It’s the weekend (a long weekend at that!). The perfect time to grab a cup of coffee and catch up on some reading. Here are 6 articles I came across this week that I found helpful as a leader and parent and hope you do as well.

If you’re a leader, part of your job is motivating your team. Whether that is an elder team, staff team, or volunteer team. This can ebb and flow depending on the season and a number of other factors. Michael Hyatt had a great post on 6 ways to motivate your team that I think are worth remembering and reminding yourself of as a leader.

Many people and leaders get to the summer rundown and tired. I know I feel like I’ve been sprinting for the last several months with church, life, the end of school for my kids and everything else. I shared recently how to maximize a day off and how to enjoy vacation. Carey Nieuwhof, always a fountain of wisdom on this topic, recently shared 12 ways to recover from burnout, but I think this list has some great applications for leaders as they head into the summer.

As Revolution, the church I lead has grown, I feel like every week is a new adventure. New challenges, new insights, new problems to tackle, but the reality is, it is new. I’ve never been there before. Others have (which is helpful for support), but I haven’t. That’s why I really appreciated this post from Brian Dodd on 8 things pastors of growing churches face. If you’re part of a growing church, you can pray for your pastor about these things because he is facing them, everyday.

We are on the verge of the teen years in our house, so I’m reading more and more articles and books on parenting teens. It is overwhelming but also exciting. Tim Elmore who speaks a lot on parenting and leadership has a great article about the 1 ingredient that moves a teen from mediocre to excellent.

Like many of you, I’m heading out on vacation this summer. We’ve traveled all over the place with kids, whether we’ve had 1 or 5. It takes planning and preparation for it to be relaxing. Here are 7 tips Katie and I have about vacations with kids. Sarah Anderson over at Parent Cue has some great tips and reality checks for parents as you head out on vacation this year.

Leadership is about discipline. Following Jesus is also filled with disciplines. Disciplines help you stay on track, moving towards a goal or an objective. Disciplines help you grow as a disciple. The problem for many leaders is we teach disciplines, but then don’t practice what we preach. Here are 4 (surprising) disciplines that Charles Stone thinks leaders neglect. He’s spot on.

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One of the reasons that churches fail to change or be effective is the leaders change the wrong things.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast. -Peter Drucker

In their book Mission Drift: The Unspoken Crisis Facing Leaders, Charities, and Churches, Peter Greer and Chris Horst point out corporate culture is tough to pin down. It’s difficult to define. But it sure is easy to feel. Culture is just “what happens.”

Every church says their strategy is to welcome new people, help people meet Jesus, grow in their relationship with Jesus, develop leaders and plant churches. Yet, for a very few churches is this reality.

Most churches do not see guests, new believers, baptism’s or disciples.

Why?

Their culture fights it.

So what do you do? How does a pastor change a church?

Go for the culture. Define the culture you want. Then go for that.

Don’t tell me that your strategy is the great commission if you aren’t seeing anyone start following Jesus.

Peter Greer said, “Leaders cultivate corporate culture within faith-based organizations just like they cultivate their own spiritual lives.”

You must create boundaries, policies, rules (whatever you want to call them) to keep the culture you are going for clear and on track.

You must celebrate the things that matter most, that help you accomplish your culture.

If your culture that you are going for has new Christians in it, celebrate when that happens. If it is baptism’s, celebrate when they happen. Tell stories. Show videos. Preach sermons.

Don’t leave it to chance. Too many pastors seem content to leave their desired culture to chance and hope that a strategy will enable to accomplish their vision.

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