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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 Passing the Baton to Your Pastoral Successor

In a relay race, there is an “incoming” and an “outgoing” runner. At different times, and in different races, runners must play either part. So it is in pastoral transitions. At various times in a typical ministry career, any given pastor will either be handing off the baton or receiving the baton. Pastoral leadership requires competency in both roles. In…

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Leading Ideas
0 Christian Wallet Principles

Every Christian knows that we are called to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. But what about our wallet? We get asked to open it every Sunday when the offering basket comes by and are told that’s being a “good steward.” There is no clearer indicator of our ultimate values than our financial priorities and practices…

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Leading Ideas
0 Freeing Laity for Ministry

How many members does your church have? Do you tend to think first of what those members need (hospital visits, sermons, childcare, parking, Bible studies, etc.) or the impact that number of passionate believers could have on your community? We tend to count pastors or staff when we calculate our capacity for ministry. It’s time to tap into the potential…

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Leading Ideas
0 11 Characteristics of Effective Smaller Churches

Some years ago, I traveled across the United States, west to east and north to south, and back north, visiting twenty-one smaller faith communities that were noted for the quality and faithfulness of their life together. I asked probing questions and listened carefully, looking for the common denominators, the faithful and exceptional qualities that were present in most or all…

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Leading Ideas
0 The Spiritual Diversity of Congregations

Parishes are a special form of human community. At the heart of every parish is a motley crowd of ordinary people, each with an individual sense of self as well as a different capacity to perceive or ignore calls from the outside. Every parish I have been part of has some people of extraordinary openness and wisdom as well as…

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Leading Ideas
0 Changing Congregational Trends

Every five years Faith Communities Today provides a marvelous service to all churches through their very thorough survey of religious congregations across the United States. Sociologist David A. Roozen and his colleagues have developed ways to monitor the pulse of congregational life. The 2015 report captures both continuity and change among U.S. congregations. Perhaps the biggest change since 2010 was…

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Leading Ideas
0 7 of John Wesley’s Practices Can Change Hearts Today

Roger Ross, author of the book Meet the Goodpeople, looks to the Wesleyan Revival for examples of effective ways of sharing faith. He says seven methods John Wesley used to reach the unchurched in the 18th Century can be reshaped to reach people today, including prayer, popular music, small groups, and lay empowerment. As a priest in the Church of…

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Leading Ideas
0 Launching Sustainable Ministries

What do you do when someone in your church presents an idea for a new program or ministry? New initiatives can be empowering and energizing. But when the initial enthusiasm wanes, leaders can end up overwhelmed, disillusioned, and feeling unsupported. New ministries are more likely to succeed when they start with a solid foundation. I find it helpful to ask…

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Leading Ideas
0 Cool Church Isn’t What It Used to Be

In a rapidly changing culture, churches cannot stay relevant by simply adopting the latest trend, says Carey Nieuwhof, especially as indifference to church grows. The keys to rebirth include deep authenticity, a true sense of mission, healthy relationships, an innovative spirit, and perhaps most of all, a sense of hope that goes beyond the mundane. For the last few decades,…

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Leading Ideas
0 Worship Game Changers

Why worship? I mean really, why worship? This is the deeper question that is asked by the rapidly growing population of spiritually yearning, institutionally alienated people in Western culture today. This group includes people with no religious preference and “nones”; but it also includes a multitude of formerly active church members who are stepping further and further from regular worship…

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Leading Ideas
0 Spiritual Growth through Mission Participation

Mission and service activities are increasingly the entry points through which people, particularly younger people, first connect with our churches. We hope that mission participation will help them understand who Jesus is, who God is, and how the church’s mission points to God’s Reign. We hope that it will lead them toward faith and into the church. But how do…

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Leading Ideas
0 Becoming a Leader Who Says Yes!

During my tenth year as pastor of a large multi-staff church, the laity offered me a twelve-week study leave for rest, renewal, and learning. I was absent during the summer months as volunteers and staff planned the fall schedule. Upon my return, I discovered a program full of great new ministries — an eight-week lay academy that offered a dozen…

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Leading Ideas
0 Next Sunday is Not a Presidential Primary

Following the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a remarkable focus emerged among churches. We know there were instances of religious prejudice and harassment, but many churches immediately understood they had a role to play in fostering better understanding across diverse faiths. They felt called to educate themselves about faith groups beyond Christianity. When someone…

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Leading Ideas
0 Easter Vigil Brings the Story of Salvation to a City in Need

The Easter Vigil service is all about remembering and reliving our story of salvation. Usually we do this within the confines of a sanctuary. But last year, the multi-site church I serve in Northwest Washington, DC, partnered with other churches to conduct an Easter Vigil in multiple locations. We came together to proclaim a story our whole city desperately needs.…

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Leading Ideas
0 Next Generation Leaders

At an event I was approached by a well-dressed older woman who said, “We are willing to do whatever it takes to get the next generation of leaders involved. We will invest our time to train them, equip them, and guide them as they learn how to run this congregation. It’s their turn to step up, just like we did…

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Leading Ideas
0 Creative Lenten Activity Encourages Reflection

Lent, the forty-day period before Easter, is set aside as a season of soul-searching and repentance. The forty days of Lent reflect Jesus’s withdrawal into the wilderness for his own time of spiritual reflection and preparation for his sacrifice on the cross. At Floris United Methodist Church in Herndon, Virginia, we invite families and groups to spend time together in…

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Leading Ideas
0 Speak More Effectively by Asking Three Questions

Perhaps the most important component to giving an effective speech is asking the right questions. There are three very simple questions your talk, speech, or sermon should be built upon: “Why?” “Who?” and “What?” Why? When I’m asked to give a speech, talk, or sermon outside of my home church, I want to know, “Why am I being asked to…

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Leading Ideas
0 Should We Go From Two Worship Services to One?

Just as some churches are adding worship services, others are considering reducing the number of worship times they offer. The most common circumstance is a church that traditionally offered two Sunday morning services and is considering replacing that pattern with a single worship experience. The question of one service is not which option I prefer personally, but rather which option…

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Leading Ideas
0 Do You Need a New Worship Service?

Our church had hit a plateau. We continued to welcome new members, but worship attendance stubbornly remained flat. We were bumping up against what consultants call the 80 Percent Rule. When 80 percent of ideal seating is full, the feeling of crowding will limit a church’s continued growth. So we began a third worship service, and, within the year, worship…

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Leading Ideas
0 Quiet Leadership by Public Leaders

Dale Bumpers was a very public leader for most of his adult life — as governor of Arkansas for two terms and then United States Senator for 24 years until his retirement in 1999. When he died recently at his home in Little Rock at the age of 90, I thought back to the first time I met him at…

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Leading Ideas
0 Reclaiming Conversation

One of the most profound and disturbing books I’ve read recently is Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (Penguin Press, 2015). Turkle is a professor at MIT, author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (Basis Books, 2010), and a researcher into how technology is reshaping human…

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Leading Ideas
0 Community Outreach Essential to Launch New Worship Site

Saint Mark United Methodist Church in Wichita, Kansas, recently launched a new worship service at a second campus in southeast Wichita that became part of our church through a merger. The worship launch team came up with a four-phase plan to connect with the new community. While these were done to launch a new worship site, they may offer ideas…

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Leading Ideas
0 More Than a Nonanxious Presence

When I came to my first local church appointment in California from the East Coast, about the only thing I had been told about the place was that it was “a beautiful plant.” Indeed, the sanctuary was quite lovely. What the district superintendent had failed to mention included such details as the discovery, about a month prior, of the body…

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Leading Ideas
0 When Higher Giving May Not Be Good News

As a new year begins, there will and should be a careful review of the past year. Perhaps there will be reports made to the church council or congregation on “how we did last year.” If statistical trends are shared, they probably show a mixture of increases and declines. Such is the ebb and flow of most congregations. The economic…

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Leading Ideas
0 Setting Stewardship Goals for the New Year

Setting annual goals for your stewardship and generosity ministry is very important to help create focus and energy. These goals can come out of brainstorming sessions; however, they will need to be refined with those who are going to be working on these goals before final decisions and approvals are made because ownership is important for best results. Your leadership…

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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.