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A Simple Way to Connect New People to Your Church

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Every church hopes to have guests come to their church. In fact, many churches spend a lot of money on marketing, invite cards and a host of other things, just to get people to come to their church.

But what happens if they show up?

Too often, the next step isn’t obvious.

If you want people to take a step at your church, make it obvious.

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Most churches want people to connect to a group, a class or a team. Those are great next steps, but I think those are too big for most people.

At Revolution, our next step from a worship service is going to a newcomer’s lunch. A simple way to find out more information, get to know the leaders and other new people. Free food, free childcare and no commitment.

When I talk with pastors, they often talk about how they will do that when they think they have enough new people.

We’ve been doing newcomer’s lunches for over 3 years and would schedule them sporadically. Recently, we’ve made the move to have them each month: the 3rd Sunday of every month.

How to connect new people in your church.

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Whether you choose to do a dessert or a lunch, here are a few things to make them successful:

  1. Schedule them regularly. People should always be four weeks away from the next one at the most. That way if someone misses one, another is on its way. I actually had someone tell me they hadn’t gotten plugged in because they were waiting for our next lunch (this was when we did them quarterly). That was one reason we moved them to each month. Each week we say, “if you are new to Revolution and are not in a missional community or on a team, your next step is to come to a newcomer’s lunch.” There is no doubt what their step is.
  2. Choose a great host. There are people in your church with the gift of hospitality, who love to open their home and serve people that way. Let them use their gifts. We started by doing them at my house but found this was a way better option, that way the leaders can focus on the people while the hosts focus on the details.
  3. Have great food and childcare. Don’t skimp here. Whether you get it catered, have someone cook it or simply serve dessert, make it great. You are communicating value to your guests and newcomer’s. Childcare is important so the adults can hear what you want them to hear instead of having to hold their kids.
  4. Talk about yourself personally, not just the church. While people want to hear stories of the church, where it came from, beliefs, etc. they want to hear about you. The people who care about beliefs or the church’s story have already read them on the website. At this point, they are asking, “Do I like the pastor?” People tell me every month they are blown away that they get to meet our leaders and have lunch with them. This also helps if you are more of an introvert (like me) to sit in a smaller group and talk.
  5. Make sure new people meet other new people. We talked about doing away with the newcomer’s lunch and doing something right after the service, but felt like that would’ve been an information dump and would miss this crucial element: new people meeting other new people. They are all in the same boat, they are all checking out your church, they don’t know a lot of people and this helps to create natural community and friendships.
  6. Share their next step from the lunch. Have a clear and obvious next step from the lunch and help get them in it. Not everyone wants to, but for those that do, they should leave your lunch with the information they need to join a group or a team or whatever is next for them. If you miss this last step, you will still have people falling through the cracks.
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9 Things Churches Can Learn from Google

I think there is a lot churches and pastors can learn from business and entrepreneurs. Whether that is Pixar, Amazon or Ben Horowitz, there has been a bunch of books published by these great leaders recently sharing what they learned in building their companies. Add to the list How Google Works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg. There are a lot that leader can learn from Google’s practices.

Here are 9 takeaways from google that can help pastors and churches:

  1. The way to challenge Microsoft, we said, was to create great products. The way any church challenges anything they face is to be great at what they do. This doesn’t mean you set out to be better than another church (although plenty of churches see other churches as competition sadly), it means you figure out what you can do, who you can reach and be the best at it. 
  2. Smart creatives, though, place culture at the top of the list. To be effective, they need to care about the place they work. This is why, when starting a new company or initiative, culture is the most important thing to consider. The old adage, “Culture trumps strategy” is still true. It determines what gets done, who you hire and who stays with your church. Before working on a vision or strategy, make sure your culture is what it needs to be.
  3. People who believe in the same things the company does will be drawn to work there, while people who don’t, won’t. This is one of the hardest thing for a pastor to get: your church is not for everybody. Your church will not reach everybody, and that is okay. The faster you as a leader can help someone determine if they should be a part of your church, the better. Whenever we have a newcomer’s lunch, I am very clear about who we are, who we feel called go best reach and how we go about that. I talk about what we do AND what we don’t do as a church.
  4. When it comes to the quality of decision-making, pay level is intrinsically irrelevant and experience is valuable only if it is used to frame a winning argument. Too often, leaders hold tightly to decision making and who makes decisions. Bring people into conversations, tap into their expertise when you are making a decision. Get their insight, even if they aren’t on staff, an elder or have been at the church for awhile.
  5. Small teams get more done than big ones, and they spend less time politicking and worrying about who gets credit. Small teams are like families: They can bicker and fight, or even be downright dysfunctional, but they usually pull together at crunch time. I’m a fan of smaller teams with less people. I think committees in most churches are too big and keep the church from accomplishing things quickly.
  6. Determine which people are having the biggest impact and organize around them. Decide who runs the company not based on function or experience, but by performance and passion. A leader always needs to be on the lookout for the mover and shakers, who people gravitate towards, who has their pulse on a church and be around them. Learn from them about what is happening and what they are hearing and why people are following them.
  7. Burnout isn’t caused by working too hard, but by resentment at having to give up what really matters to you. Burnout is something I’ve written a lot about and so I found this take on it interesting. I wonder if many pastors burn out because they wish they were doing something different in their job or were spending more time on things they aren’t spending time on or spending time with people they don’t spend enough time with.
  8. A problem well put is half solved. I love this. What are you trying to solve? What is the problem? Most issues that churches are trying to solve aren’t the issues or aren’t that important. Make sure what you are solving is actually the problem.
  9. Spend 80 percent of your time on 80 percent of your revenue. This is such well-known, old advice that you might wonder why I include it as a great takeaway. It is true. And pastors do not often abide by it. They waste so much time on things that do not bring return or aren’t things they should be doing. Every year, a pastor should take stuff out of their job description so they are focusing on the most important things.

The book was a great read and if you are a leader, you should add it to your reading list.

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How to Make Time for Your Spouse

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Recently in a sermon I said that every couple should have a weekly date night. I also blogged about why every couple should have a yearly getaway.

As usual, the pushback I got was expected and normal.

Things like: we don’t have time, we don’t have money, we spend time when we can (when time magically appears one guy told me), we have kids so that isn’t possible, we don’t know what to do, date nights aren’t that important, we’ll get away someday or my favorite: my marriage doesn’t need date nights.

My response: you don’t have time not to. You don’t have time to not make spending intentional time together as a couple not happen. It is that important.

Let’s take a step back to when you were dating.

You spent all kinds of time together. You would sit on the couch and just be together, you would leave notes for each other, you would take walks together, you would watch movies and eat ice cream. Now, which of those cost more than $10?

None of them.

Yet, the older we get and the longer we’re married, we make all kinds of reasons (and excuses) as to why we don’t we spend intentional time together.

That’s the key word: intentional.

If you are not intentional in your marriage, it will begin to fall apart.

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I don’t care if you call it date night, a weekly meeting or the 2 hours I spend with my spouse each week.

But if you don’t spend time building into your relationship, something or someone else will.

A common thing I hear is: who has the time for that? Between sports, bed time, work, school, hobbies, the list goes on and on. Again, it doesn’t have to be a lot, it needs to be intentional. I know a couple who walks together 30 minutes each day to build into their relationship. Katie and I used to spend an hour each night talking before bed. I would sit on a chair (we bought a chair that we put right next to the bed so I could sit up and not fall asleep, I’m not kidding) and we would talk to end our day.

The question you have to ask: what is getting my time that should be going to my spouse? All of the things you do, you don’t have to do. You waste time. Everyone does. Take some of that wasted time and spend it with your spouse. Stop binging on Netflix, don’t sleep in on Saturday and maybe you should quit your adult softball or soccer league, so you can spend time as a couple together.

Here’s a common one: I have young kids and I can’t be away from them for more than 2 hours because one of them is nursing.

Great. You have 2 hours. Use it wisely. Take a long walk. Go out somewhere for coffee. Hit up McDonalds. Do something out of the house. Take your child with you and get dressed up and intentionally go somewhere instead of getting takeout because you didn’t feel like making dinner. When you were dating, you would drive 45 minutes to see your now spouse for 5 – 10 minutes, just to see them. Do that now. Instead of wasting two hours doing nothing productive, build into your marriage.

I don’t have money is the one I hear the most often.

The reality is, great date nights don’t have to be expensive, they just have to be intentional. Plan them. Do it at home. Put the kids down, put on a special playlist on spotify (I made several for our date nights to rotate through although Katie can’t tell the difference), turn off your phones and notifications and be together. Eat some fancy dessert (cheesecake factory to go!) and be together. The rule for us on date night is no electronics so we can focus on each other.

Great date nights don’t have to be expensive, they just have to be intentional.

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I had a conversation after my sermon and a guy told me, “My marriage doesn’t need a date night.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this and every time I shake my head.

Here’s what is true about every couple who has ever told me this. I mean every because I’ve heard it so many times. Ready?

They are all either divorced now or unhappy. Every couple. The ones who aren’t are putting on a front right now. Don’t believe me? Get them alone and ask them point blank how their marriage is and push hard on it.

Did this guy need date nights to get married? Yep.

What changed? Their expectations as to how great their relationship could be changed. Their desire for each other, their need for time together has not changed.

I remember reading a mom blog once and the blogger was talking about how her parents and grandparents didn’t have date nights when they were married and how they had good marriages in spite of that, so all the talk that her marriage and marriages today needed it was not necessary.

One thing to keep in mind with this, is the time. Is marriage in 2015 and parenting different than marriage in 1985? 1965? Yes and no. But before simply taking “my grandparents did this in 1955 so I can do the same thing” make sure it is apples to apples. Email, social media, netflix binging, kids school and sports, all of those things are different than in 1985.

A few years ago a woman told me the same thing after a sermon I did on marriage. She said afterward in her pushback how her marriage was great without time together. A few weeks after she told me this, I saw her and asked how she was doing. She almost started crying as she said, “My husband is so busy with work and school, we just don’t have time for each other.”

To me, that is just heartbreaking.

I don’t care what you call it, but if you aren’t intentionally building into your marriage each, someone or something else will.

But what about later in life? The couple who says, “We are pouring our lives into our kids and we’ll be together when they move out.” First, how do you know you’ll live that long? I have several friends right now, my age, with kids the same age as mine, with stage 3 or stage 4 cancer. Will that work for them?

In fact, more and more couples are getting divorced later in life because they spent all their lives pouring into their kids or their hobbies that when it is just them and their spouse, they realize they are roommates and there is no real reason to stay together because, the kids are gone.

Again, that is heartbreaking.

Don’t put off spending time with your spouse. You don’t if you’ll get that time later in life.

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I realize this is a rant and kind of my soapbox, but to me, if you are going to be married, why wouldn’t you want it to be as great as it possibly could be?

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Two Things a Pastor must Do

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Robert Bruce Shaw in his book Leadership Blindspots: How Successful Leaders Identify and Overcome the Weaknesses That Matter said, “There are two things a leader (for our purposes, let’s insert the word pastor for leader) must do: define reality and give hope.”

  1. Define reality. Many pastors have a hard time defining reality for their church. Whether they struggle to have a clear picture of where their church is at or simply want to live in a dream world. Many pastors stick their heads in the sand by not having a clear ministry plan, not having clear follow up systems, not holding other leaders and staff accountable for what they do and simply coast along. I’ve met so many pastors who are simply waiting for retirement, just collecting a paycheck and their churches resemble that attitude.
  2. Give hope. One thing people should always have when they walk out of your church is hope. Not false hope, because sometimes they need to feel conviction and guilt, but they should be hopeful. We believe in a Savior that walked out of the tomb, conquering all things who will day return to rule and reign and right all the wrongs of the world. Because of that, there is hope. Any time someone meets with you, there should be hope by the end of the meeting, regardless of what it entailed. It is never over.

While there are many things pastors can and should do, I think these are two that many pastors fail to do on a regular basis and can turn the tide in a lot of congregations if pastors would take them seriously.

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How to Overcome the Weaknesses That Matter

One of the best leadership books I’ve read in a long time was Leadership Blindspots: How Successful Leaders Identify and Overcome the Weaknesses That Matter by Robert Bruce Shaw.

In it, he defines the term blindspot to refer to an unrecognized weakness or threat that has the potential to undermine a leader’s success. But this is bigger than leadership. Every person has blind spots in their lives. These blindspots are often what other people see but rarely do we see our blindspots, hence the name. Our blindspots though stop our careers before they get started, creating a ceiling on our effectiveness and keep us from having the life we long for.

How to find the blindspots that can hurt you the most.

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  • An executive I know believes that leadership, when all is said and done, is simply making better decisions than your competition. I’ve said before that the longer I am a leader, the more I believe leadership is simply making decisions. It is the same with getting ahead in any area of your life.
  • Leadership strengths are often found in close proximity to blindspots. An overpowering strength, in particular, usually has an associated blindspot—one that is sometimes problematic and sometimes not, but always close at hand. If you want to know what can hinder your success in any part of your life, look at what you are strong at. If you are an eternal optimist, always believing and hoping for the best, this can easily derail you when pessimism would be more helpful. 
  • The question that a leader should ask about each weakness or threat is, “Will this weakness or threat, if not addressed, cause serious harm to me or my organization?” Or, stated differently, “If my thinking about the impact of this weakness or threat is incorrect, can I live with the potential consequences?” Not all blind spots can be changed or should be changed. Some should be noticed and managed, not ignored. It is important to know what your blind spot will do if left alone. 
  • Solving problems is sometimes easier for a leader than identifying the problems that must be solved. This is true and one of the reasons many people do not overcome weaknesses in their lives. They don’t see them, they don’t look for them. Instead of solving the issue of why people are leaving a church, we argue about songs or the carpet. Instead of looking at sin in our lives, we point it out in someone else’s life.

All in all, this was a helpful, helpful book. I loved how Shaw looked at not only personal blind spots, but also team dynamics and organizational blind spots and how they can miss opportunities because they aren’t ready for them.

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Be a Leader, not a Jerk

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One of the sad things that has happened in recent years, especially in the reformed camp of church planting is that pastors and bloggers have become known for being jerks. We have watchdog bloggers, people who are constantly pointing out mistakes in people, creating more and more lines among Christians instead of working together.

Fewer pastors are known as winsome and gracious and more known for being jerks.

4 Ways to Stop Being a Jerk

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If you want to stop any movement, kill any church from having influence in a city, stop any influence you may have long-term with other leaders, be a jerk.

That isn’t the kind of person people follow for a long time. You may get by for a period of time based off of skill, charisma or simply connections, but eventually your colors (in this case, being a jerk) show up.

Leaders should be winsome & gracious, not jerks.

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Here are a few ways to remind yourself as a leader to stay on track and be winsome and gracious:

  1. Remember your brokenness. The fastest way to become a jerk is to think you have it all together, are beyond sin or can’t fall. Remember your weaknesses, your need for Jesus and that you don’t know it all. Because the jerks online tend to be about pointing sin out in others, this is a hard thing to remember, but crucial. You cannot be gracious without experiencing grace.
  2. Spend time with people and read people outside of your tribe. They don’t need to be on your reading lists all the time, but read some business books, some books by those you don’t agree with theologically to learn from them. There should be some discomfort when you read instead of always just nodding your head. While you need to be cautious here, but if you are a leader of a church, your theology should be strong enough to be challenged. Also, those books will also tell you what some of the people who show up to hear you preach think and that can be helpful sermon prep. Otherwise, you end up answering questions no one is asking.
  3. Have some friends who can tell you when you are being a jerk and taking the wrong stand. Whether this is your spouse, an elder, another pastor or blogger, but you need a friend to tell you, “you are being a jerk on that, let it go.” Historically, pastors are terrible friends. We don’t know how to do anything or talk about anything other than church, so we get lost in our world of what other pastors are doing, the latest theology debate, what the blogs are raging about and most people we talk to could care less.
  4. Take the right stands, but not all of them. A mentor told me once, “be careful the hills you choose to die on because you will die on all those hills and you can’t die that often.” Every issue doesn’t deserve a response from you. Every heresy you see online, some can be let go. That person who spouts out bad marriage advice on Facebook in your church, eventually they are seen for who they are. You can let it go. Someone else can step in. Sometimes though, you need to step up and say something, but when you do, be gracious and winsome.
Be careful the hills you choose to die on because you will die on all those hills

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Why Pastors Should Read more Leadership Books

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A few years ago another pastor told me he was concerned for me because my blog only reviewed leadership books but not a lot of “gospel centered or theology books” as he said. The other day another pastor asked me why I don’t review more of those books and then said, “Do you even read theology books?”

The short answer is “yes I do read them” but I believe pastors (especially ones in my Acts 29 tribe) read too many theology books and not enough leadership books.

In fact, when I shared what churches could learn from Amazon, I got comments about how business thinking and learnings fail the church and pastors need to spend less time learning from CEO’s.

Here’s a few reasons pastors should read more leadership books:

  1. It’s the language people in your church are speaking. If your church is like mine, it is filled with leaders and businesspeople. They respond to strong leadership, budgets, systems, and marketing (and yes your church markets simply by having a website and a place to meet).
  2. The church is like a business. I didn’t say it was a business, but like one. Money comes in and goes out. There are bills. Each church has a target audience. Each church competes with things (ie. sports, trips, activities on Sunday mornings, school, work). Churches do not compete with other churches, but there are a lot of things vying for people’s attention on Sunday’s.
  3. You need to be stretched. Most pastors are very smart when it comes to doctrine and theology. Yes, you should grow in those areas, but most pastors are well on their way in those things. They can counsel people well, preach well, but struggle to lead meetings, handle budgets and build systems for follow up with guests, new givers and new believers (most pastors give me blank stares when I ask what happens for all those things in their churches.

Robert Bruce Shaw in his book Leadership Blindspots: How Successful Leaders Identify and Overcome the Weaknesses That Matter said, “My fundamental belief is that if a company wants to see the future, 80 percent of what it is going to have to learn will be from outside its own industry…Leaders need to master the details of their business but also need to remain curious about a broader range of topics that can enrich their ability to seize opportunities and recognize threats.”

I am blown away at the sermon material I get simply by reading the latest business book. A lot of our discipleship ideas have been taken from business books because they are stronger in the areas of developing leaders and a pipeline.

I remember talking to someone and they asked, “But how do you expect your leaders to grow in doctrine if you encourage them to read more leadership books?” The short answer I gave, “well, they do read their bibles.”

If you are looking for a good place to start, here are 10 books I think every Christian leader should read.

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3 Strikes and a Good Idea

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In Leadership Blindspots: How Successful Leaders Identify and Overcome the Weaknesses That Matter author Robert Bruce Shaw talks about the 3 strike rule used by Mark Ronald, former CEO of BAE Systems, Inc. The idea comes that not every decision needs to be resolved right away. Even in a fast paced environment like our culture today, you can sit on ideas.

For me, whenever someone says, “I need to know now” my response is almost always, “Well if you need to know now, the answer is no.” I don’t like to feel backed into a corner and wise decisions are rarely made in a rush.

Wise decisions are rarely made in a rush.

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According to Ronald, “any concern that affects the whole organization should be given 3 opportunities for a hearing by the leader and his or her team.” He goes on, “Each time the same issue surfaces, the individual advocating the position has a responsibility to either present new date or analysis that has not been heard before – or to cultivate further support from others who were not present or supportive in earlier discussions.”

One of the things people often do when advocating an idea is bring the same stats, data, passion, etc. to a discussion. Not new information.

According to Ronald, after 3 times though, the idea is dead in the water and not discussed again.

If you can’t get buy in from the people above you after 3 tries, you either didn’t do your homework, the organization isn’t ready for it, or the church will miss an opportunity.

If you aren’t in charge though, you can only control the data you bring in your 3 tries.

Let’s say you are not the lead pastor at your church and you bring an idea to the elders or lead pastor and they shoot it down. Instead of walking away frustrated, saying they have no idea what they are talking about or how they are irrelevant and just don’t get it. Ask them if you can do some more work on the idea and present it again. If it is a valid idea, they should say yes.

The next time you see a problem that you bring to your boss’s attention, also bring a solution with it. Your boss does not want to solve your problems, they want you to. You are the leader of your area, act like it.

A simple way to get buy in on any decision.

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How to Work 5 Days

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I talk with pastors, church planters and people who work outside of the church about productivity, pace, schedule and the stress of work. Over the past several years, I have read almost every book and blog I can get my hands on when it comes to these topics because the balance between work and life is so hard to balance.

Last week I talked with another pastor and he asked, “How do you get everything done that you need to get done by just working 5 days? I can’t imagine not working 6.” In fact, a few years ago one megachurch decided to start putting a theological framework around a 6 day work week. I’m not going to debate that, but from this blog post I think you can determine I think that was not a smart idea.

The short answer is lots of coffee.

Just kidding.

5 ways to work only 5 days this week.

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There are a few ways I’ve learned to work only 5 days instead of 6 and how to not take work home regardless of the business you have. Here they are:

  1. Decide you’ll only work 5 days. This may seem obvious but most people simply concede that working more than 5 days is just the lot in life for everyone. We don’t take control of our schedules very well and allow others to dictate them. Work also takes the amount of time you give it, so if you set a cut off time at the end of the day or week that you stick to, work will get done in that time. Don’t believe me? Think about how productive you are before a holiday or vacation. You get a ton done and what you don’t get done gets left (so it probably wasn’t that important).
  2. Talk to your boss about not taking work home. If there is an expectation (written or unwritten) at work that you will take work home, have a conversation with your boss about it. Ask what you could do so that work can get left at work. Don’t dictate terms, let your boss be part of the solution.
  3. Control email and notifications instead of them controlling you. Too many people allow social media and email notifications to drive their lives. In my opinion, you should check email at lunch and before the end of the day and that’s it. Email has a way of determining your to-do list and if you check it first thing in the morning, it can also hijack your focus as you will think about that frustrating email you got. At night, turn your phone off and don’t check social media. 
    How to control email instead of the other way around.

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  4. Do only that which matters. If you hold to working 5 days and sticking to a certain number of hours, this will cause you to cut some things out of your life and make you do only the most important things. This is a good thing. As a leader, you should know what in your church or organization only you can do and do those things. You should be giving away leadership and allowing others to use their gifts.
  5. Leave things undone. You don’t need to do everything. This a myth too many people buy into. Some things that come across your desk, some requests are not worth doing. They don’t move you or your church forward. What things should be left undone? It depends.

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9 Leadership Principles from Amazon and How They Apply to Your Church

I just finished The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. As a reader and a parent who buys Christmas gifts, Amazon has gotten a lot of my money and time. The book was a fascinating look at their culture and the leader who started that culture.

Two things stood out about Amazon and Jeff Bezos: their focus on the customer and their desire to be the biggest and best store online, hence the title.

Here are 9 things I learned and what pastors can learn from Bezos and Amazon:

  1. “We are genuinely customer-centric, we are genuinely long-term oriented and we genuinely like to invent. Most companies are not those things. They are focused on the competitor, rather than the customer. They want to work on things that will pay dividends in two or three years, and if they don’t work in two or three years they will move on to something else. And they prefer to be close-followers rather than inventors, because it’s safer. So if you want to capture the truth about Amazon, that is why we are different. Very few companies have all of those three elements.” This is the driving force of everything Amazon does. How many churches can say they have that kind of clarity, and that kind of clarity on reaching people who don’t know Jesus. Churches get lost in committees, programs, finances and lose sight of what we are called to do. We lose sight of those who don’t know Jesus while trying to appease those who are already there. Making discipleship only about growing believers, losing sight of the fact we are called to help those who lost be found.
  2. Looking at things in new ways can enhance one’s understanding. Pastors need to get out of their camps and their bubbles to learn new things and new ways of doing ministry and leadership. If you haven’t learned anything new, been made uncomfortable as a leader recently, that is a problem.
  3. Bezos chose to start his company in Seattle because of the city’s reputation as a technology hub and because the state of Washington had a relatively small population (compared to California, New York, and Texas), which meant that Amazon would have to collect state sales tax from only a minor percentage of customers. Your location as a church says a lot about you and who you are trying to reach. Have you thought proactively about it? Why are you where you in your city? How does that translate into your vision?s.”
  4. Figure out what you can do better than anyone and do that: This was a key part of Amazon’s early strategy: maximizing the Internet’s ability to provide a superior selection of products as compared to those available at traditional retail stores.  Too many churches and pastors try to be someone or some church they are not. Be you. What can you as a leader do that no one else can? What passion, wiring do you have that no other pastor has? Who are you passionate about reaching that someone else isn’t? The greatest companies and churches have this clarity. 
  5. Our biggest mistake was thinking we had the bandwidth to work with all these companies. When you get to complex, disaster strikes. Like most churches, Amazon has had seasons of complexity. Whether they were buying companies or starting new things. When this happened, Amazon got off track and they felt the cost of it. Burnout, turnover, loss of profit. When churches get busy or complex, they get off track. The problem is that you don’t feel the effects of that until down the road when you are playing catch up. 
  6. During one memorable meeting, a female employee pointedly asked Bezos when Amazon was going to establish a better work-life balance. He didn’t take that well. “The reason we are here is to get stuff done, that is the top priority,” he answered bluntly. “That is the DNA of Amazon. If you can’t excel and put everything into it, this might not be the place for you.” While I’ve written about the work-life balance and health and don’t necessarily agree with how Bezos drove his employees into the ground, he was at least clear on his objective as a CEO and company. He was more concerned about the customer than his employees. He was at least clear and clarity is something a leader can never lose. This was so clear for Amazon that stone wrote, “Bezos was obsessed with the customer experience, and anyone who didn’t have the same single-minded focus or who he felt wasn’t demonstrating a capacity for thinking big bore the brunt of his considerable temper.”
  7. Every product, shelving unit, forklift, roller cart, and employee badge has a bar code, and invisible algorithms calculate the most efficient paths for workers through the facility. Pastors and churches need to think about how to be more efficient. Time is wasted in meetings, programs, setting up and tearing down, follow up. Things and people overlap tasks because pastors have not asked, “how can we be as efficient as possible?” Does this matter? Yes because this is a stewardship issue. Every moment I spend on something is stewarding my time for God. It needs to be on the right thing.
  8. Amazon invested heavily in technology, taking aggressive swings with digital initiatives like the Kindle. Amazon also focused on fixing and improving the efficiency of its fulfillment centers. EBay executives searched for high-growth businesses elsewhere, acquiring the calling service Skype in 2005, the online-ticketing site StubHub in 2007, and a series of classified-advertising websites. But it let its primary site wither. Customers became happier over time with the shopping experience on Amazon and progressively more disgruntled with the challenges of finding items on eBay and dealing with sellers who overcharged for shipping. Amazon had battled and mastered chaos; eBay was engulfed by it. Just like #4, eBay tried to be Amazon and Amazon tried to be Amazon. Guess who won?
  9. “When given the choice of obsessing over competitors or obsessing over customers, we always obsess over customers,” he said, reciting a well-worn and, considering the past few years of competition with Zappos, credulity-straining Jeffism. “We pay attention to what our competitors do but it’s not where we put our energy.” I love the laser focus of Amazon and wish more churches had that. Think for a minute about why focus matters. It clears up what you will do, why you will do it, how you will spend your time and money. Now, what is at stake for your church compared to Amazon? Eternity versus selling things. And Amazon has more clarity than most churches.

All in all, I loved this book. Tons of wisdom for leaders in it and a great story about a great company. I thought it was fascinating.