Category Archives: Healthy Leadership

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How to Pick Ministry Ideas

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Pastors know this conversation.

Someone comes up to you and says, “Do you know what our church needs?” A ministry for _______.

Now, that blank is often a good idea. In fact, it might be a great idea. The one idea that is just waiting to take your church over the top.

What many people and pastors fail to realize, the person asking it doesn’t actually want that. They may think they want that or that they want to be a part of that, but they don’t.

When to say yes to something.

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Typically, when someone in a church says “we need a women’s ministry” or a class on finances or prayer or parenting, we need a group for empty nesters or college students, church leaders jump and start one up because “they don’t want to lose this influential person.”

Now, when this class or ministry starts, do you know who won’t be there?

That’s right.

The person in the original conversation.

Why?

When it comes to our spiritual growth we don’t know what we actually need. 

We often want what we think others have. We look at the end product of another church, another ministry but don’t ask, “What led them to start that? What need were they trying to reach? Does that need exist in our church or city? If it does, what is the best thing to reach it?”

We often get asked why we don’t have a women’s ministry or life stage groups at Revolution. The answer is, we think there’s a better way to reach our target in our city. There is nothing wrong with them, we just think the way they are usually done would hinder our goal as a church.

The other issue we don’t often think about is when a need is presented, it is simply in an effort to meet that need. This is good, but what leaders often fail to realize as they take in suggestions is they are tasked with seeing the whole field, the whole situation, while the person making a recommendation is not.

This isn’t bad, but before a leader goes ahead with an idea, they must stop to ask if it fits into what is already happening, the goal of a ministry or church.

Sometimes the answer is yes and sometimes it is no or wait.

So, when that new idea comes up, here are some criteria to take it through:

7 ways to know if now is the time to start something new or kill something old.

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  1. Does it reach our target as a church? Every church has a target whether they admit it or not. The target of your church, whether that is families, singles, students, empty nesters should drive many of the decisions of your church. Your target is who you are best situated to reach and who God has called you to reach. You want to reach everybody, but are best suited to reach certain people in your city. Who that target is will determine the ministries and ideas you run with as a church.
  2. Does the answer to question 1 matter? Sometimes the answer to question 1 doesn’t matter. God is calling you, your church or team to move forward with an idea that your target doesn’t matter. This won’t happen a lot, but I wanted to put this in there.
  3. Can we afford to do it? Do you have the structure, the bandwidth, the finances to make something happen.
  4. Can we afford not to do it? If you don’t do something, what happens? Not enough pastors list out what happens if they say no or not yet. Often, we live in fear of people, losing people, making someone angry and never list out, “What really happens if we say no?” Often, saying no will not mean the world ends.
  5. Is now the time to do this? Just because an idea is good or great does not mean now is the time to do it. Church planters often feel this tension as the larger church down the road can do a lot more than they can. That’s okay, let them.
  6. If we do this, will it hurt something else we do? Many times, we unknowingly undermine something that we are already doing by doing something else. This is why we don’t do a women’s ministry at Revolution, because of what unintentionally happens in a church when one is going.
  7. Can we be great at doing it? Too many churches do too much because that’s what churches do instead of asking, if we do this, will we be great at it? Can we do this better than someone else? Don’t just do concerts, Awana or classes to have them. Be great at the things you do. This will mean, you will do less.

The reality when this conversation happens is the person who says, “We should do ____” wants to see their church be great, healthy and reach more people. You as a leader though are held accountable for knowing when the time is right to say yes.

Chess Not Checkers: Elevate Your Leadership Game

Mark Miller’s new book Chess Not Checkers: Elevate Your Leadership Game is easily the best book to read if you are a pastor that is facing a growth plateau, can’t break through the next growth barrier or find yourself breaking through say, 500 people but always drop back down.

How to take your leadership to the next level.

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I read this book and so many things about my leadership and the church I lead became so obvious to me I was annoyed I didn’t see it.

For instance, it helped me see that as Revolution is on its way to becoming a church of 500, I and our team act like and lead like we are still a church of 200.

If you are facing a church growth barrier, read this…

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Many churches do this without knowing it and the reason as Miller points out is, the game has changed.

I love the picture of this book. Chess and checkers use the same board, but have different pieces and different rules. The game board flips but no one seems to notice.

Here’s how Miller describes it:

Most small businesses can be successful with a checkers mindset. That’s actually the game you play when an organization is in start-up mode. The leader does virtually everything in the beginning. That’s checkers. Then, if you grow, you begin to add staff. Many leaders see these additional people as interchangeable pieces, nothing more than hired hands, no need for specialists. Each piece is capable of the same limited moves. That’s checkers. In the beginning the game is simple. That’s checkers. You react, you make decisions, the pace is frenetic—you’re playing checkers. And, it works … for a while. “You can win in business by playing checkers until someone sneaks in one night after you’ve closed for the day and flips the board. The game changes, and you don’t even know it.

So how do you know if the game has switched? Here are a few:

  1. You always find yourself responding to something. Your leadership and job become reactive instead of proactive.
  2. You don’t feel like you have time to do your job.
  3. Here’s another question to help reveal which game you’re playing: Have you asked your employees to think deeply about the business? Have you asked them to prevent problems and solve the ones that do surface?
  4. If you, and the others on your leadership team, probably like coming to the rescue. You think that is your job. You like checkers. The pace and the excitement can be exhilarating. Your employees are following your lead. They are playing checkers because you are.
  5. Problems that reoccur; problems that should have been anticipated and avoided, problems that catch us totally by surprise and we should have seen coming, and problems that are created by lack of focus or a failure to execute.

This is a book that every time we get close to a growth barrier, I am returning too. Get it today.

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It Doesn’t Matter What People Think of You

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In his book The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster: Why Now Is the Time to #Join the Ride, Darren Hardy says

Someone explained “getting a grip” to me another way, calling it the 18-40-65 rule.

When we’re eighteen, we worry endlessly about what people think of us. Does he or she think I’m cute? Do they like me? Is so-and-so made at me? Am I being gossiped about? Then by age forty, we stop worrying about gossip and opinion. We finally stop caring what people think about us.

But it isn’t until age sixty-five that we realize the truth: All this time, nobody has really been thinking about us at all. 

People don’t think about you as much as you think they do.

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Leadership is Playing Well with Others

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Often, I’ll talk with younger leaders who want to be further along in their career than they are. They want to be leading a church, on the front lines of making decisions, but they aren’t.

Many people never reach their potential because of their anger for being “overlooked.”

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I’ll hear from older leaders who wish they had more influence, that people would listen to their ideas.

Recently, I was talking with someone who told me, “It’s frustrating that my talents are being wasted. Why doesn’t anyone let me do what I know I can do?”

What would you say? Have you ever felt this way?

Now to be clear and fair, sometimes churches and companies fail to see talent. The people in leadership are so concerned about keeping their post that they don’t let anyone rise up and have a shot. They keep new ideas at bay so as to not look bad themselves. This does happen and it breaks my heart when it does.

When I was this leader, feeling overlooked, not appreciated. When I would look at the lead pastor that I worked for and thought, “I could do his job. Why don’t they listen to my ideas? When am I going to get my shot?”

What I never asked myself was, why am I not getting my shot?

Have you ever asked yourself why you’re being overlooked for a position?

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At least not in a way to discover an answer. I asked out of frustration, not for the goal of discovery.

A few years ago there was a person in our church who wanted badly to be a leader. This person had a lot of qualities that made for a good leader: hard worker, creative, talented. Yet, they couldn’t play well with others. Everywhere this person went, bodies would be left on the ground (not literally). No one wanted to be on a team with this person.

I could relate because I was that person when I was 22. I was pushy, demanding, sometimes demeaning. People were there for my vision, my goals.

If you can’t play well with others, you’ll never be a leader.

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It wasn’t until I sat down and dove into, why am I being overlooked that I realized, I wasn’t nice. I wasn’t fun. I wasn’t someone that others wanted to work with and be with.

This is a hard truth to see in the mirror.

As one mentor told me, “People who bite don’t make good leaders.”

People who bite don’t make good leaders.

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Often, the reason someone never realizes their full potential or gets their ideas heard on a team is because they don’t get along with others. People will go out of their way for those who play well with others, but will hinder the potential of those who don’t.

Right or wrong. That’s the way people work.

If you want to be all that God has called you to be, you must get along with others.

If you want to be all that God has called you to be, you must get along with others.

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How to Protect Your Heart as a Pastor

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Every week when a pastor preaches, they talk about the sin that binds the people in their church, the idols they battle, the lies they easily fall into and the truth of Jesus that frees them and destroys sin and death.

Pastors by and large, struggle to apply this same medicine to their own sin.

Pastors by and large, struggle to apply the gospel they preach to their own sin.

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Much of the identity and idols that pastor’s fall into reside in what happens on a Sunday morning at church. High attendance, strong giving, loud singing and it was a good day. A pastor will float through Sunday night, post about all that God did on twitter and wake up ready to charge hell on Monday morning.

Low attendance, a down week in giving, few laughs and no one sings and the pastor will go home, look at twitter and get jealous of the megachurch down the road and wake up Monday morning ready to resign and get another job.

The difference between the two examples?

The heart of the pastor.

When we started Revolution, I rode this roller coaster (and still do many weeks if I’m not careful). I was so concerned about these metrics of our church: how many people came, what did people give. Some of that is a necessity because when you are a church plant, there are weeks that if no one gives you may close down. It got so bad at one point that I would help with the offering count so I would know how much was given right after church and then I could go home knowing if it would be a good night or a bad one.

This feels silly to write, but it is the ride many pastors go on each weekend.

Here are a couple of things I’ve done to protect my heart:

2 ways to protect your heart as a pastor.

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  1. Stay off social media until Monday. Twitter and Facebook are great, but on Sunday it is pastor after pastor talking about the triumph of the day. I get it and love to celebrate it, but it can create a resentful spirit if you aren’t careful. Like all temptations, if you don’t engage, you are able to fight it. Also, many pastors want to see how many people tweeted their stuff, if anyone said anything about church and this can easily stroke a pastors ego.
  2. Find out the attendance and giving on Monday. If you find a lot of identity in what the attendance and giving was, wait until Monday to find out what they were. Yes, these are helpful metrics to the health of your church (along with how many people serve, are in community, become Christians and invite someone), but it doesn’t make a difference in the life of your church if you find them out on Sunday or Monday. It only matters to a pastor who finds identity in them.

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Live the Life that Unfolds Before You

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Right now, I’m reading my kids The Wilderking Trilogy. In the first book, one of the characters, Bayard the Truthspeaker tells Aidan a teenager who has dreams of being great, “live the life that unfolds before you.”

That line stood out to me.

Live the life that unfolds before you.

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Often, I don’t live the life in front me. My life becomes a series of choices to get ahead, move on to the next thing, make more money, have more opportunity, maximize this appointment, this chance, right now. I’m constantly focused on what I can do now and miss the life right in front of me.

Now, I’m all for goals and planning ahead, but in our effort to do it all, I feel like we miss life right now.

What if you have a goal to start a business, a church, write a book, go back to school? You could do it now, but what if you did it in 10, 20 or 30 years because it doesn’t work right now, you have young kids. What if that happened? Would you be a failure? Would you feel like a failure?

If so, why?

We get so amazed at people who do great things in their 20’s but forget that people do great things in their 80’s.

I know, we aren’t promised tomorrow and I’m not saying we put things off that we should do today.

But often, the thing we should do today is the thing right in front of us, not always, but usually.

Before you get ahead of yourself and go charging down the field of life to hit your next goal, conquer your next thing, start a new project, become great or famous. What if, the life you are supposed to live right now is the one right in front of you. Not extraordinary or different, but rather ordinary and right there. What if great things are for later so that you don’t miss now?

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It’s Lonely at the Top

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In his book The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster: Why Now Is the Time to #Join the Ride, Darren Hardy says “The higher you climb, the lonelier it is and the more people dislike you.”

This idea is often debated in church circles. Should their be the guy at the top or a team? What about the plurality of leaders? Does one person make the final call? Is that healthy and good?

Does it have to be lonely at the top?

Does leadership have to be lonely at the top?

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The reality is that leadership is different than following. There are similarities and  you have to be a good follower to be a great leader.

There are some realities though that you have to keep in mind as you climb the ladder of any church or organization.

1. Someone has to make a decision. In every meeting, in every team, committee, church, business or family, someone has to make a decision. Once all the research is done and all the data is collected and every discussion has been had, someone has to say “yes, no or wait.” Somebody does. You might say, “but it is a team decision.” My question would then be, “if it fails, who gets fired?” The person who is accountable for something is the person who is leading. In football, they fire coaches. Many leaders try to not make a decision in hopes of saving themselves, but you have to decide.

Leadership often boils down to being the one who makes the decision.

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2. Leaders need to get better at letting people in. As leaders lament the loneliness of leadership and it can be lonely, the reality is that many leaders and pastors are bad at friendships. We are bad at letting people in. At the same time, when you make a decision, when you have to have the conversation about firing someone, it is lonely. When you get the scathing email about your sermon, it is lonely. When people talk about how your kids act or what your wife does or does not do, it can be lonely. Some of this loneliness is the nature of a role, but often is the fear of the leader that makes it lonely.

It is fear that makes leadership lonely.

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3. Leaders need other leaders as friends. As I said before, leaders and pastors are notorious for being poor at friendships. This is why it is crucial to the health of a leader and their spouse to have friends who are in the same position at another church or company. Lead pastors can relate to lead pastors. A student pastor doesn’t have the full picture of what that life is like. It is crucial to have friendships with people who walk in your shoes.

For your health, be friends with people who are in the same position at another church.

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4. Does everyone have to dislike you to be a good leader? The answer to this is yes and no. It is true that leaders often make people angry by changes they make, new things they start, old things they stop doing. Often, the reason leaders are disliked is that they are jerks instead of nice people. Often people will dislike a leader as a church grows because the relationship is different. People who were close to a leader and in meetings with them at the start of a church plant are no longer in the same meetings when it is hits 200. The game changed. At the same time, if no one is mad at you as a leader, you may have moved into maintaining mode and are no longer pushing into new ground. We like smooth sailing, but that means we have no wind and aren’t going anywhere.

4 ways to battle loneliness in leadership.

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The Most Important Leadership Skill in a Church

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What is the most important leadership skill in a church? For a pastor of students, kids, worship or a lead pastor to have?

Is it vision casting? Strategizing? Team building? Shepherding?

The choices you make in the recruiting process are, in effect, determining your future. -Darren Hardy

The most important leadership skill in any church is recruiting. Who you surround yourself with, who you put on a team, who you hire, who you make an elder. Nothing else matters or makes more of an impact on the life of your church than this.

You might wonder, isn’t it prayer? Prayer isn’t a leadership skill. Prayer is a Christian skill. Prayer and the Holy Spirit makes or breaks your ministry.

What I’m talking about are the things you as the leader can control and do.

Why does recruiting matter?

Who you place on a team, in roles will decide your success.

When you look at the culture of your church, the people make up the culture. You can’t decide what your culture will be. You can’t sit in a meeting and decide you will be a welcoming, prayer-filled, evangelistic culture. You have to find people with that and put them on your team.

A company consists of one thing, really. If I buy a plane from Boeing, it’ll be exactly the same plane that BA [British Airways] will buy, which will be exactly the same plane that United [Airlines] will buy, exactly the same plane that Air Canada will buy. So what is a company? A company is the people that are working inside that plane, the people that are working on the ground. They’re the people that make up a company. They either make this company exceptional or average. -Sir Richard Branson

The same is true for your church.

3 things keep churches from being great and they’re all about people.

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Three problems happen in many churches as it pertains to recruiting and hiring:

  1. Most churches see it as the lead pastors job and only the lead pastors job to recruit. From the stage.
  2. In hiring, many lead pastors give away too much because they’d rather not read resumes, sit in interviews or talk to references.
  3. Churches don’t think they can be great so they don’t hire great people.

Both ideas are rampant in churches and are why many churches are mediocre at best.

If you look at any growing, healthy effective church, do you know what you will find? Talented, hard working people who love Jesus. Somehow, they all ended up at the same church.

Coincidence?

Nope.

The answer to the first problem: recruiting is everybody’s job. Whenever I hear someone at Revolution say, “We need more people serving in ____, can you make an announcement from the stage? I know we have a problem. And that problem is not a lack of people.

Whenever the hope of recruiting is a stage announcement, there’s a problem.

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In fact, the best people to recruit are the people doing it. Not the person getting paid to do it.

There’s something that happens when someone who works with middle school students tells someone else, “I love the chance I get to influence the lives of students. Its my favorite hours of the week. Hey, why don’t you come with me next week and check it out?”

Recruiting in a church is everyone’s responsibility.

Recruiting in a church is everyone’s responsibility.

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The answer to the second problem: the lead pastor has to be more involved in hiring. 

In most churches, hiring is done by a committee that the lead pastor might be a part of, but often he has nothing to do with it. This is the biggest mistake churches make and accounts much of the mediocrity in churches.

If you are like me, hiring, reading resumes, doing phone interviews, in person interviews, talking to references, reading personality tests is that last thing you want to do. It is draining, un-exciting and yet the single determinant to what your church will be like. Three years ago we hired a staff member that I didn’t put a lot of effort into. I let others do that and it cost us in people, time, energy, my stress level and money. We lost momentum, families, excitement. This person was on our team for a little over a year and it took us close to 18 months to get back to the level of momentum and size that we were when we hired this person.

Can one person do that?

Yep.

According to Darren Hardy in The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster: Why Now Is the Time to #Join the Ride, a bad hire can cost a company or church six figures. Now, a church is not a business or all about the money, but if that’s true and I think it’s at least close, that’s incredibly poor stewardship. And that is a spiritual issue.

A bad hire is a spiritual issue because it’s poor stewardship.

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The third problem is one that many pastors don’t talk about in hushed tones. They would never say it on stage, but when pastors grab coffee together, they talk jealously about the big church down the road and the things they can do that they as a smaller church can’t do. And it all boils down to the people they have. While the jealous pastors would say they can’t hire or recruit great people. They can’t find talented musicians, great kids teachers, passionate student workers, off the charts community group leaders. They would say it is a matter of money, but it boils down to what the pastors think they can do. Most churches don’t think they can be great so they don’t hire great people.

Most churches don’t think they can be great so they don’t hire great people.

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Sadly, in many churches the leaders have succumbed to the myth that only large, cutting edge megachurches can get the best people and they are stuck in the 1990’s when it comes to technology and talent.

Not true.

How do you find and hire great people?

First, know what you are looking for. If you don’t, you will never find it. If you want someone great, pray for it, look for it, believe you can find that person and you can vision cast that person into your team. Most people make recruiting and hiring mistakes with staff and volunteer positions because they’ll take anybody. Often, this means you will wait to do things as a church because you don’t have the leader yet. That’s okay.

Second, look for talented people. If you are afraid of talented people (and many pastors are because they’re control freaks) then that’s a sin issue on your part. If you have to micro-manage someone, you didn’t find a talented leader, you found a lackey to do your bidding and you don’t want that.

Third, they have great character. You can’t teach character, what someone’s character is, is what it is. Yes, the Holy Spirit can change people, but don’t hire or recruit someone to a key role with that hope and prayer in mind. Character is not a given in a church interview process, don’t assume it.

The best way to check for character is to hire from within your church. When this happens, you know exactly what you are getting. What their marriage is like, how they treat people, their giving and generosity, if they fit, if you like them.

The last thing that matters and this comes best from people within your church, they love your city and your church. Not everyone loves your city or loves the people in your church. You want people who do. There are unique things that make up your city and church and it doesn’t fit everyone. That’s okay. I get nervous when I get the spam email of guys looking for a job anywhere God will send them. My question is, “Where do you feel like God has called you?” Most of the people in the Bible had a place God called them to, not a paycheck, but a people, a city, a place, a neighborhood. Are people looking for that when they send out 100 emails? Yes, but often and I can speak from experience when I was in my 20’s, they are often looking for someone else to the heart and calling work for them.

If God has called you to a city and a people, he will provide for you there.

If God has called you to a city and a people, he will provide for you there.

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The reality is great people find other great people and great people want to work with other great people. 

Once you find someone great, others follow along. It can be slow and sometimes feels like you are moving backwards or letting momentum slip through your fingers as you try to rebuild a team or restart a culture. But you as the lead hold the keys to building it.

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Great Leaders Navigate Conflict & Personalities

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There are a lot of books and articles that talk about the difference between a leader and a follower. The same can be said for the difference between a mediocre, good and great leader.

Things like vision, strategy, recruiting, decision making are all things that make the list.

But I think there is a skill that sets certain leaders apart.

The ability to navigate personalities. 

Great leaders navigate personalities.

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For a pastor, the personalities they encounter in committee or staff meetings is just like a meeting at any company. You have people who are older, younger, want the church to reach more families, more singles, more empty nesters. There are people who have been in a number of churches, have only been to this church.

One of the dynamics I’ve seen in churches is that the passion level goes up because people give to the church; are married to someone who leads an area that needs more money, time or attention; or you encounter the person who started the ministry that you are talking about killing or cutting the budget of.

When trying to resolve conflict or working towards a decision, a great leader understands the dynamics in the room. Things like:

  1. What does each person hope to accomplish?
  2. What will each person try to get in the result: comfort, control, approval or power?
  3. Why are they advocating for something?
Struggling to navigate personalities & conflict at church?

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Let’s look at each one:

1. What does each person hope to accomplish? Each person, including the leader is trying to accomplish something in a conversation, conflict resolution or decision making process. Some times they are good things and some times they are selfish things. It is important to understand what they are. Once you know a person’s goal, you are able to either help get there or at least understand why they are advocating for something.

Great leaders navigate conflict.

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2. What will each person try to get in the result: comfort, control, approval or power? These are the four idol of the hearts that Tim Chester says we are all prone to have (usually one is dominant). This idol will pop its head up in conversations and cause people to either push for something too quickly, make people fearful and hesitant or cause people to be compliant to avoid more conflict.

3. Why are they advocating for something? What happens in many churches is that people in a decision making meeting see themselves not as leaders but as advocates. That is not leadership. No one in a meeting should be advocating for kids ministry, student ministry, women’s ministry, traditional worship or anything else. The moment you notice advocates, you need to coach them to understand their role or remove them. This often happens in a budget meeting. Once you know why someone is advocating for something, you are able to navigate through the conversation.

Leaders are not advocates.

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