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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 Cultivating a Feedback-Friendly Congregation

Think of a time when good feedback or a helpful suggestion made a big difference for you or for your church. Think about what you do regularly that perhaps goes back to an observation or idea a friend shared with you. Remember all that you never realized you were doing wrong or poorly until someone pointed out a better way.…

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Leading Ideas
0 Bringing about Systemic Change through Social Entrepreneurship

I believe that an understanding of the concepts of social entrepreneurship is critical for church leaders who seek to effect real, sustainable change and address complex social problems incumbent in many communities today. Social entrepreneurship, as defined by Debbi Brock and Susan Steiner, is “the creation of social impact by developing and implementing a sustainable business model which draws on…

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Leading Ideas
0 Fostering Conversations That Connect

Does it seem that you still see the same people in worship on Sunday but not as often? For a number of years, declines in attendance have come not primarily from people giving up on the church but from a less frequent pattern of attendance by members. Even as churches work hard to reach more people in worship, they are…

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Leading Ideas
0 Learn from the Stupid Things You Do

It was a stupid thing to do. Returning to my hotel room at the end of the first day of a conference, I could not find the keys to my Honda. My husband, Gary, and I drove separately to the event. We looked everywhere, dumping out the contents of both suitcases and computer bags and checking the pockets of our…

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Leading Ideas
0 Some Practices to Improve the Use of Your Time

Everyone can improve how productively they use their time each day. It isn’t necessarily a matter of working harder or having the most items on your to-do list crossed off. The important thing is working toward your goals and getting there on time or ahead of schedule. In working with churches and their leaders over the years, I have identified…

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Leading Ideas
0 How to Communicate Change

Three years ago I was hired for my dream job: communications director for a large church. I came with more than 20 years of experience in marketing consulting. In marketing, my job was to help prospects see my clients in the best possible light. I quickly discovered that communicating to a large, demographically diverse congregation is a different animal altogether.…

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Leading Ideas
0 9 Ways Generosity Leads to Healthier and More Purposeful Living

Do you sometimes wish for empirical evidence to back up your faith claims? In The Paradox of Generosity (Oxford University Press, 2014), sociologists Christian Smith and Hillary Davidson provide compelling social-scientific evidence suggesting that generosity leads to a happier, healthier, more purposeful life, confirming Jesus’ teaching that “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their…

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Leading Ideas
0 Navigating Shifting and Competing Values

When I have done strategic planning with congregations of older members, it is common to hear their values expressed as family, community, and faith. But all these are changing. Family has changed. There are fewer nuclear families and more extended-families, blended families, single-parent families, among others. Communities are changing as well, including their expansion given the global nature of today’s…

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Leading Ideas
0 What is “Adjacent Possible”? Can It Benefit Your Church?

Business scholar Rosabeth Moss Kanter has completed a two-year study of the nation’s infrastructure with a special focus on its transportation systems. Many of these systems are many years old and in need of rethinking and reinvestment. Yet she believes the solution does not lie totally in new models not yet conceived, as needed as they are, but rather in…

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Leading Ideas
0 Leadership Lived: Clementa Pinckney and Open Doors

As soon as I saw the television images of Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston on the early morning news, my heart sank. The caption below said nine people had been killed, and soon there appeared the picture of the church’s pastor, my friend and student the Reverend Clementa Pinckney, one of the victims. This cannot be…

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Leading Ideas
0 The Failure-Tolerant Leader

In tennis, players usually give their maximum effort on the first serve, knowing that if they fault on that one, they will have another opportunity. On the second serve, players usually take a more conservative approach to avoid getting a double fault. Imagine a tennis player who determines never to double fault on the serve. He or she will serve…

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Leading Ideas
0 Can New People Navigate Your Worship?

Many churches have a way of doing things that doesn’t allow for new people to connect. Without even knowing it, we exclude those we truly want to reach. Let me illustrate. A guest arrives at a church that is new to her. She learned of the service times from the website. She is nervous. She almost talked herself out of…

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Leading Ideas
0 The Greeter Gauntlet

I have visited churches where I approach the front doors and am immediately met by my first greeter. The eager greeter hands me a bulletin and grabs my hand for a shake. Then I get to the door, and another greeter opens the door, again offering me a handshake. Immediately inside the door, another smiling face goes for an embrace.…

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Leading Ideas
0 What is Your Faith Development Process?

How does someone in your church go from being new to being an authentic follower of Jesus Christ? Many churches provide really fuzzy answers to this question. We often hear people say, “That is what Sunday school is for, right?” We have come to believe that if we come to worship, attend Sunday school, serve on a couple of committees,…

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Leading Ideas
0 Assertive and Humble Leadership

Columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr., reported on Senator Chris Coons of Delaware speaking to the Secular Coalition of America (“A Senator’s Faith — and Humility,” Washington Post, May 3, 2015). The group is committed to amplifying the “growing voice of the nontheistic community in the United States.” Senator Coons was invited because of his commitment to the separation of church…

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Leading Ideas
0 How to Make a Good Entrance

About this time each year, many clergy prepare to begin new work in new places with new people. Some of it will feel familiar. Some challenges will catch us off guard. There will be unexpected blessings. Nothing will feel as overwhelming as it does on the first day, but it will not be as easy as we might like either.…

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Leading Ideas
0 Check Your Website Immediately

Many people can remember when the telephone Yellow Pages or the sign outside your church were likely to be the first places people looked to find information about your church or other congregations in your community. No more. People of all ages go first to your website “to check you out.” This is one of the biggest changes for churches…

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Leading Ideas
0 Starbucks, Communion, and Race Conversations

Many of us were skeptical and even downright hostile when Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, initiated the idea of “Race Together” to promote conversations about race at coffee shops around the country. Schultz was criticized by those who said “he didn’t understand the complexity of the race issue” and by those who said “I don’t want controversial conversations while…

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Leading Ideas
0 The Tardy Guest

In an ideal world, everyone would arrive 10 to 15 minutes early for worship. They would greet five people as they walk toward the building from the parking lot. They would grab some coffee, their bulletins, and their seats, and still have five minutes to get settled before the service begins. Their hearts would be ready, and as soon as…

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Leading Ideas
0 The Power of Laity in Connecting to the Community

For much of my ministry, I had a recurring fantasy each time I was moving to a new church as pastor. I would imagine myself going ahead of time to the new community, finding a popular local hang out, and spending time there. I would listen and learn some of the news and ways of the town from the perspective…

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Leading Ideas
0 Connecting with “Those People”

For four years, I’ve been the pastor of Women at the Well, a congregation within a women’s prison in Mitchellville, Iowa. I meet some amazing women there. When I hear their stories, I can’t help thinking that I haven’t met many women like them in the churches I’ve known and pastored. It’s not because they aren’t in our communities. I…

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Leading Ideas
0 Commencement Season Lessons for All Leaders

Next Monday is Commencement for Wesley Theological Seminary of which the Lewis Center for Church Leadership is an integral part. Commencements are happy and glorious occasions. The location of Wesley’s commencement service at the Washington National Cathedral adds to the grandeur of the day. It is impossible to evade the tension between those common sense practices that make ministry possible…

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Leading Ideas
0 What if Your Church Had No Building?

On the weekend of my first Easter as a church planter in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, I made the drive from my house to a local city park. It was Saturday, and I noticed church after church hosting their annual Easter egg hunts. The parking lots were packed, and children filled church lawns covered in pastel covered eggs. A part of…

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Leading Ideas
0 Tying Facility Needs to Mission

Churches that have been around for many years often face numerous property challenges. With aging buildings, there are frequent unplanned property issues that arise and insufficient funds in the operating budget for these repairs. Just when we seem to make some progress, something else has to be fixed. This can be frustrating for everyone. For example, I was dispirited to…

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Leading Ideas
0 Five Guidelines for Doing Good Well

A few years ago, I ran into Tony Campolo, prominent leader in missional evangelism. He had been at the Clinton Global Initiatives meeting. We sat down for lunch, and he was fuming. “David, do you know how many Christian organizations are at work in Haiti today? There are 900. And after 40 years of all that mission work, Haiti is no…

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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.