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Leading Ideas
Delivered every Wednesday, our free e-newsletter Leading Ideas offers articles by thoughtful, cutting-edge leaders on subjects you care about — navigating change, reaching younger people, financing your ministry, communicating effectively — to help you be the leader God is calling you to be.

The Lewis Center is committed to helping congregations and denominations thrive and grow by providing ideas, research, resources, and training for vital and fruitful leadership. Through Leading Ideas, we share vignettes of leaders and congregations, book reviews, leadership quotes, and helpful “right questions” built around the premise that leaders don’t need answers — they need to know the right questions.

Leading Ideas
0 5 Steps to Resume Ministries beyond Worship in Fruitful Ways

Lovett Weems says that churches should be deliberate and careful in making plans to resume ministries disrupted by the pandemic. The restart of youth ministry, Christian education, mission, and other programs presents an opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of your pre-pandemic approach, consider new options, and innovate in ways that promote fruitful outcomes. Churches are devoting a good deal of…

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Leading Ideas
0 Commissioning: A Simple Tool for Activating People’s Gifts

David Ferguson, one of the authors of Hero Maker: 5 Essential Practices for Leaders to Multiply Leaders, describes how the simple act of commissioning church leaders can bless their ministries and affirm their gifts. He describes how laying hands on and praying for leaders and ministries teams has energized the leadership culture in his church. How can you bless people…

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Leading Ideas
0 Becoming a Digital Savvy Congregation

How can your church extend its reach and maximize its impact through digital media? Doug Powe interviews media producer Phil Cooke about strategies for becoming more media savvy. Listen to this interview, watch the interview video, or continue reading. Doug Powe: Why do so many churches and church leaders struggle to maximize their influence? Phil Cooke: A lot of it’s…

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Leading Ideas
0 7 Ways to Make it Easier to Talk about Money in Church

Ann Michel of the Lewis Center staff writes that churches can promote financial transparency and enhance generosity by addressing the often-taboo subject of money more openly and faithfully. She offers seven practical strategies to improve the tone of your conversation around money and giving. Some congregations are so close-lipped when discussing money and giving that members might think the Christian…

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Leading Ideas
0 3 Key Components of Effective Visitor Follow-Up

Yvonne Gentile and Debi Nixon of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection say a church’s first goal with first-time worship visitors is to get them to come back. So, it is important to follow up with them in ways that are prompt, personal, and pleasant. Faith Perceptions, which does research related to the first-time guest experience in churches, published…

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Leading Ideas
0 Connecting with the People God Has Placed in Your Pathway

Ann Michel of the Lewis Center staff says churches can improve outreach efforts by focusing on people nearby. Those attending activities in your building, family and friends of members, and immediate neighbors already know something about your church. And you know important things about them as well. Who comes to mind when you think about connecting with new people? This…

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Leading Ideas
0 Flipping the Script of Church Owned Property

How can local churches reimagine property stewardship so that a building can fund a church, rather than a church needing to fund a building? Tom Sine and Dwight Friesen offer examples of churches that have discovered innovative ways to leverage their property to fund their church and ministry. It seems clear that the future of the church will focus less…

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Leading Ideas
0 Cultivating and Nurturing Pastoral Imagination

What is pastoral imagination? And how can it be nurtured by clergy and laity? Jessica Anschutz of the Lewis Center staff interviews Eileen Campbell-Reed on the subject of how clergy can cultivate and nurture pastoral imagination to address conflict, experience joy, and develop a deep, wise knowing. Listen to this interview or continue reading. Jessica Anschutz: Can you explain the term…

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Leading Ideas
0 5 Key Ways to Improve Your Church YouTube Channel

Phil Cooke explains why YouTube is critical to your church’s digital presence. He outlines five ways to improve your YouTube channel and boost your outreach. There’s no question that a great number of church and ministry organizations should be addressing today’s digital mission field. And one of the key platforms is YouTube. Most churches and ministries think YouTube is for…

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Leading Ideas
0 6 Suggestions to Promote Healthy Intergenerational Worship

David Manner says the goal of healthy intergenerational worship is unobtainable unless the different generations within your church are first interacting together outside of worship. He outlines six suggestions for bringing those of different ages together in prayer, Bible study, service, song, fellowship, and communion. How can congregations expect to have healthy intergenerational worship when they segregate by age in…

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Leading Ideas
0 Relationships are the Key Ingredient in Successful Outreach

Lewis Center Director Doug Powe writes that a focus on relationships helps a church connect with its neighbors in genuine and effective ways. Successful outreach efforts truly engage others by listening, extending invitations, and building community connections. What’s the secret to success in effective church outreach? The question assumes that outreach is like homemade BBQ sauce. If I just add…

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Leading Ideas
0 4 Steps to Launch a Ministry of Financial Literacy

Lovett H. Weems Jr. and Ann A. Michel of the Lewis Center explain that churches can play a key role in educating, supporting, and equipping their members to steward their personal financial resources wisely. They outline four simple steps for launching a ministry of financial literacy as an expression of spiritual and pastoral care. Getting one’s own affairs in order…

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Leading Ideas
0 Staffing When You Can’t Afford to Staff

Dan Hotchkiss explains how congregations can build their staffs by “hiring” unpaid volunteers. He explains how this approach can make fuller use of a volunteer’s talent and energy while also creating a more unified reporting and decision-making structure. Leaders of small congregations often say, “We can’t afford to hire as many people as we need.” Leaders of large congregations say…

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Leading Ideas
0 Leaders Don’t Need All the Answers

Clay Scroggins writes that authentic leaders are comfortable letting others know they don’t have all the answers. Maximizing your influence requires that you resist the attraction of false certainty. We all crave certainty in uncertain times, and leaders are prone to provide that certainty whether they have good reason to do so or not. I’ve sat in meetings with people…

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Leading Ideas
0 There Are No Volunteers Named “Somebody”

Lewis Center Director Doug Powe explains why recruitment efforts based on general appeals invariably fall flat. It’s far more effective to generate interest through firsthand testimonies and personal invitations to individuals or groups. We have all heard it and even done it. We stand up in front of the church and say, “We need somebody to volunteer for our mission…

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Leading Ideas
0 Cultivating Good Questions

Eileen Campbell-Reed explains why cultivating good questions is a key skill for ministry leaders. She outlines three types of questions essential to building understanding and empathy and discerning the way forward. When we take time to pay attention patiently and deeply, we can discover that there is much more going on, much more to discover about the person or situation,…

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Leading Ideas
0 What Can Churches and Businesses Learn from Each Other?

What can churches, nonprofits, and businesses learn from one another? Lewis Center Director Doug Powe interviews Randy Casey-Rutland, a theologically educated business executive, who shares insights about what the church can learn from the business world and vice versa. Listen to this interview or continue reading. Doug Powe: Can you share a bit of your journey from theological education to running…

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Leading Ideas
0 8 Financial Lessons for the Post-pandemic Church

Lovett Weems and Ann Michel share eight key lessons to help churches deal with the financial aftershocks of the COVID crisis. Now is the time to create a healthier financial future by managing resources wisely, engaging givers more effectively, and seeking more creative approaches to economic sustainability. In the aftershocks of the COVID-19 crisis, many churches face a period of…

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Leading Ideas
0 3 Myths about Digital Worship

Tim Snyder of the Lewis Center staff reveals how common myths that diminish the legitimacy of digital worship are not borne out in research or practice. Digital worship can be as real, as embodied, and as communal as the types of worship with which we are more familiar. What comes to mind when you think about digital worship? A few…

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Leading Ideas
0 How a Food Pantry Became So Much More

Kevin Harney describes how his church transformed their successful food pantry ministry to attend to spiritual as well as physical needs. Volunteers are offering conversation, prayer, and Bibles to the many people who have come for help during the pandemic period. Shoreline Church has offered a food pantry ministry to our community for many years. It has been a solid,…

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Leading Ideas
0 Acknowledging the Toll of the Pandemic on Ministry Leaders

Churches and their members may not fully appreciate the strain the pandemic has placed on their pastors and other ministry leaders. Mike Bonem urges congregations to take heed of the stress carried by leaders in this busy and chaotic time and develop plans to respond. I want to share a secret with you. It’s not the kind of secret that…

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Leading Ideas
0 3 Indicators of a Thriving Rural Congregation

Allen Stanton says rural churches need better indicators of what it means to thrive. He outlines three characteristics of vital rural congregations able to lead the wider community toward the Kingdom of God. I pay attention to the way rural pastors describe their ministry. Often, they are apologetic. They presume their churches are deficient because they try to adhere to…

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Leading Ideas
0 The Church and the Response to the Mental Health Crisis

The church is the first place most individuals with mental illness seek help, even those with serious mental illness. Ann Michel interviews Dr. Matthew Stanford about his new book Madness and Grace: A Practical Guide for Pastoral Care and Serious Mental Illness. They discuss the scope of the mental health crisis and how churches can respond in constructive ways. Listen…

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Leading Ideas
0 The Art of Forging a Meaningful Consensus

Ann Michel of the Lewis Center staff says that unanimity is not required for a group to move forward. Good leaders drive consensus by extracting different opinions and views, listening carefully for threads of agreement, and then clarifying a way forward. We’ve all been in church groups that meet regularly but never seem to get anything done. Groups that discuss…

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This article is reprinted by permission from Leading Ideas, a free e-newsletter from the Lewis Center for Church Leadership of Wesley Theological Seminary available at churchleadership.com.