One of the more popular posts on this blog is titled The Power of Clarity in Your Church’s Vision. That post still gets a large number of hits, because people see a great deal of value in having a solid vision statement for their church. I love vision statements… I think they are incredibly valuable tools for churches when they are used properly. However, there is a danger to vision statements. There are times when we [...]

Chuck Lawless recently wrote a great piece over on Thom Ranier’s blog. Entitled Seven Mistakes in Public Speaking, Lawless hits on the things that we all need to review from time to time… but one of his mistakes was something that I feel like I have been seeing a lot of lately: Inviting indifference – Maybe you’ve heard speakers do it: “I’m sure this is not exciting, but it’s important.” “I really haven’t had much time to prepare, [...]

Over the last few years I have been fascinated by the approach of a pretty significant trend in the evangelical world. Over the course of the next decade, we will be seeing a changing of the guard in many churches as the baby-boomers begin to transition out of day to day leadership, and into retirement. We have already heard Bill Hybels and others begin to address the idea of succession planning, and while it will [...]

Earlier this month NPR’s Planet Money did a story on J.C. Penny, and the fairly significant change in their strategy over the past year. While many business analysts will say that they are doing the right things, the company has been releasing bad news about its financial projections every two months for the entire year. The problem is that in changing the way that they do business, they have chased away much of their core [...]

Todd Henry, in a recent Accidental Creative podcast, discussed legacy systems and the impact that they have on our organizations. In the podcast he told the story of a hotel in Florida that had a series of cables running from the side of the building to a palm tree. Not knowing what the deal was, his wife asked a lady at the front desk about the wires and was basically told that the wires were [...]

If you know me, you know that I am a huge Washington Redskins fan. You also know that the Redskins had quite the season this year, thanks to rookie quarterback Robert Griffin III. Yesterday I saw a new Adidas commercial, featuring RGIII… check it out:   So, we have RGIII, football, and explosions… I doubt a better commercial has ever been made. I also think that there is a powerful lesson for leaders, especially church leaders, embedded [...]

Late last week Seth Godin shared a post on his blog called For the only person who didn’t get the joke. In the post he pointed out to the fact that there were a few people who shunned Miles Davis, just like there are those who aren’t a fan of the church you lead. Seth makes a killer point by saying: For everyone else, though, the ability to say, “It’s not for you,” is the [...]

Seth Godin advertised it as a “book that could kill a small mammal.” As soon as I read the description, I didn’t care what was written in it, I needed to have it. The book was part of the Kickstarter campaign to publish Godin’s new book: The Icarus Deception (the book hasn’t publicly dropped yet, but I will give you a copy… keep reading). Last week, I heard our postal worker grumbling under his breath as he [...]

Last night I noticed this video being shared around Facebook: Three thoughts from watching the video: The creativity and resourcefulness exhibited in putting these instruments together is phenomenal to me. The best line of the whole video for me was this: People realize that we shouldn’t throw away trash carelessly. Well we shouldn’t throw away people, either. That’ll preach. This story is a beautiful metaphor of what the church can, and should, be. How are [...]

In the church world, leadership is an adventure in mutual voluntary submission. Whether we are planting a church, or leading an established church, we need to be intentional about setting up accountability structures for our teams… and ourselves. While setting up effective accountability structures is never easy, it can be especially challenging for church planters. Planters, by their very nature, are entrepreneurial and independent: two personality traits that tend to chafe at submitting to authority. Several [...]