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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 Worship from the Eyes of a Child

To make worship more family friendly, you might look at it through the eyes of a child. Ask other ministers and church leaders what they think a child would see. Go in your sanctuary or worship center and get down on your knees and take a look around. What does the environment look like from a three- or four-foot level?…

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Leading Ideas
0 Learning to Fail Fast

While reading recent studies in leadership development trends, I was reminded of Paul’s call in Romans to be “transformed by the renewal of your minds.” It is from such renewed ways of thinking that we are able to discern God’s will and be the leaders God would have us be. The complexity and rapidity of change today requires much more…

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Leading Ideas
0 Effective Church-School Partnerships

Effective church-school partnerships take a true commitment and willingness to build long-term, sacrificial relationships. Learning from the many congregations that have begun partnerships with low-income schools, we can take away several key lessons on what works and what doesn’t. Find out what schools need, and meet those needs. Period. While I understand the temptation to dictate what we see as…

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Leading Ideas
0 Educating All God’s Children

Any church leader looking to be convinced that the state of public education in America is a Christian concern need look no further than Nicole Baker Fulgham’s Educating All God’s Children: What Christians Can — and Should — Do to Improve Public Education for Low-Income Children (Brazos Press, 2013). The book makes a compelling case that the academic achievement gap…

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Leading Ideas
0 The Power of Five Questions

In a local church, feedback will happen — whether you ask for it or not! But the challenge is to collect feedback in a systematic and constructive way when so much spontaneous feedback is qualitative and subjective. Feedback is the lifeblood of creative, responsive church leadership. So it is important for leaders to model the behavior of giving and receiving…

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Leading Ideas
0 A Love Letter to a Closed Church

You walk up the concrete steps between the tall white columns. You try the door. It doesn’t open. You try again. It is locked. It’s Sunday morning and the church is locked. You listen at the door — but you hear no sound. Everything is quiet. For the first time in ninety years — the doors are locked tight on…

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Leading Ideas
0 Learning from Growing Churches in England

The Church of England set out to learn from the 18 percent of their churches that grew in the decade up to 2010. A study conducted between 2011 and 2013 sought to investigate the factors influencing church growth in the Church of England. While there is “no single recipe” for growth, they concluded there are some ingredients closely associated with growing…

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Leading Ideas
0 What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Last summer I joined a large group of extended family and friends at the beach. There were, on and off, about twenty-five to thirty of us. Come Sunday morning, some slept in, some worked out, two went running, one read the newspaper and watched the Sunday morning talk shows. Most of the group undertook an obligatory annual ritual of pancakes…

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Leading Ideas
0 Intergenerational Ministry and the Small Church

Church leaders typically consider it a liability when they are unable to provide focused age-specific ministry to every demographic in the congregation. But in large and thoroughly age-segregated churches where the generations seldom interact, children and youth can move through the church without ever being integrated into congregational life in any meaningful way. They go from the nursery to children’s…

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Leading Ideas
0 What’s Good about That?

It’s good to pay attention to what’s going well. Most congregations — like most people — can accomplish more by building on their strengths than worrying about how to fix everything that could be better. That’s the basic insight of Appreciative Inquiry and other asset-based approaches to strategic planning: Instead of asking “What’s the matter?” ask, “What’s good? What’s going well?”…

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Leading Ideas
0 The First Two Minutes of Worship

For many years, my wife and I were regular viewers of “The Tonight Show” — first with Johnny Carson, then with Jay Leno. We have now become fairly regular viewers of the new “Tonight Show” and its new host, Jimmy Fallon. Fallon has a consistent way of beginning each night. He emerges from behind the stage curtains with joy, exuberance,…

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Leading Ideas
0 Leadership Lessons from The Salvation Army

For most of us, The Salvation Army has been an icon of service throughout our lives. The inner workings of the Army are unknown to most people, overshadowed by their caring presence among the poorest and most vulnerable in our midst. That changed somewhat when noted management expert Peter Drucker called them “by far the most effective organization in the…

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Leading Ideas
0 Social Media and Pastoral Moves

What should pastors do about their social media relationships when they move from one pastoral assignment to another? Do you “unfriend” all former members on Facebook and “unfollow” them on Twitter? After all, members in the church you are leaving may be watching to see if you post affectionate notes about your new church. You might find yourself curious about…

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Leading Ideas
0 Preparing to Receive a New Pastor

Welcoming a new pastor in genuine and effective ways lays the groundwork for a healthy and vital relationship and for the development of stable, long-term ministries together. The following suggestions from 50 Ways to Welcome your New Senior or Associate Pastor will help your congregation receive a new pastor with a spirit of openness and hospitality. Open your hearts and…

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Leading Ideas
0 Engaging your Mission Field

Perhaps there was a time when inspiring worship and great music brought people to church. Today, however, in an increasing number of places, the quality of what is happening within the church is not enough to reach those outside the church. Those outside the church, including the growing number of those who state their religious preference as “none,” seek more…

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Leading Ideas
0 Reaching the Millennial Generation

Churches must become more innovative and diverse on a variety of fronts, but less doctrinaire and institutionally rigid, if they want to reach millennials. This is one conclusion of recently released research from the Pew Research Center that surveyed the millennial generation in adulthood. Pew’s new report, “Millennials in Adulthood: Detached from Institutions, Networked with Friends,” reveals some significant changes…

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Leading Ideas
0 Best Practices for Reaching Young Adults

The emerging consensus of research regarding young adults shows a growing percentage of this age group is not connected with any religion, although many younger Americans express an interest in spirituality. This reality raises concerns about young adult participation in religious communities. How are faith communities with a significant proportion of young adults distinctive? The Faith Communities Today research project…

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Leading Ideas
0 Jesus’ Lessons for Leading

Building a congregation’s life around a clear vision and purpose is easy to affirm. Aligning that purpose with biblical teaching and witness makes sense. Seldom will church leaders resist the idea that the path toward a vibrant and engaging congregation is to embody God’s mission in clear, dynamic, and powerful ways. What if we used Jesus as a model for…

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Leading Ideas
0 Saying Yes

One of the surest ways to empower people to serve is to champion their ideas. If any church member approaches you with an idea for a ministry, the answer must always be yes! Does this mean your church supports and sanctions every ministry idea a person wishes to attempt? No, it doesn’t. But it does mean that you champion each…

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Leading Ideas
0 Millennials, Social Media, and the Church

Millennials — everybody wants them but no one seems to know how to get them. That’s the major take-away from a newly-released study by Pew Research, “Millennials in Adulthood: Detached from Institutions, Networked with Friends.” So the question for congregations naturally becomes, “How do we reach them?” In this new space of communicating, authenticity is everything. People can sniff out…

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Leading Ideas
0 Leading as Moses Led

One of the most fundamental elements of any successful organization is leadership. However, it is also one of the most misunderstood qualities as it relates to congregational development and structure. We are in the midst of a drastic shift within many mainline churches — some would say the shift has already taken place — in that membership is declining, the…

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Leading Ideas
0 Spending More on Others Fosters Increased Generosity

Three years ago, our church set an ambitious goal — to become a “tithing congregation” that gives ten percent of our church’s budget to outreach, benevolences, and mission benefiting those beyond our congregation. Over five years, we are increasing our outreach spending — only one percent of our budget when we began — to ten percent. This ten percent would…

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Leading Ideas
0 Give a Word of Witness

One of the most powerful tools for growing generosity in the church is telling the story of how the church is transforming people’s lives through ministry. People want to know their giving is making a difference in the life of another — so give a word of witness! In talking with those who tithe or give above a 10 percent…

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Leading Ideas
0 Levers of Change for Congregations

Bishop Robert Schnase, author of the popular Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations (Abingdon, 2007), has inspired thousands of congregations to focus on what is most essential to their mission and vitality. His newest book, Seven Levers: Missional Strategies for Conferences (Abingdon Press, 2014), considers church renewal from a different vantage point. It examines the function of Annual Conferences (United Methodist…

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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.