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Joshua Reich

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The Squeaky Wheel

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Pastors, you know this conversation because you’ve had it a million times. “Our church needs to have ____. Our church needs to do _____. If we had ____ more people would find Jesus.” That blank could be more classes, more groups, men’s ministry, women’s ministry, a quilting group, louder music, quieter music, more services, more kids stuff.

Here’s the problem when someone says your church should do something.

They have no idea what they want. 

Carmine Gallo said, “People don’t know what they want and, if they do, they have a hard time articulating what they truly desire.”

This is why leadership is so crucial in a church.

You can’t lead based off what people say they want or what people think they want.

Often, we don’t know the very thing that would help us get out of our predicament. We can see that to be true in our lives.

Leadership then, is the ability to move people to where they need to be, not always where they want to be.

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Why People Attend Church

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There is power in identity. When we create the right kind of identity, we can say things to the world around us that they don’t actually believe makes sense. We can get them to do things that they don’t think they can do. -Carmine Gallo, Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds

Wrapped up in this quote is a key to preaching the works: helping people see the possibilities of a sermon on their future. 

Many sermons seem to miss this component, helping people imagine the changes that would come to their life if a change was made.

Think for a minute, what if someone began reading their bible? What if someone actually let go of a past hurt and forgave someone? What if a married couple began investing in their relationship as much as they do a hobby or their kids? What if someone actually began to see the impact of seeing God as father would make in their life?

Often, sermons tend to stay in the intellectual side of things or we focus on getting to the emotions (possibly manipulating them).

What about motivation?

I know many can cringe at this because it makes them feel like a salesman, pushy, or that they are simply being a motivational speaker who is creating rah-rah cheers in their church.

This question gets at something every pastor should answer before they get up to preach: why should anybody care about what I’m about to say?

The answer is not because it is in the Bible, most of our culture does not care what is in the Bible. The answer is not because it is true, most people in our culture do not believe the Bible is truer than some other book.

It gets at why most people show up at church on a given week.

Hope. 

Most people walk through doors of a church looking for hope.

They might be lost, they might be aimless, they may have tried other things, they may be at the end of their rope or halfway to the end.

But they are looking for hope, for possibilities.

A sermon, through the power of the gospel should show them that hope.

This is one thing I say almost every week as we get ready to take communion. We are reminded in communion that when Jesus walked out of the tomb, we have hope. Hope that one day all the wrongs of our world will be righted. Hope that we can conquer all things through the power of Jesus. Hope that we can live the life God has called us.

Hope.

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The Tension of Leadership

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leadership

Leaders and pastors live with a tension that everyone experiences in life, but is different on an organizational level.

It is the tension of the in between. Leaders lead and live in the now of the organization, but also with what could be, their vision for the future and where things are going or where they’d like them to be.

A leader has one foot in the future and one foot in the present, which creates enormous tension.

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This is hard.

A leader knows what is coming, the changes that are going to be made, the momentum that can be had because of those steps, but often has to wait. It might be waiting on a new hire, waiting for things to settle down at a church or for the summer season to end so you can get started.

As a leader, right now you are stuck with this tension. And it won’t go away. It will simply shift to something new. Six months from now, you will be waiting on something different to happen.

Here are 5 ways to survive this tension:

    1. Enjoy where you are. This is hard for leaders because we are wired to keep moving, but you are in a certain season. Your church is a certain size, enjoy it. I’ve enjoyed all the sizes of Revolution for different reasons and sometimes have looked back on how easy something was when we were smaller. But I didn’t enjoy it like I could.
    2. Make sure things are in place for what is next. Many pastors by nature are not strong planners. They often fly by their seat, spend a lot of time focused on people and find themselves behind the curve on something. This is why it is so important to make time to work on your church, not just in it. If you are growing, do you have enough groups for people? Are you prepared to add classes for kids? What about parking spaces?
    3. Start looking past what is next. At some point, you need to start preparing for what comes after what is next. Meaning, you just grew your church plant to 100 and people and are on your way to 200, you need to begin thinking about what your church will be like at 400. Why? There’s a good chance you will do something at 200 to keep you from growing to 400.
    4. Listen to the fears that people have. As you are making plans and getting key leaders on board for what is next, you will run into someone who is not excited about what is next and may even hold you back. This person is not the enemy, although you will think they are. They may be crucial to slowing you down (which might be good), they might be God’s way of helping you grow as a leader, you might be God’s way of helping them grow through their fears, or they may be divisive and need to move on. Each person and situation is different, but don’t disregard someone who is not as excited as you are about what is next. You should always be more excited than everyone else, you’re the leader.
    5. Plan for what is next. All growth means change. If your church gets larger, changes are coming. You will hand things off to people, leaders that worked well in a church of 100 won’t be the leaders you need at 200. Your schedule will be busier, which will make sermon prep, meeting with people and strategizing harder because you will need to plan better. Everything is different at each stage of your church. Many leaders blindly walk into the next season, get busier and burn out because they haven’t planned for what is next.
5 ways to handle tension as a leader.

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How to Put Your Sin to Death

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sin

We all struggle with something.

We all commit some sin or have some emotion we wished that we didn’t have.

Throughout Scripture (Romans 8:13; Galatians 5:24; Colossians 3:5) we are told to crucify our sin, to put it to death.

But what does that look like?

Right before vs. 24, Paul has two lists: a list of sins (vs. 19 – 21) and a list called the fruit of the Spirit (vs. 22 – 23).

In vs. 19 – 21 there are sexual immorality (which is all sex outside of the bounds of marriage between a man and a woman), impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and things like these.

What is interesting about this list is that Paul seems to put them all on the same level and says, “living in these will keep you from God” (see the end of vs. 21). While I’ve seen “Christians” holding signs that say “Gay people go to hell.” I’ve never seen one hold a sign that says, “Jealous people go to hell.” (But that’s a different post)

What Paul says though, is these are not occasional sins. In vs. 16 – 17, he describes these as overwhelming, all-encompassing desires that you cannot control the longing of. They are your identity. This is where it becomes broken for us, “I’m a gay man. I can’t control my anger. I’m a fighter. I have to win at all costs.”

For each person, vs. 19 – 21 is where the battle happens.

But how do you put them to death?

This is where the fruit of the Spirit comes in in vs. 22 – 23 of Galatians 5.

I love that Paul calls them fruit. It gives this picture of a farmer, of gradual growth, that is done by a farmer, not the fruit. The fruit doesn’t make itself grow, God does. Fruit does grow. Not always at the rate we would expect or think it should, but it grows.

The question for a follower of Jesus then, do you see growth in your life in the areas of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? Do you see how God is working on your heart in those areas?

If the answer is no, I would say the Holy Spirit is not living in you because a follower of Jesus should be growing in all these areas at some point. We never stop, we never reach the pinnacle.

Now, as we take the fruit of the Spirit and put our sin to death from vs. 19 – 21.

This becomes a daily thing.

Crucifixion in vs. 24 carries this idea that it will be a death. It will be painful, hard, difficult. Freedom always involves a war.

Freedom always involves a war.

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One of the best ways to walk this road is through confession. Our family practices confession at the end of the day. We each confess to each other areas where we sinned or hurt someone. We’ve told our kids, whatever they say in this moment they will get grace. This is a way we teach them to confess their sins, but also what grace means. This can be dicey as a parent.

One thing I’ve learned about God’s grace is that, many times, the reason we don’t experience God’s grace and freedom in Jesus is because we won’t allow ourselves to. 

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The Pain of Breaking the 200 Barrier

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200 barrier

Most churches in America never break through the 200 barrier, in fact, only 15% of churches break through it. Some pastors talk about it like it is the mythical unicorn. There are books, podcasts, webinars, and articles on how to break it. For years, Revolution would bump up against the 200 barrier and then go back down. We’d have seasons where we would stay above it and I thought we were through. Finally, we broke through it.

Breaking the 200 barrier isn’t a mythical thing, but does take specific steps.

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No light from heaven shone. There were no songs or angels. It just happened.

Since that moment, I’ve learned something.

Breaking through 200 hurts. A lot.

To break through 200, a lot of things in your church change and most of them are connected to the lead pastor. Teams you used to lead and meetings you used to be in, you no longer are. There is now a layer between you and someone you used to talk to every week.

If you are a planter, things your wife used to do you are now paying someone to do. People who were leaders from the moment of your church starting to get to 200 have hit their lid and are now replaced by other leaders.

This issue of control and feeling of loss looms larger than most leaders talk about. Don’t get me wrong, a growing church is exciting, but it is painful.

Here in lies why most churches don’t grow: the church and the pastor are not willing to go through the pain for it to grow.  What I mean is, people who feel connected to the pastor at 150 will often feel less connected at 200.

Churches that break the 200 barrier are willing to make room for more people.

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You will begin hearing things like, “the church doesn’t feel like a family anymore.” “I don’t know anyone at church.” “I used to have coffee with the pastor, but now I have to make an appointment.” People will lament it feels like a corporation instead of a church or that there are a bunch of new people. Pastors will have to stop micro managing and allow leaders to run with ideas. You will start to see things you don’t like in your church, the church you started. Not every pastor can handle this. Communication loops change. What used to take a phone call or a text, now takes a video, announcement or mass email. Putting together an event or work day used to take a few days of lead up now takes a few weeks to work out schedules across ministries. Where you used to know every leader and were able to put people into place of leadership roles, you now need a process to vet and check those who are leading teams. The world has changed. And this is why most churches break through 200 and settle back at 150. They don’t like the way things felt at 200. 

In addition to all this, there is another reason few pastors are willing to make the jump through 200.

Finances.

Churches that break the 200 barrier are willing to take a step of faith financially.

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It is a squeeze on a church financially to break through 200. At this point, you need to hire some more staff and you won’t have the money for it. It will stretch your budget and your faith. You will take a step that depending on where your church is could sink your ship if it goes poorly. Many pastors and churches are not willing to take this step, are unsure of how to hire correctly and so they stay stuck. In the end, this boils down to a willingness to do what it takes to become the church God has called you to become.

If you are still with me and arguing with me in your head, let me hit the last reason churches and leaders don’t break through this barrier.

Their personal lid.  Many churches or pastors simply don’t have the capacity to break this barrier. Many will say, “Then they shouldn’t. We need small churches.” There is some truth in that and some lie. We need small churches, but we need those churches to be healthy, must be discipling people and helping people find Jesus and baptize them. Some churches do this, plant more churches and never break 200. Some planters start churches well, get it to 200 and pass the baton to go and plant another church.

Churches that break the 200 barrier are led by pastors who are willing to lead and grow.

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In the end, the churches and leaders that break through 200 and go on to break 400-500 have the willingness to make the sacrifice so that a church can do more and help more people enter a relationship with Jesus so they can become who God has called them to be.

What Pastors can Learn from TED Talks by Carmine Gallo (2014)

If you preach on a regular basis or give any kind of lesson or business presentations, the one book you need to read this year is Carmine Gallo’s book Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds. I’ve been a fan of his since I read The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, another great speaking book.

In his latest book, Gallo gives nine lessons every speaker can learn from the best TED Talks. Here are 9 lessons I took away for pastors:

  1. The world was and still is clearly hungry for great ideas presented in an engaging way. While many lament the changing culture and the lack of morals and change of opinion towards Christians. This is all true. Yet, the world is still looking for hope. Whether they are a follower of Jesus or have never walked into a church, those who show up on a Sunday are looking for hope, they are looking for change. They are hungry for the gospel.
  2. If you can’t inspire anyone else with your ideas, it won’t matter how great those ideas are, because great communicators reach your head and your heart. Pastors tend to reach either the head or the heart of someone. They are either incredibly smart so they engage them intellectually or they have a passion and can tell stories so they reach the heart. You have to reach both. Depending on your ministry background and theological camp, you know which one comes naturally for you. For me, I can reach anyone’s head. The speakers I listen to so that I can grow as a communicator tend to be the seeker-church guys (Andy Stanley, Perry Noble, Craig Groeschel, etc). Why? They know how to do something that doesn’t come naturally for me and I want to grow.
  3. You cannot inspire others unless you are inspired yourself. For many pastors, they preach because it is Sunday, not because they have something to say. This has to do with their own heart, devotional time, sleep patterns, eating habits and how they are protecting themselves. Your church knows if you are inspired by what you are sharing or if you are just giving a sermon. Take care of yourself, prepare your heart, confess your sin and preach because you can’t keep it in any longer.
  4. Positive leaders are perceived as more effective and therefore more likely to persuade their followers to do what they want their followers to do. While their is a time for seriousness in a sermon, people must walk away feeling hopeful and knowing you believe what you said and knowing that you believe the gospel has the power to do what you said it can do.
  5. If you start with something too esoteric and disconnected from the lives of everyday people, it’s harder for people to engage. Always, always start with something that connects to real life. You have 30 seconds to convince people to listen to you. Showing them that you understand where they’re coming from and that you can help them move to a place they want to go goes a long way in raising the interest level in your sermon.
  6. Giving a presentation that truly moves people takes hard work. Let’s face it, many pastors are lazy. They become a pastor because it seems easier, they read a lot and most people don’t have a high expectation for a sermon to be great (sadly). They are simply hoping for short. Preaching is hard work. If you aren’t willing to put in the hard work, don’t preach. At the end of the day, someone pays a price for a sermon, the pastor or the church.
  7. Authenticity doesn’t happen naturally. This seems counterintuitive, because authenticity just happens. It takes practice. It takes learning how to share, what to share and when to share it. Sometimes, pastors in an effort to be authentic sound creepy. Sometimes, they skip it and sound like they never struggle with anything they are preaching on. One question I ask each time I preach and seek to answer in my sermon is: How has this passage affected and changed me?
  8. When you walk into a classroom you have two jobs: one is to teach and the other is to recruit everyone in that classroom to join the pursuit of truth. Let’s face it, preaching is about moving people to action. It might be for them to take a next step, follow Jesus, get baptized, start giving, work on an area of their life or join the mission of a church. A sermon is a call to move from where you are to somewhere else.
  9. If you can’t explain your big idea in 140 characters or less, keep working on your message. I’ve talked a lot in blog posts about having 1 big idea, one thing you are trying to get across. Not 3, 5 or 7. A pastor recently asked me to critique a sermon and after listening to it I asked him, “What was the main point?” He couldn’t recall it. Neither could his church. I love how Gallo says, “Every talk should be a twitter headline. If it can’t fit, you aren’t ready to talk.” For some great examples, just listen to Andy Stanley preach. By having a twitter headline, you are able to help control and influence what people walk out knowing.

As I said, if you speak, this is the one book you need to read this year. So, so good.

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How to Work from Home Successfully

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It is becoming more and more common to work remotely. Not only in offices, but for churches. Especially with the rise of church plants, more and more pastors find themselves working from coffee shops, their house or a shared work space.

The transition to this or starting your own business in your house can be difficult. After 7 years of working in a church office, we planted Revolution and I’ve been working from home and other places since then.

Here are 6 ways to work from home successfully:

  1. Have a designated work space. Depending on your set up, this can be hard but it is important that you have a work space. If you can have a room with a door, this is ideal but not completely necessary. I’ve had seasons where my office was a kids bedroom and that is part of it.
  2. Have a clear start and stop time. Some jobs that work remotely have this built in. I have a friend who works for a call center but does it in his house, so he has to sign in at a certain time. For others, like a pastor, this isn’t as clear. It is important define, especially if you are married and have kids, when you will start and when you will stop. This will help to prevent working more than you should and having a clear boundary.
  3. The water cooler factor. If you work in an office, interruptions are part of the day. People stopping by, you getting up to walk around. These can be helpful and intrusive. It is important that you plan for these in working from home. I try to break my day up into 90 minute increments and have a break in between that could be as simple as getting more coffee. You also need to keep this in mind as you think about how long your work day should be as your spouse probably isn’t stopping by to talk about fantasy football for 30 minutes while you work.
  4. Stay focused. It is easy to work from home and not stay focused. After all, you can see other things that need to be done and no one is looking over your shoulder telling you not to look at blogs, Facebook or the news. You must have a system to stay focused on the task at hand. One of the things I installed was Chrome Nanny and put in certain websites that are blocked during my work hours, like social media sites, to help me stay focused.
  5. Handling interruptions. Working from home, you will still have interruptions. Kids knocking on your door, your spouse asking you to do something. This is part of the flexibility of not being in an office, but you have to have a system for handling them, otherwise you won’t get any work done. There are times when my door is locked and the kids leave me alone and times when it is open and they can do schoolwork or play on my floor while I work.
  6. Disconnecting from work. If you work from home, you walk out of your home office and your home. You don’t get that 30, 60 minute commute to disconnect from work, listen to sports radio or have some silence before you connect with your family. I used to work and as soon as I was done go into family mode. This doesn’t work as I can be on edge or still thinking about work. Now, I workout, take a walk or read some sports blogs and then go into family mode. You have to learn how to make your commute happen without having a commute.
6 ways to work from home successfully.

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Working from home isn’t for everyone or for every job. Some people can’t handle the freedom that comes from not having a set start time or not having a boss look over their shoulder. We had someone on our staff team once that struggled to accomplish 30% of their job because of this, so you must be wise when deciding to work from home as it is a stewardship issue for you and your company or church.

 

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3 Essential Values for Strong Teams

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strong teams

Every leader and team have different values. Things that determine how they live and work with each other.

For each team I lead, I give each person 3 promises and ask them to make the same to me. If everyone on the team fulfills each of these to each other, it is amazing what the team can accomplish and how much people enjoy being a part of it.

Here they are:

1. Never surprise me. There is nothing worse as a leader than being surprised. Most leaders know this conversation, someone comes up to you and says, “Did you hear what is happening in the kids ministry, or my missional community or _________?” You didn’t know, and depending on the situation, you might have to defend it, put your name and reputation on the line for it, or look like you have no idea what is happening. This is why honesty and being up front is so important. If you don’t surprise me, I can be behind you always and make sure I throw all my leadership change behind you. Don’t make me have to pick by being surprised, let me do so privately beforehand.

Strong teams don’t surprise each other.

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2. Always make me look good. When people first hear this one, they usually pushback as if this is selfish. It isn’t. It is a value that each team member will do whatever they can to make the other members of the team look good. Put them in the best light, believe the best about them, speak highly of them in public and in private, to set them up to succeed instead of fail. This means, you are willing to make yourself look poorly so that someone else can look better. This is humility and no effective team can make it without this.

Strong teams make each other look good.

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3. Always have my back. This is loyalty, plain and simple. Teams can handle many things, but when loyalty is lost, the game is over. I can walk with a leader through many things, but if I’m not convinced they are loyal, I’m not that interested in riding the storm out with you. For the people that work under me, they want to know I will have their back. That I will be on their side, get what they need to succeed and do their job and that I will be there.

Strong teams always have each other’s back.

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You Aren’t Gospel Centered

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There’s been a resurgence in the last few years around the gospel. This is a good thing. We are starting to have a larger view of the gospel, seeing the gospel as more than just how one is made right with God, how one is changed and how one goes to heaven. We are seeing the gospel for Christians as well and how the power of the gospel changes us into who God has called us to be.

This is positive.

It has also created a new thing to complain about.

Now, preachers are gospel centered preachers. If you want to sell a book, throw the word gospel into it. Parenting, preaching, church planting, maybe even write a book called the gospel. 

Now, bloggers complain about writers and preachers who aren’t gospel centered. Maybe, if you are a pastor, you’ve had someone tell you, “I’m leaving your church because you aren’t gospel centered.”

When I’ve heard this personally, what this often means is, “You don’t preach the gospel the way I think the gospel should be preached.” In other words, “I think the gospel has specific components and need to be said in a certain order (ie. the Romans road) and if you don’t say them in that order, you haven’t preached the gospel.

This has also become code for deeper preaching and not having to move forward and do anything with a sermon someone gives.

So, if you are a pastor and get someone who comes up to you after a sermon or sends you an email telling you that you aren’t gospel centered, even though someone started following Jesus in that same sermon, what do you do?

  1. Ask them what it means to be gospel centered. Most of the people who will make this complaint have a prophet lens. For them, gospel centered is the gospel they heard when they got saved, how Tim Keller or John Piper tells the gospel message or something else, but something very specific. One of the best ways to learn from them and help them understand your perspective is to ask them what they think is gospel centered. Sadly, most people who make this complaint cannot actually articulate it. I had one guy complain about this for almost a year and he could never tell me what it meant to be gospel centered, only that our church wasn’t it. Finally, he said we were to sensitive to seekers, so that made us not gospel centered. At that point, you can actually have a conversation, when terms are defined.
  2. Lovingly tell them the gospel from your perspective. As you move forward, explain to them what the gospel is from your perspective. All over the New Testament, there is evidence of Peter and Paul communicating the gospel differently depending upon their audience. This is important for a pastor to keep in mind. So, what John Piper says at a Passion conference may have a different goal and audience than your church in New England or rural Nebraska.
  3. Understand the fears that come from someone with this complaint. Most of the complaints around this, and I can say this since the camp I’m a part of, the Reformed camp is the one blogging and complaining about this issue. It comes from fear. As we watch our country become more and more liberal, people are fearful that the church is going the same way, and many are. This is a legitimate concern, not fear. Scripture is clear that we are not to be afraid. This is a great shepherding moment for you as a pastor. Many leaders miss this opportunity in an effort to be right or win the argument.

In the end, gospel centered preaching should always push people to a decision. It should show someone, whether they are a follower of Jesus or not, who they are apart from Jesus, their default sinful nature and how their only hope for life, freedom and peace is found in the power of the gospel.

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11 Ways Churches Can Improve Hiring

The church I lead is in the process of hiring two new staff members so I’ve been reading blogs, articles and books on hiring this summer. There is a ton of incredibly unhelpful stuff out there, but also some great things that applies greatly to churches. One of them is It’s Not the How or the What but the Who: Succeed by Surrounding Yourself with the Best by Claudio Fernández-Aráoz.

book

I think people applying for a job should do a better job of interviewing the boss they’ll work for and understanding the church culture, but churches need to have a clearer hiring process as well.

Here are 11 things I learned from It’s Not the How or the What but the Who: Succeed by Surrounding Yourself with the Best:

  1. Success is rooted in relationships, in the people around you. You are hiring to make your church more effective, to move the gospel and the mission forward. Hiring should take a large part of your time if you have open positions. Yes, use other staff members or hiring firms, but you can’t delegate the whole thing. You must spend time on it if you are the leader.
  2. Humans aren’t programmed to make great people decisions. The first step in surrounding yourself with the best is to recognize—and correct—your own failings. Churches are notorious for being too nice and overlooking their tendencies. It is amazing to me how much of this book was about how to get past your personal biases. We have them and they hinder us from effectively finding leaders, volunteers and staff members. Studies show that adults gravitate toward those with whom they share something, whether it’s a common nationality, ethnicity, gender, education, or career path—even the same first-name initial! It is important to recognize these in ourselves and put a team around us to help us make these choices so we don’t fall into traps.
  3. Overconfidence in predictions is a pervasive human bias that has a dramatic impact not just on our financial or weather forecasts but also on our people decisions. I can easily make a choice right away based on my bias and be wrong. All leaders do this. We need to make sure we stick with our process that we laid out and not jump forward too much. One of those he pointed out was, “Unconsciously, we make choices based on what we already know.” Again, our bias gets in the way.
  4. Most of us are bad and slow at getting the wrong people off the bus. This is true of almost every church. Our goal is to serve, care and love people so it makes sense this would be a struggle. Yet, when this choice must be made, we must make it. For the sake of the church and the person. If they aren’t meeting expectations, it isn’t good stewardship to keep them in a role. If they need help or coaching, we need to do our best to make that happen. Sometimes though, a person’s time is done and they need to get off the bus and that is okay.
  5. Why hiring matters. At most companies, people spend 2 percent of their time recruiting and 75 percent managing their recruiting mistakes. Take the time to make the right choice, even if it means your ministry suffers some in the short term.
  6. Should you hire from inside or outside of your church? It is popular now to hire only from inside a church and sometimes this is the right move. Sometimes, you need an outside perspective to shake things up or take things in a new direction or add an element you don’t have on a team right now. Most churches though, do not evaluate the same. We simply don’t work as hard to evaluate insiders—not only in cases of CEO succession but in all appointments—and this is especially true when things are going well.
  7. Schedule interviews correctly. Don’t simply schedule an interview, make sure it is at a time when you are awake, alert and can focus. Great decision makers never schedule endless back-to-back meetings, and they never work hungry.
  8. Interview 3 people for a position. My expectation was that a larger pool of people interviewed would increase the stick rate, and that happened up to a point. But after three or four candidates, it rapidly declined, confirming that too many options generate suboptimal decisions. So three to four seems to be the right number, just as it is with the interviewers you involve in your key people decisions.
  9. Most people assume that the best hiring strategy is to find the best performers in a given field and get them on your team. I found this fascinating in that someone can be a star at one company or church, but not at another. The DNA, culture and systems of a church can often help someone and if those things aren’t at a new church, their star can diminish. This is important to keep in mind. Also, you don’t always need a star.
  10. Identifying potential should be our first priority. Most people look for a proven track record, and that is important. A proven track record is also attached to someone usually set in their ways, committed to one way of doing things and sometimes you have to untrain someone. This reminder of looking for what someone could be is crucial.
  11. Team effectiveness explains perhaps 80 percent of leaders’ success. Leaders, if you needed a reminder of why hiring matters, this is it.

If you’re hiring, you must read this book. I haven’t found a more helpful book out there on the topic.

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