Learning From Business

There is great debate about what and how much the Church can (and should) learn from business. We all know that the Church is not a business, and yet there are business principles that we need to be aware of within the Church, especially as a local congregation grows beyond 200.

Today I was reading about a visionary leader named Terry Mathews who is ahead of the game in regard to helping others develop their own businesses. As I read the article I couldn't help but notice the crossover between some of his strategies and the Leadership within the Church.

Give it a read and let me know what you think. Link

Being Driven

I recently read in Fast Company magazine about an interview with communication mogul Ted Turner. In the interview Turner mentioned that his IQ was 128 (genius is 140), and that he was in the top 97% academically. The next thing he said caught me by surprise. He said,

"That means 3 percent of people were smarter than me. I knew I was going to have to work hard if I wanted to accomplish something in life. So I read a lot -- classics, warfare, Alexander the Great -- I used my brain all the time. Everything I did was education. Others just shot the breeze, wasted time -- nothing wrong with that, but you can't get to the top doing that."

It's evident that Ted Turner never reached the top of the communications industry by wasting his time or sitting around being idle. The guy was driven to always be growing and learning.

Sometimes within Christian circles being "driven" is seen as a negative. The truth of the matter is that most of us are driven by something. As leaders it's important that we possess a clear sense of godly drive. The Apostle Paul certainly had it as evidenced when he said,

"I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it,but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us." (Philippians 3:12-14)

So what about you? Are you driven or are you simply doing your job, coasting in neutral?

Maintaining Vision

When it comes to leadership vision is an absolute necessity. Knowing this is one thing, maintaining a strong focus on vision is another. Mike Silliman has a good blog post about maintaining vision.

Getting Beyond the "Everyone Knows the Pastor" Stage

J. D. Greear was asked, "What is the most important thing for a pastor of a church that's out-growing the "everyone knows the pastor" phase to do?" J. D.'s offers some great advice in his answer. Here's what he had to say.

I think the most important thing is to, before you get to that phase, develop a culture in the church that leadership is multi-leveled. That comes from teaching on the egalitarian nature of ministry gifts--that each believer is empowered by the Holy Spirit with gifts to minister to the body. I often tell our congregation that according to Ephesians 4:11, when I became a pastor I left "the ministry." I became an empowerer.

There are small but significant things like referring to yourself as only "one of the pastors" and sharing significant stage time with other leaders. You can strategically not show up at certain events so that other leaders can develop. People will whine and moan about that as first, because everybody knows if you (the lead pastor) are not there it doesn't really count in God's eyes... but overall, that's good pain for them to go through and they'll get used to it.

I found it very important to set a precedent, from the very first week I was pastor, to emphasize to the congregation that the greatest thing I could do for the people was teach the word of God faithfully and creatively each week, and so we would guard viciously my preparation time. From the beginning I've never taken calls or emails before 11am, because that is my time in prayer and the word. I could be a wonderful counselor, administrator, phone call answerer, problem solver, etc but if I am not teaching the Word of God with power each Sunday then the church suffers. Flipping that around, if I teach the Word well each Sunday, other things may struggle for a while, but the church will be healthy and other leaders will arise to do those things... or, through faithful preaching, you can grow the size of your congregation to where you can hire someone to do them. Either way, guarding my time in the Word has been a key to developing multiple leaders.

I have also found that developing a culture of sending people out is important in raising up leaders--whether that be out into the community for ministry or somewhere to plant a church or new campus. Real leaders love a challenge and compelling vision. Leaders like to lead, not just follow. They will not be content to be cogs in "your machine"; they will thrive when you are empowering them to see the things that they can lead in the church and community. We at the Summit often emphasize that the best ideas for ministry are in the congregation, not in our offices. Our role as pastors is to inspire and release. I would rather our church be like a group of wild steeds and our staff be like the reins trying to keep all the horses running the same direction than I would our staff be more like the engine driving a car.

Surprisingly to me, considering the size of our church, I feel relatively unbothered, and I think that is because of we have a large leadership culture. People in our church really do see a host of pastors, small group leaders, and coaches as every bit as able to minister the Word in the power of the Holy Spirit as I am. I have the freedom now to talk to people comfortably after service, and am able to return most of the phone calls and emails that come to me. That's in part because people from the church don't email me as much anymore--because there are multiple leaders they can talk to. That wasn't always the case. I used to get asked about every question you could think of--from theology to complaints about the church to math word problems (that's not a joke!).

Holiday Serving Ideas

When it comes to breaking the ice and opening conversational doors few things are as effective as unexpectedly serving others. With the holidays upon us the calendar makes it all that much easier to serve with no strings attached. Here are some ideas for how you can get involved with serving others this holiday season. Link

Sports and Spirituality

As many of you know I am a big sports fan. Like many of you, I have my favorite sport (College Football) and my favorite team (the Cornhuskers). Tune in to a college football game on TV some Saturday and you can quickly draw some parallels between sport and worship.

This morning I read a blog post by a Brazillian church planter named Felipe Assis who wrote about this connection. I enjoyed the post and agree with his conclusion that sport points to a greater reality that satisfies the internal longings for which we often times turn to sports.

Here's the link.

Thinking Outside the Box

As leaders we have to be open to new ways of communicating things that may seem commonplace. While vision needs to continually be repeated, we must make sure that we're repeating it in different ways. An idea Bryan Mowrey had for our current God Series was to have tee shirts designed that contained a graphic germane to that morning's message.

Here's a business example of what I'm talking about. It's a company that came up with a new way of displaying something very commonplace, bar codes. Take a look.

What are you doing to communicate your church's vision in a way that makes people take notice?

Redeemer Church Sermon Downloads

Redeemer Church and it's pastor, Tim Keller are making 150 sermon downloads available free of charge. What a great resource this is. Here's the link.

So What's So Bad About the Prosperity Gospel?

Turn on your television and on some channel somewhere you'll find a nicely dressed preacher telling people that God's will for them is that they would prosper. It sounds good, especially when they back it up with strategically selected verses of scripture. But is this really God's will? What if I'm not rich? Does that mean I've sinned?

In this ten-minute video John Piper unpacks the dangers behind the Prosperity Gospel. If you are receiving this post via email, click on the title to view the video.

Free Audio Book: Desiring God

For those of you who spend a lot of time in the car, here's a link to a free audio download of John Piper's book Desiring God. Don't we just love free stuff? Oh yeah!