After sending you Seven Ways To Get On Offense last week, I sensed a need to get more specific and down to earth with my suggestions. Our big, challenging subject is the need for pastors to be able to transition from a reactive, back-on-your heels type of ministry, to doing the kind of proactive, intentional […]
Pastors Turning Inward: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
“Now go out and encourage your men. I swear by the LORD that if you don’t go out, not a man will be left with you by nightfall.” Secretary of Defense Joab, to King David, in II Samuel 19:7 “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at […]
Keeping The Band Together: Maintaining Unity As Your Church Grows
Would that every church leadership team would be faced with the challenges of significant church growth! A pastor who is dealing with that happy situation put this question to me: “I love the unity we have in our church right now. How can we maintain it as we continue to grow?” Again: wouldn’t it be […]
Keeping The Band Together: Maintaining Unity As Your Church Grows, Part Two
Sometimes our success can be our own undoing. Oh-so-happy is the experience of the small, united church! Such congregations tend to grow spontaneously: “Come and check out our wonderful little church! I think you’ll love it.” And they do come, and they do love it, because we’re all looking for love, and this kind of […]
Seven Marks Of The Closed-System Church
Let’s get right to it. In the business world, a closed-system at the leadership level means that the senior leaders are listening to themselves and each other, but to no one else. Those in production are shut out of the decision-making process, as are the front-line workers, as are the customers. These companies go from […]
How Fast Can My Church Change?
A pastor whose church is experiencing vibrant health and growth recently asked me this great question. Would that more church leaders – the world over – had cause to be asking this! As I write these words, his congregation is growing and significant changes are being made to accommodate and catalyze that growth, and it’s […]
How Fast Can My Church Change? Three More Factors
Last week I wrote about a happy question put to me by the pastor of a growing church: “How fast can my church change?” I noted that there’s probably no simple answer available, but I noted several factors, which, considered together, should help a leadership team determine how fast their church can change. BTW: The […]
Surviving Those No-Win Pastoral Situations, Part Two
“I am greatly encouraged. In all our troubles, my joy knows no bounds.” […]
Brian’s “Peace Verses”
Psalm 3:5,6 “I lie down and sleep; I wake again because the LORD sustains me. I will not fear the tens of thousands drawn up against me on every side.” (NIV) Psalm 4:7,8 “You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound. I will lie down and sleep […]
Surviving Those “No-Win” Pastoral Situations
I imagine that people in other professions also experience “no-win” situations. It just so happens that, having been a pastor for many years, and working with many of them now in coaching and consulting relationships, I’m tuned in to the dilemmas in which the leaders of churches sometimes find themselves. Such as: A beloved staff […]
Leadership In A Crisis: Ten Ways To Succeed
Leadership in a crisis is hard. Very hard. In a crisis, the norm for us laughably flawed human beings who are trying to lead entire groups of laughably flawed human beings, is to make a mess of things. In a crisis, mistakes are normal, wisdom is exceptional and brilliance is almost unheard of. But if […]
Leadership In A Crisis: Ten Ways To Succeed, Part Two
Last week I shared that leadership in a crisis is so hard that it’s normal for us to use this opportunity to make a mess of things. In a crisis, mistakes are normal, wisdom is exceptional and brilliance is almost unheard of. But if you lead anything – from a family to a church to […]
Your Seniors Are Frustrated, But You Can Help Them
Everywhere I go I meet older church members who are seriously frustrated with their churches. Since becoming a senior myself, I think I’m learning to understand them. These are mostly very good people. Some of them, in fact, are great people. Some of them are amazing people. Those of us who are younger than they […]
Three Misunderstood Truths About Servant Leadership
One of the least understood concepts in the Christian world is that of “servant leadership.” While the term isn’t used in the Bible, the concept certainly is, and it’s very important. The context for the following passage was the “power play” by brothers James and John to secure the top spots in Jesus’ Kingdom cabinet. […]
Help For Frustrated (or angry) Pastors
If you’re not a pastor, you may have been surprised by my title. “What? Pastors, frustrated or angry? He must mean, ‘frustrated by their golf games, their cars, their lawns or even their kids’ but surely he can’t mean ‘frustrated by their churches or their ministries!’” But frustrated by their churches or ministries is exactly […]
Six Ways Your Vision Can Be Dangerous
Donna and I just watched a documentary film called Titan, about the ill-fated deep-sea submarine of that name in which five people lost their lives on June 18, 2023. The key figure in the story was visionary entrepreneur Stoddard Rush. As with so many great dreamers before him, Rush was brilliant, charming, passionate, fiercely devoted […]
The Seventh Danger: Vision Frustration
It’s an awful picture isn’t it? The ancient, venerable leader Moses, who had been through so much and was so special to God and so needed by mankind, loses his temper and strikes the rock, a picture of Jesus Christ, with his precious shepherd’s rod, a symbol of both his God-given authority and his God-given […]
Spiritual Leadership: What It Looks Like In A Church
Spiritual leadership is one of those nice, amorphous, high sounding Christian terms. It’s rather like the weather: “everybody’s talking about it, but nobody’s doing anything about it.” I don’t think the term is in the Bible, so is there such a thing at all? And, if so, does it matter? Personally, I think that it […]
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