization and ministry philosophy that step took. Recently King's went to three meetings and now are planning for a fourth.

It will be great if Steve and the guys pull this off successfully - it will raise the lid for the rest of us. Then it is only a matter of time before someone successfully raises the lid in going from multi-service to multi-site. I 'prophesied' this over Steve two years ago, at which time he was somewhat sceptical about the idea - but its going to happen. You heard it here first!

For a number of years the great trumpet call for many churches (I'm writing from a Newfrontiers perspective here) was to obtain a warehouse type building that could accommodate 1,000+ people. Some churches have successfully done this, but the cold reality that in the south of the UK this kind of project represents an investment of £5-10 million means that, if for no other reason than cost, going multi-service and multi-site is a much more realistic option.

The danger now is that just as many people were chasing after 1,000 seater venues even though their circumstances and levels of leadership gift meant this was always a pipe-dream, equally large numbers could jump on the 'multi' model when they are not actually ready for it. King's is going multi on the back of momentum - consistent year on year growth over many years. Multiplication needs to come from a position of strength, and not simply multiply weakness.

Go King's!

(BTW, Steve is currently posting a helpful series on leading through the financial crisis)

A Little Bit of Politics

John Maxwell writes about the importance of identifying the right people to build a team:

Past presidents have learned the hard way that failures of a leader's trusted advisors can bring disaster. During the Clinton administration, investigations into the conduct of five cabinet members eroded public perception of the President's judgment. The indictments and allegations gave ammunition to Clinton's foes and cast doubts on his character, especially after the Monica Lewinsky scandal came to light.

Likewise, President George W. Bush faced embarrassment when the man he appointed as head of FEMA, Michael D. Brown, failed to provide strong federal leadership in the aftermath Hurricane Katrina. Inexperienced in emergency management, Brown was overwhelmed by the crisis. During the height of the disaster, he fretted about finding a dogsitter and fussed about his attire. His unpreparedness and inaction left the Bush Administration vulnerable to scathing accusations of neglect and indifference.

Click here to read more.

Fighting the Fear

Thoughts on how to lead through the economic crisis...

The other night Grace & I were woken by the foghorn sounding at Poole Harbour. Although the harbour must be two miles from our house the doleful sound was enough to cut through the stygian gloom and disturb our sleep.

In the wider world there is a similarly penetrating and baleful noise – the sound of fear as the economic fog falls upon us.

The BBC’s doom-monger-in-chief, Robert Peston, is this week in Davos, the Alpine resort, covering the World Economic Forum. He writes:

For the bankers, financiers and business leaders who feel able to leave the day-to-day crisis of managing their businesses through this painful recession for a few days of jaw-jaw and endless canapes, the big question is "what horrors still lurk beneath the surface".
They are sombre and anxious - such a contrast with their confidence of previous years that globalisation and financial innovation were enriching the world.

“Somber and anxious.” That pretty well sums it up.

But my conviction is that those of us who are disciples of Jesus Christ need to fight this fear.

First of all there is the little talked about reality that those who are keeping hold of their jobs are most likely better off than they were a year ago – mortgage rates have gone down; fuel and utility bills are starting to slip; food is not quite so expensive as it was; and the shops are filled with bargains – pretty much anything you bought last year you can get at a discount now, from the big ticket items like houses and cars to household goods and clothes.

So why are we all so afraid?

Secondly, of greater significance than a packet of butter costing a bit less than it did is the hope that we have in the gospel. I am preparing to preach this Sunday from 1 John 4 and the verse that says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” If we live with an experience of the love of God, and live in a way that shares this love with other people, our fears will be thrown out. Part of the prophetic task of the Church at this time has got to be fighting fear and fuelling faith. Those of us who pastor churches will have to handle difficulties that the economic crisis brings to our people – church members made redundant, maybe mortgage foreclosures, and the like – but our overall aim at this time should be to breathe on faith, and reduce fear.

Many pastors are reporting a dip in their church incomes already and having to look at restructuring budgets downwards. This is prudent, but at the same time we should be looking for faith to produce a harvest. If, as the world sinks into economic gloom, the Church rises up as an example of a place where people are faithful rather than fearful, loving rather than selfish, generous rather than miserly, then we will be preaching the gospel with a greater clarity than that with which a foghorn cuts through the night.

Fight the fear.

Moving into Leadership

For any leader about to move to a new church, or any other leadership position, Justin Pinkerman writes helpfully:

As President Barack Obama takes office, he enjoys a significant advantage over other incoming leaders: he can stock key positions with friends and loyal allies. Unlike the President, most new leaders must play the cards they are dealt; they do not have the luxury of choosing their hand. Like a single passenger on a full flight, a new leader must sit in his or her assigned seat, even if it's located beside a screaming infant or sandwiched between two behemoths.

As an incoming leader walking into a position of authority, how can you best setup yourself up for success? Here are a few suggestions on what to do as the new kid on the block.

1. Heed the Step-Parent Effect
Recognize the existing loyalties your people may still have for your predecessor. Like an incoming step-parent, you will have trouble exerting leadership until you establish a relationship of trust founded on respect. Upon arrival you must initiate the relationship. Seek to comprehend the primary motivations of those you lead, but first share your story. Give people access to your journey. Be personable; don't jump too quickly into laying out long-term strategies and vision. Appeal to those you lead as a fellow human, not as the new sheriff in town.

2. Prioritize Japan over Djibouti
Picture yourself as an American diplomat. Although you'd like to forge friendly alliances with every nation, a powerful nation like Japan deserves infinitely more attention than a tiny country like Djibouti. Likewise, incoming leaders must scan the power structure of their new territory and focus the bulk of their time winning buy-in from the main players. Although every person has value, not everyone shares equal influence.

3. When in Doubt, Over-Communicate
People are apprehensive of change and resistant to it. Pour the fuel of uncertainty on top of change, and you're in for some fireworks. Be sensitive to change-aversion. Use every opportunity to paint a picture of where you're headed, and be intentional about reassuring key players of their value to the team. Your ability to communicate clearly and consistently will defuse some of the tension surrounding your arrival.

Terry Transitions

Terry Virgo (leader of the Newfrontiers movement) blogs about leading in times of transition:

When predictable routine dominates the scene, leadership requires little skill, but leadership is never more tested than in a time of transition! By definition a leader should have followers or he or she is no leader at all. As John Maxwell says, ‘He who thinks he leads and has no one following him is only taking a walk.’ You may have been appointed to a leadership role but this simply means that you are now in a context where the gift of leadership can be proven and manifested. Real leadership is demonstrated when people confidently follow.

The Best Practices of the Best Leaders

This is such a helpful article from Catalyst that I am copying it here almost in entirety:

In today's global environment, it's more important than ever before that as leaders, we know what our job really is! The question we're most frequently asked by church planters and pastors is "What's my job? Where should I be focusing my time and effort?" This is why, after years of working with leaders from all over the country, we have come to the conclusion that there is actually a short list of the Best Practices of the Best Leaders. What's most encouraging is the fact that these best practices not rocket science! Anyone can focus on and grow in these five areas! However, don't let the simplicity fool you. These best practices are the best practices of the best leaders! The more you can narrow your focus to these five things the greater your potential for impact.

NURTURING VITALITY
Leaders must lead themselves before they can lead others. You have to be a disciple in order to make disciples and you will always produce what you are. The best leaders pay close attention to their own lives. The best leaders "nurture (care for, feed, pay attention to) their own vitality (strength, health). The best leaders understand that we can't give what we don't have. They understand that leadership is a discipline and this is reflected in their physical, relational, financial, emotional and spiritual vitality! They have what others are calling "it", but at the same time they understand the high price that comes with getting "it". Are you nurturing your vitality?

BEING MEAN ABOUT THE VISION
There is a meanness that's required to be a great leader when it comes to vision. The best leaders are not mean people, but they are mean about the vision. They understand that vision comes from God, therefore they are relentless about protecting the vision that God has given them. They refuse to allow anyone---or any group---highjack the vision and are relentless about guarding their own heart when it comes to vision. With this comes a passion for communicating the vision that includes both art and science. They are gifted at communicating vision, but they work just as hard at it. Being mean about the vision also means a relentless commitment to make hard calls in an effort to please God and God alone. Are you being mean about the vision?

FINANCING THE VISION
Perhaps no practice separates great leaders from good leaders like Financing the Mission. Every great vision requires an incredible amount of resourcing to implement. Churches that are seeing the greatest impact understand the importance of balancing faith and wisdom in this area. Financing the Mission is not something that simply happens, but something the best leaders take personal responsibility for and spend lots of time working on. The best leaders give inordinate amounts of time developing a culture of generosity within their church or organization and raising up men and women committed to financing the mission. In today's global environment, it's more important than ever before we take responsibility to build fully resourced organizations. Are you taking the responsibility for financing the mission?

THINKING TEAM
Leaders who experience significant breakthroughs are always thinking team. It is one of their primary responsibilities. They have the ability to identify and raise up teams out of their organization. However, it doesn't end there. They also have the ability to attract high level team players and coach them to play at their greatest capacity. The best leaders spend lots of time with their team. The best leaders understand that entrepreneurship is not leadership. Entrepreneurship plus teamwork is. Are you thinking team?

REDEFINING DISCIPLESHIP
A leader sets the culture and spiritual temperature of their church. They understand that they set the pace for helping people discover the centrality and simplicity of Jesus and his ways. They have a white-hot passion for Jesus and not only do they spend time keeping this passion for themselves, they create a culture, strategy, systems, and process for leading others to this white-hot passion for Jesus. The best leaders help lead people to understand that discipleship is not primarily about church programs, Bible studies, and busyness at the church. Rather, discipleship is based on the simplicity of loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving others more than we love ourselves! Are you helping the people within your organization redefine discipleship?

Books and books and books

A helpful post from What's Best Next:

For the last several years, I’ve been a subscriber to Audio-Tech Business Book Summaries. Each month, you get two summaries of some of the most important and latest business books. The summaries come in both audio form (either CD or, I think, MP3 download) and in written transcripts (by email).
Each summary is about 45 minutes, and they actually summarize the content very, very well. So for a time investment of about 1.5 hours per month, you can keep up with 24 business books per year.
This post is not an advertisement — nobody asked me to write this. I have simply found this to be a helpful tool which some of you might be interested in exploring. I think the cost is about $150/year.
One point to keep in mind: Don’t expect to fully absorb the content in only 1.5 hours a month. If you want to truly think over and remember the content, it will take additional review of the transcripts and just plain reflecting on the content. I view this program as a way to stay briefed on new books, and then go deeper on the few that seem most useful.

Change for what?

Quote of the week award goes to Ed Stetzer:

A change movement that does not produce converts is as useless as a systematic theology text at Joel Osteen's church.

In this article Stetzer argues that we tend to spend too much time arguing with one another about how to build the church and not give enough attention to making converts to Jesus. The how of how we do things is very important, but we mustn't forget the what.

Have a read - its a good one.

Where are all the leaders?

This is a persistent question. Actually, leaders are all around us. More often the problem we are lamenting is the lack of character we need in our leaders; the need for selflessness. Leaders reflect the society from which they come. If we don’t like what we see, we have to grapple with the fact that we are rewarding, nourishing and displaying the wrong behaviors in our homes, our schools and our churches. We need to take a hard look at these crucibles were our leaders are made. It is silly to endlessly attack what we have produced and do nothing about the source of the problem. We need to get the fundamentals right. Poor leadership is a self-inflicted wound.

Click here to continue reading.

What's Your Perspective?

Justin Pinkerman writes:

Distraught over massive financial losses incurred during the past year, Adolf Merckle scrawled a suicide note to his family and wandered out the door into a dark, wintry night. He made his way for the railway where he stood by the tracks and waited in the cold. Spotting the headlight of an oncoming railcar, he threw himself under the train and took leave of this world.

As tragic as the suicide was, it would not have received worldwide press apart from one shocking fact: Adolf Merckle was valued at 9.2 billion dollars, ranking 94th on Forbes 2008 list of the world’s richest persons.

Pinkerman identifies gratitude, selective hearing and pressing on as the keys to getting a healthier perspective than Adolf Merckle's. To read more, click here.

Got Problems?

Problems are a normal part of life - especially for leaders. It is how we deal with those problems that is really crucial. It is how we deal with them that will define our success as leaders.

Leadership expert John Maxwell identifies five truths leaders understand about problems:

1. They're unavoidable.
2. Perspective on the problem, rather than the problem itself, determines success or failure.
3. There's a big difference between problem spotting and problem solving.
4. The size of the person is more important than the size of the problem.
5. Problems, responded to correctly, can propel us forward.

To read more, click here.

Leaders are Readers

The top ten books for Christian leaders from last year, as selected by Leadership Journal:

Charles Spurgeon counseled his students to be discriminating about what they read, and to bathe in good books "until they saturate you." He said, "A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by twenty books merely skimmed." But which books to choose? Each year in ministry, leaders find there are more books to read and less time to read them. That is why Leadership is presenting the ten books of 2008 deemed most valuable for church leaders. The titles were compiled from submissions by a diverse group of more than 100 pastors from across the country. Our contributing editors then voted to determine the winners in two categories: The Leader's Inner World, and The Leader's Outer World. We hope this canon contributes to your development as both a follower of Christ and a leader of his church.

To see the list, click here.

Is your church friendly?

Rick Warren writes:

There are a lot of reasons a church might grow. Sometimes people come because of the preaching. Sometimes people come because of the music. Some people like the great programs for kids and youth.

But I’m convinced there’s an often overlooked factor in church growth: Growing churches are friendly to guests. All churches think they’re friendly, but when you take a good look at them, you often discover they’re friendly to people who have been attending for 15 years or more – not to new people.

Click here to continue reading.

Jonathan Edwards on Christ our Leader

This isn't too shabby a description of what Christian leaders should seek to obtain:

If we judge by scriptural representations of things, we have reason to suppose, that Christ took on him our nature, and dwelt with us in this world, in a suffering state, not only to satisfy for our sins; but that he, being in our nature and circumstances, and under our trials, might be our most fit and proper example, leader and captain, in the exercise of glorious and victorious virtue, and might be a visible instance of the glorious end and reward of it; that we might see in him the beauty, amiableness, and true honor and glory, and exceeding benefit of that virtue, which it is proper for us human beings to practice; and might thereby learn, and be animated, to seek the like glory and honor, and to obtain the like glorious reward.

(Here's the reference)

Crouch on Culture

If you have any interest in how the Church engages with culture you will want to read this interview with Andy Crouch on Trevin Wax's blog. Here are a couple of excerpts:

“Impact” is a terribly misleading noun masquerading as a verb. As in, “I want to move to New York and impact the culture.” (Bonus points if you want to “just really impact the culture.”)

This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how cultures work. Human cultures are designed to absorb and deflect impact. There is nothing a culture resists so strongly as “impact.”

Peter Berger and others have made a very persuasive case that one of culture’s essential functions is to ward off the “impacts” that threaten us from the outside world—the unpredictable calamities of nature, the threat of other tribes and nations, and the ultimate perplexity of death.

So if you want to provoke a really effective immune response from a culture—if you want to ensure that every cultural resource will be mobilized against you—set out to “impact” it.

Ouch... there is one of my favourite tag-lines well and truly demolished!

The resurrection of Jesus was and is the most culturally significant event in history. It has changed more than anything else before or since. I think that is not just a religious statement but an empirically verifiable one. If you don’t believe in the resurrection, substitute “whatever the heck happened just after the Passover in CE 33,” because *something* happened that year that changed the world—and that’s not a phrase I use lightly.

Having said that, there are some remarkable things about the resurrection that challenge many of our tacit assumptions. Its cultural effects were the very opposite of “impact.”

On Easter Monday, nothing had measurably changed in the surrounding culture, at all, in any way.

One hundred years later, reports of an obscure sect begin to show up in the memos of minor Roman functionaries, but that’s about it.

And yet by 350 perhaps half the Roman Empire are Christians. That is not “impact.” That’s what Jesus described as a mustard seed—starting off all but invisible, yet eventually growing into a tree where the birds can nest.

Amen!

A Bit of Spurgeon

From the sermon, The Lamb Our Leader:

And, brothers and sisters, what other leader could they follow? What model, except Christ, is there for a saint to copy? How can we attain to holiness if we work not after this pattern? Where shall any manhood be seen as fit for imitation, except where it is linked with the Godhead, in the Divine Son of God? Where shall we see the law written out in living characters, but in the life of this glorious Man, this blessed Son of God? Beloved, it is not possible for saints, in all respects, to follow any other leader, and it is characteristic of them that they follow the Lamb. Ask yourselves, my dear hearers, whether you are among these followers of the Lamb.

Perseverance

By Dr. John C. Maxwell

Perseverance is not an issue of talent. It is not an issue of time. It is about finishing. Talent provides hope for accomplishment, but perseverance guarantees it.

Click here to continue reading.

Should you plant a church or launch a campus?

By Geoff Surratt

When Seacoast Church in Charleston, South Carolina, began talking about opening a second campus there were very few models to emulate. We had heard about a couple of churches around the country that were experimenting with the concept of being one church in many locations, but the jury was out on whether it was a viable strategy to expand the kingdom. Almost seven years, 13 campuses, and 7,000 new attenders later, we can attest to the fact that multi-site is a viable strategy for us – and I have connected with hundreds of church leaders across the country who would agree that launching new campuses is an incredible way to reach more people with the Good News.

Seacoast’s pastor, Greg Surratt, also has a vision for planting new churches. The same year we launched our first off-site campus, we co-founded the Association of Related Churches (ARC), a church planting organization that has planted over 75 congregations over the past seven years.

Although launching campuses and planting churches simultaneously seems somewhat schizophrenic, it’s actually more common than you might suspect. Dave Ferguson, senior pastor of Community Christian Church based in Naperville, Illinois, has overseen the launch of nine campuses while also planting 30 churches through the New Thing Network.

Click here to continue reading.