Subscribe free to "Leading Ideas" at churchleadership.com/leadingideas. Every Wednesday, "Leading Ideas" delivers information, resources, and strategies for forward-thinking church leaders.

Lewis Center for Church Leadership
You are at:»Category: "Leading Ideas" (Page 34)

Browsing: Leading Ideas

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 Status, Ambition, and the Way of Jesus

Craig Hill, dean of Perkins School of Theology, says that ambition and the desire for status are wholly natural, yet like other natural desires they are inherently ambiguous and must be kept in check. He says the most common strategy employed by the New Testament authors in response to conflicts over status was an appeal to the example of Jesus.…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Building Congregational Engagement in a Church-School Partnership

Jake McGlothin, author of The Mission-Minded Guide to Church and School Partnerships, explains how compelling messages that align your congregation’s vision to the task of forming a school partnership and simple recruitment ideas will harness the resources needed to serve children in your community. Creating and maintaining a great church-school partnership can be challenging. But there are resources in your…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 What’s Your Goal for Visitor Follow-Up?

Lovett H. Weems, Jr. says the traditional approach to visitor follow-up aimed at moving people quickly toward membership may not fit well in an era when people are hesitant to join anything. An alternative approach is to engage newcomers around the goal of enhancing their spiritual development. Most churches have follow-up systems in place for first-time guests. If the visitor…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Relationships Are Important to Vitality

Bonnie Marden explores the importance of relationships to congregational vitality, and she suggests key questions for assessing the strength of relationships that undergird a congregation’s ministry. The strength and quality of relationships within a congregation is strongly connected to vitality and growth. Healthy relationships are motivating. They support networks that undergird amazing ministry and missions, whereas broken relationships and unresolved…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 10 Ways to Master the Art of Asking

Learning how to be effective in asking others to support your ministry is a key to fruitful leadership, says Ann Michel of the Lewis Center staff. She provides ten practical tips from her new book Synergy that will enhance your volunteer recruitment and fundraising. Whether you’re recruiting Sunday school teachers, amping up your praise team, or raising funds to support…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 What Church Leaders Need to Know About Grants and Crowdfunding

Many churches need to think more creatively about funding their ministries in today’s environment. Church planter and consultant Rosario Picardo provides tips and resources for those interested in exploring the potential of grants and crowdfunding. Grants are often a mystery for churches and are overlooked as a potential funding source for new projects or programs. While it is true that…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 10 Ways to Strengthen Relations with Police and Public Safety Officials

Baltimore pastor Dr. C. Anthony Hunt says congregations need to work proactively to strengthen community relations and build trust with police and public officials. He provides ten suggestions for strengthening these critical relationships in the wake of recent police-involved shootings and violence toward police. One key to a church’s vitality is the quality of the relationships it establishes with a…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Doing Mission Fundraising Well

Do you wish your church could do more to support mission? Pastor Lisa Kipp gives tips for how special fundraising for mission can be done effectively to enhance stewardship and increase a congregation’s overall mission giving. Several years ago, our congregation decided to try an experiment. We wondered what might happen if we held specific fundraisers through the year for…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 The Importance of Why

Healthy churches know why they do what they do, says pastor and author Graham Standish. When what we do is based on a clear why, we act with purpose. When we don’t know why we do what we do, we lose focus. Why do some churches flourish and others struggle? Those that flourish generally know why they do what they…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Effective Church Websites

Web designer and consultant Scott Dixon shares tips for designing a good church website. He says three traits are essential — great content, good design, and easy navigation. I can’t count how many times I’ve been asked “What makes a good website?” Or, better yet, “What can I do to make my website better?” I’ve learned there are three essential traits…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 9 Things Preachers Should Never Say

Many preachers shoot themselves in the foot when they start off with hackneyed or formulaic phrases that fail to capture the fleeting attention of those in the pew.  Charley Reeb, a Florida pastor known as a gifted preacher, outlines nine opening lines that good preachers avoid. Preaching is challenging. When someone suggested to Winston Churchill that he ought to put…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Blessing Boxes Energize Churches to Meet Needs

The idea of a Blessing Box, shared widely on social media, has inspired many congregations to take direct action to meet community needs. Amy Forbus describes how Blessing Boxes have energized churches in the Arkansas Conference of the UMC to provide for their neighbors in creative, participatory ways. The concept is simple: Stock a container with nonperishable food items, toiletries…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Keychain Leadership

One core commitment that can help a congregation engage younger people is a willingness to entrust teens and emerging adults with the “keys” to real influence and agency by giving away access, power, and responsibility. The authors of Growing Young call this empowering style of leadership “keychain leadership.” Is leadership style a critical variable in helping a church reach younger…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 The Leader as Communicator

Effective leaders are good communicators, according to Lovett H. Weems, Jr. They understand the importance of all forms of communication and that communication is always two-way, receiving as well as giving information and feelings. One study of leadership analyzed how leaders spend their days, concluding “for formal leaders in organizations … the world consists of many activities (most of them…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 The Lent Challenge

Tom Berlin, pastor of Floris United Methodist Church, challenges his congregation to deepen their spiritual journey during Lent by taking up the disciplines of worship, study, and scripture reading rather than giving up chocolates or dessert. Lent is a time for going more deeply into Christian discipleship. Church members are often aware that Lent is a season for increased devotion…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Should You Add Another Easter Worship Service?

Lovett H. Weems, Jr., encourages churches to consider whether adding an additional worship service on Easter Sunday will increase their ability to reach more worshipers. He says an unexpected, positive benefit of modifying your worship schedule is that you need to be more deliberate in sharing information with members and potential visitors. Easter is the special day of the Christian…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 When Volunteers Aren’t Working Out

Churches often put up with ineffective volunteers because they don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, says Lory Beth Huffman, a pastor in Western North Carolina. She describes how to help volunteers succeed, but also how to remove a dysfunctional volunteer with grace and honesty when necessary for the sake of fruitfulness in God’s Kingdom. One of the hardest dilemmas we…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Organizing a Missional COMMUNITY

Hal Knight and Doug Powe discuss nine characteristics of transformative Christian communities that allow them to nurture spiritual growth while also remaining open to others and connected to the broader community. Whether starting a new church or renewing an existing congregation, leaders must be able to organize communities so that their members are growing in spiritual depth while also focusing…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Lead Positively

Lovett H. Weems Jr., explains why leaders need to affirm the positive and assume the best of others — even when things aren’t what they ultimately need to be. Critique and judgment have their place — but not at the expense of projecting a grace-filled and hopeful attitude toward others. Leaders sometimes are reluctant to affirm good things among those we serve…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Is Your Vision a Mural or a To-Do List?

Tiffany Deluccia says that for too many churches, their de facto vision is nothing more than a list of the next things to be done. Instead, your vision should be an inspiring and compelling portrait of what God is doing in the life of your church. When someone asks you about your church’s vision for the next 3-5 years, how…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 The Multiplying Effect of Community Partnerships

Rather than creating new programs that reinvent the wheel, Rosario Picardo says congregations can multiply the impact of their outreach by seeking out the people and organizations in their community already doing God’s work and forging creative partnerships. As churches, we have a tendency to create “new” programs either out of a desire for control or because we simply don’t…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Two Views of Vision

What kind of vision helps a church finds its way forward? Lovett H. Weems, Jr., says a vision needn’t be grandiose, nor is the process necessarily linear. Drawing on Margaret Wheatley’s “circular” understanding of vision, he explains that visioning can involve a series of small, next-step visions that become a field of energy from which a larger vision emerges. Margaret…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 A Spiritually Inviting Food Pantry

Sue Nilson Kibbey, author of the new book Flood Gates: Holy Momentum for a Fearless Church, describes how a food pantry ministry provided the opportunity for a congregation to develop deepening relationships with the food pantry clients. It started with serving a warm meal and eventually led to the creation of a new community of Christ followers. A church leader…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Ten Ways to Build the Beloved Community

Baltimore Pastor C. Anthony Hunt lifts up Martin Luther King, Jr.’s powerful vision of the Beloved Community, calling on individuals and churches to continue to promote peace with justice. He provides ten suggestions for heightening our commitment to community building and social engagement. A universal human striving is for authentic community. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was among those who…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Why Some Ministries Need to Die

Every ministry has a lifespan, according to pastor and author Graham Standish. When a church forces dying ministries to stay alive, it prevents new ministries from being resurrected from the death of the old. A major problem of any struggling church is that it consistently does what it’s always done before, and avoids doing what it’s never done before. Whenever…

Read More
1 … 32 33 34 35 36 … 60

Shop



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.