Tag Archives: andy stanley

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Highlights from Rethink Leadership on Team

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leadership

I’m at Rethink Leadership Conference in Atlanta, which has been like drinking from a fire hose of leadership wisdom. The fourth session was on team, which is always a challenge in a growing church and one that I really appreciated. Here are some highlights:

Brad Lomenick & Heather Larson
  • Everybody around the table needs to be known and recognized for what they bring.
  • One of the best things that everyone can do on a team for the lead pastor is get good at leading up.
  • It is important to know what is the lead pastor’s passions in the local church to know how best to help him.
  • Influence matters far more than position.
  • What someone grows up is very different than what someone walks into.
Jimmy Mellado
  • The most important thing you will bring to your team is your soul.
  • The reason teams break up is the inner stuff, not the skill stuff.
  • Great gifts will take a leader to a level, but an absence of strong soul and character won’t keep you there.
  • Hell is not just a destination but can be a diagnosis of where your soul is today.
  • A good or rotten soul never stays to itself.
  • Do people want to be around you because of your soul?
  • What is running your life at any given moment is your soul. -Dallas Willard
Cheryl Bachelder
  • What are the convictions about leadership that are evident to the people who are entrusted to your care?
  • Why do people work?
  • Why do we lead?
  • Where are you taking the people you lead? How do you think about the people you lead?
  • A leader needs to take people to a daring destination with the humility to serve them along the journey.
  • A leader needs to choose to lead people to a daring destination.
  • Taking people to a bold destination is serving them well.
  • A leader must choose to love the people they lead.
  • A leader has to deliver results.
  • No one wants to hear your convictions about leadership if they don’t work.
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Highlights from Rethink Leadership on Momentum

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leadership

I’m at Rethink Leadership Conference in Atlanta, which has been like drinking from a fire hose of leadership wisdom. The second session was on momentum, which is always an elusive thing for a leader. Here are some highlights:

Geoff Surratt
  • We are on the cusp of a new way of doing church and that’s exciting.
  • Churches that are winning with Millennials…
    • Transparency. They don’t care about outside accountability. Millennials want to if you are the real deal.
    • Collaboration. Boomers want to know what happens at the decision making table. Gen Xers don’t just want to be in the loop, they want to be heard at the table. Millennials don’t just want to know what’s happening, they want to be a part of deciding what’s going on.
    • Learn to let Millennials lead. Our job stops being the mentor job but letting them get out in front.
    • Make failure an option.
    • They have figured out mission in a different way, they are living on mission(al). How are you on mission everyday, in everything you do?
    • Is your organization the real deal? Is there fluff going on here?
    • They learn to live in the mess, to do ministry that is messy.
Interview w/ Josh Gagnon
  • See the need and communicate the why behind the need gets people on the same boat headed in the same direction.
  • Staying consistent even when you feel like you are making no movement.
  • You gain momentum when you stay true to who you are.
  • You can find momentum in seasons on the calendar. Don’t fight the calendar, live in it, work in it.
  • People who create momentum are teachable, thrive in a culture of change and openness.
  • Momentum is killed when you do it at the wrong time with the wrong people.
Kevin Myers
  • A powerful force is the momentum of the soul of the leader, when Jesus is changing the life of the leader.
  • Keeping our calling current is critical to keeping our momentum, don’t let the fire go out.
  • Main thoughts: smoke what you’re selling. Sell what you’re smoking.
  • Questions to keep wood on the fire of my soul for momentum on the inside:
    • What’s my current word from the Lord? It’s not new, but what is God whispering to you lately.
    • What’s my current obedience to the Lord? There can be sacrifice without obedience, but there can’t be obedience without sacrifice.
    • What is my current awe before the Lord? Will I get on God’s agenda and trust Him to take care of my agenda?
  • How to move momentum as a church:
    • What’s your current territory?
    • What’s your current risk?
    • What’s your current discipline to afford the risk?
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Highlights from Rethink Leadership on Strategy

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leadership

I’m at Rethink Leadership Conference in Atlanta, which has been like drinking from a fire hose of leadership wisdom. The first session was on strategy, which was incredibly stretching. Here are some highlights:

Reggie Joiner
  • It isn’t the vision that determines our success at a church, it’s your strategy.
  • A strategy is a plan of action with an end in mind.
  • You don’t have to work at getting misaligned as a team or organization.
  • Questions to ask: What do we want someone to become? If you could only get the people who come to your church for one thing, what would that one thing be?
Carey Neiuwhof
  • Is vision as important as we think it is?
  • The reason vision isn’t as important as we think is almost every church has the same vision.
  • Your problem as a leader isn’t a vision problem, it’s a strategy problem.
  • Mission and vision determines intention, but strategy determines direction. -Andy Stanley
  • Strategy initially divides, but ultimately unites, every organization.
Leonce Crump
  • Forms and functions change, but convictions never should.
  • How do you change your strategy without losing your core:
    • Can you measure your core? Do you know who your core is? Make sure they know your core convictions.
    • Vision is taught, culture is felt. What do people feel in our church?
    • Every person wants consistency out of their leaders more than anything else in the world. Do you know who you are and can you consistently communicate who you are?
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8 Ideas That Challenged me as a Leader This Week

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leader

Here are 8 posts I came across this week that challenged my thinking or helped me as a leader, husband and father this week. I hope they help you too:

  1. How to Know if ‘Kids Sports’ has Become an Idol? by Jim Elliff
  2. 10 Confessions of a Millennial to Older Leaders by Zach Yentzer
  3. 6 Reasons Church Offerings are Struggling by Thom Rainer
  4. Creating a Path to Healthy Church Growth by Tony Morgan
  5. 6 Habits of the Best Conversationalists by Stephanie Vozza
  6. 3 Morning Habits to Boost Brain Power by Charles Stone
  7. 5 Key Differences between Church Shoppes & the Unchurched by Carey Nieuwhof
  8. The 7 Keys to Public Speaking by Nick Morgan
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How to Plan an Effective Easter Service

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Easter

Every year around this time I get questions from other pastors or people in our church about why we don’t do a normal Easter service on Easter Sunday. The thinking goes, “Churches will have people who only come once or twice a year, so you need to hit them with the Easter message. Don’t miss this opportunity.”

Do you have the right goal for your Easter sermon?

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And while I understand this thinking, I think it is shortsighted, which leads me to my answer:

Don’t miss the opportunity of Easter.

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  1. We do an Easter message every week. At Revolution we end all our services by taking communion. The goal of every sermon is to get to the resurrection. Notice I didn’t say cross, but that’s a different post. Each and every week we do the same thing: “We are broken and can’t fix ourselves. Our only hope is found in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.” Easter is just one out of 52 times we do this each year.
  2. Create a reason to come back next week. I have two goals on Easter: helping people take the step of following Jesus for those who are ready, and getting everyone else to come back the week after Easter. Therefore, you have to create a reason for them to come back. Pastors do not put enough effort into this and just hope people will come back. This is why I love to start a series on Easter. In years past we’ve started a series on the Gospel of John and looked at how change works from Galatians. Last year we kicked off a relationship series on Easter. Give them a reason to come back. Never end a series on Easter; that communicates, too bad you missed all the cool stuff!
  3. If they only come on Easter, give it a twist so they don’t get bored. Unchurched people are smarter than we often give them credit for. They come on Easter, think they know the story, what you will say and how it will end. Because of this, they tune it out and wait until it ends so they can go back to their life. What if you hit them with an unexpected twist, hit a felt need they weren’t expecting you to talk about? The resurrection is our hope in all things in life; start with the brokenness it is the hope for. Too often Easter messages are geared towards Christians. I understand the tension because they are the ones who complain if they don’t like your Easter message. Everyone simply doesn’t come back.
3 things that should happen on Easter at your church.

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How to Invite Someone to Church

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invite someone to church

It can be awkward inviting someone to church. We have fears about the relationship changing. What if they think we’re weird, or worse think we’re just friends with them so we can invite them to church?

Yet the reason you attend a church is, somewhere along the way, someone decided to take a risk, to take a chance and invite you. They knew that everything would change if you heard about Jesus, if you saw life-changing community unfold before you and thought, “I have to invite this person to my church.”

But how do you know if it is time to take that risk? How do you do it?

First, how do you know if you should invite someone?

There are clues to listen to when you talk to someone. Andy Stanley calls these “the not cues.” When you hear a person say something like, “Things are not going well.” Or, “I’m not prepared for…” Or, “I am not from here, we just moved to the area.”

When you hear any of these, you know it is worth the risk. Often the person who says these things is searching for something. They may not think it is Jesus, but it is.

Another way is to know what your church is preaching on and finding someone who would benefit from that. Maybe your church is doing a series on marriage, and you have a friend who is struggling in their marriage. Invite them. It might be a series on apologetics, and you have a friend who loves to argue about religion or has questions about who Jesus is and why Christianity is true. Invite them.

Once you decide to take the risk, and hopefully you do, the next question is how. That is an awkward moment. I remember this past Christmas inviting a friend to church, and when they didn’t come I thought, “Great, now it’s going to be weird.” Usually it isn’t. I saw them a week later, and it was fine. Life moved on, so don’t fear. I’ll ask them again.

You can call, text, email, share a Facebook event page or talk to them. Hand them an invite card. Take them out to lunch afterward to answer questions they have or simply to hang out with them. Be sure when you bring them to introduce them to people. Especially your pastor; he’ll love to meet your friend.

Let me end with this.

You never know when a simple invite can change a life. Hopefully your life has changed because of attending your church. This is a chance to change someone’s life and eternity, to help them see the life found only in Jesus.

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How do You Handle Success?

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success

I remember talking to a mentor once, and she asked, “Josh, do you enjoy success?”

Honestly, the question stopped me in my tracks, and I didn’t say anything for awhile.

The truth is, as a leader I am trained to fix things. I am wired to find things that are not working and make them start working or stop them. To find something that is going well and make it great.

As soon as something is fixed or working well, we go looking for the next thing to fix. Who has time to sit back and enjoy success?

But let me ask you, “How do you handle success? Do you enjoy success?”

How do you handle success?

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Have you thought about that as a church leader?

Many times in life we wallow in things that aren’t working. This didn’t go our way. We didn’t get a raise or a promotion. We prayed for this, and instead that happened. It is easy to become pessimistic.

It is easy to fix things. It makes us feel active and important, like we are needed.

Most leaders do not know how to enjoy something. We are always so focused on future things and projects that we fail to see what is right in front of us.

If something just succeeded for you, take a moment and enjoy it. You worked hard for that to happen. You set goals, made sacrifices and it worked. Gather your team together and enjoy it.

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4 Ways to Learn from a Mistake

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No one wants to learn by mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from success to go beyond the state of the art. -Henry Petroski

Mistakes and missteps in life are painful but incredibly helpful if we don’t waste them.

When you make a decision in your church, business or life and it doesn’t pan out as you expected, what do you do with that? You can either let it go and move on pretending it never happened. You can mope about life being hard and waste the experience. Or you can dissect the decision and learn from it.

Only one of those choices will actually move you forward; the other two will keep you stuck or move you backwards.

Do you feel like you make mistakes and never learn from them?

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In The Prepared Mind of a Leader: Eight Skills Leaders Use to Innovate, Make Decisions, and Solve Problems, the authors give four questions to ask as you reflect on an action or decision in your life:

  1. What did I/we expect to accomplish?
  2. What, in fact, did I/we accomplish?
  3. Why are the answers to questions 1 and 2 different? (Notice that the question is not, “Who’s to blame?”)
  4. What actions do we have to take to make sure this does not happen again? In other words, what did we learn?
4 questions to grow when you make a bad choice.

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How to Handle Guns Blazing Awesome Guy

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awesome

If you are a pastor you have had this experience.

You meet someone new at your church on a Sunday morning, or they email about getting together and they are excited. I mean really excited. They can’t wait to jump in. They are passionate, extroverted, seemingly gifted and they have tons of experience at other churches. They know the lingo, have read the books, have been to the conferences and have the t-shirt.

They are guns blazing awesome guy (or girl).

Your first thought is, “Where has this person been? Finally!”

Be cautious with ‘guns blazing awesome guy.’

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I get it because as a leader you want people who are excited, and guns blazing awesome guy is excited. He’s excited enough for 10 people! You can only imagine how far he can move the needle in your church and the people who will follow him, and how great it will be to have someone to shoulder the load.

All that may be true, but let me throw a caution flag.

There is a reason guns blazing awesome guy is at your church and not the church he just left. And it isn’t because of doctrine or because your church is somehow better. There is often something hidden in the background, lurking. It is this that gets so many church planters and pastors in trouble.

This is why there is so much wisdom in Paul’s advice to Timothy to not be hasty in laying on hands (1 Timothy 5:22). Move slowly. Guns blazing awesome guy may turn out to be simply awesome and great for your church, or he will move on to the next church that will elevate him into leadership quickly.

Now let me talk to the guns blazing awesome guy. The guy who is gifted, ready and maybe even mature. Not all guns blazing awesome guys are bad or sinful.

Many times you jump from church to church trying to find a spot, and the reason you have to jump from church to church has nothing to do with you and everything to do with people not seeing how awesome you are.

Slow down.

I know, I know. You are 25 and not getting any younger, and you have all these ideas and energy. Yet part of being a leader is being a follower, being under authority.

I recently talked to a pastor who was interviewing pastors for a job. He said, “One guy stands head and shoulders above the rest in talent and gifts. Yet he hasn’t been in a church for more than a year, and when he has, he didn’t volunteer anywhere, and he had no reason for that. It was ‘the leaders and the culture.'” I told him it would be a mistake to hire this guy, no matter how talented he is.

If you’re awesome, be patient instead of impatient. People will notice.

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For both the leader in charge and the guns blazing awesome guy or girl, patience is in order. This is hard for both because ironically they need each other but often have different goals.

I can tell you in my years of ministry I’ve been frustrated because people didn’t see how awesome I was when I thought it. The moments I dug into that, learned and allowed myself to be teachable were the most beneficial. When I kicked up the dirt and moved on, it brought anger, hurt and bitterness. When I’ve rushed the guns blazing awesome guy or girl into leadership because, well, they were awesome, I’ve paid a hard price for it. I’ve overlooked character issues because of how talented they were and because we needed someone in that role. I’ve also moved too slowly with someone and lost them because another opportunity came along.

This isn’t an exact science, so it won’t end like that.

This is more of a caution to explore where you are right now. You may have a guns blazing awesome leader you need to slow down the process on or put a process into place. That way it is less of a feeling and more of a science as you move them into leadership. You may need to take a step back to ask why people don’t think you are as awesome as you think you are and what God might be trying to teach you in the waiting.

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Pastor’s are Chief Vision Casters

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vision

There are a lot of things pastors have to do each week. They preach, teach, counsel, pray with, pray for, listen, fund raise, make decisions, build teams, go over budgets, look towards the future, disciple, evangelize. This list goes on and on.

Some of the things a pastor does he can and should delegate. Some things he should train others to do so they can do it either at the church or in another church one day.

Some things, regardless of gifting, he can’t give away. There is one role, that while every leader in the church does it, the pastor cannot give away.

It is a role that must be on every pastor’s job description: Chief Vision Caster.

The pastor is the Chief Vision Caster.

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Every leader in your church does this or should do this (more on that in a minute), but you are the one who starts it. You are the loudest voice.

Why?

Does this matter so much?

The answer is yes.

If you aren’t careful, your church will slowly move off course. Not theologically, but it will slowly become inward focused. It will start to become about keeping people comfortable.

You know this and know what it feels like. Vision leaks and slowly becomes blurry.

What Separates Leaders & Followers

In my opinion vision is one of the things that separates leaders and followers. Everyone can point out what needs to change, everyone has an opinion of what a church should do, who they should try to reach, what it should look like. Only a leader can take them there. Only a leader can say, “Here is where we are, there is where we should be and here’s how we’re getting there.”

A vision is a picture of a preferred future, not just a complaint about the present.

A vision is a picture of a preferred future, not just a complaint about the present.

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How to Keep Vision Clear

As I said, you can’t delegate this away. You aren’t the only vision caster in the church, but you are the chief one. You should be the clearest, and all the visions for ministries in the church are based on what the vision of the church is.

Often, though, vision becomes blurry for the leader. It can become stale; you wonder if you are reaching it, if it is worth going after. When that happens, it is blurrier for people in your church.

Remember the law of the lid: no one (outside of Jesus) will ever have a clearer vision or stronger passion for your church than you do. It is imperative you do whatever you can to keep your vision clear and white hot.

Here are some things I do:

  1. Hang around people who don’t know Jesus. This reminds you of what your church is to do. Remind yourself that you are battling for souls, not over worship styles or service times. Church becomes so petty when you forget that souls hang in the balance. Followers of Jesus become the most alive when they are living on the mission that Jesus called them on, and that includes people who don’t know Jesus. It reminds you of why you work so hard, why everything you do matters and is worthwhile.
  2. Listen to great vision casters. Not every pastor is a great vision caster, but remember, every great vision caster did not start out that way. So listen to great vision casters. Listen to men and women who cast a clear and compelling vision. You aren’t copying their vision, but it can not only teach you how to use words but it will get you excited. Your excitement for the vision is the lid of the excitement of your church, team or organization.
  3. Spend time with Jesus. This one seems obvious, but pastors need to be reminded to do what they challenge others to do. Your vision will get dim and blurry if you aren’t spending time with Jesus; if you aren’t confessing your own sin and living in the power of the cross and resurrection of the one who gave you the vision and the passion in the first place. This time will not only clarify your vision but will strengthen you for the road to accomplish that vision.
3 ways to cast a clear and compelling vision for your church.

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