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 42)

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 Determine On What Hills You Are Willing To Die

As a much younger leader, I wanted to fight about everything. Growing in this particular understanding may be more a factor of aging and maturing. I’m not sure. I just know that I’m not willing to go to the mat over the color of the carpet or whether the preschoolers use room 5 or 6 at the 10:00 service. I…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Church Renewal Requires Property Renewal

We might want spiritual concerns to be the drivers of the revitalization of a parish. However, in my observations and experience, if there is one key to the renewal, that key is getting on top of the buildings. If the physical plant is in terrible shape, it will be the major source of anxiety and shame for the people. You…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 A Different Kind of Church Shopper

Gone is the denominational and congregational loyalty that was the mark of our parents’ generation. In particular, I have been acutely aware of two types of “church shoppers.” The first is the familiar consumer-oriented seeker who asks “What’s in it for me?” This consumer mentality is looking for the “perfect church.” There is another kind of church shopper. They are…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Reach More Volunteers

If the idea of recruiting volunteers has been a challenge in the past, you are not alone. But getting rid of the mind-set of recruiting for a task and switching to the idea of inviting a team can help. Recruiting sounds like work; inviting is a privilege. People want to be needed. Even more than that, they want to spend…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Who Takes Your Church Seriously?

No church is right for everyone. It can be helpful to acknowledge that fact to potential members. It is a way to treat such conversations from the perspective of their need to find the right church rather than from the church’s need for members. In essence, you are saying that our goal is for you to find the church where…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Online Giving Connects Ministry and Mission

Nearly three years ago our church began offering online giving through our website. We added a PayPal button and were curious to see how church members and friends might use the new option. On the advice of a clergy mentor, we unveiled the new feature with a challenge to the congregation. One Sunday morning I announced that online giving was…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Electronic Giving: A Matter of Vision, Not Just Convenience

In 2011, Pleasant Hope Baptist Church was experiencing a financial crunch. In addition to the turbulence associated with the national economic recession, our discomfort was compounded by the fact that within a 13-month period, seven senior, stalwart members of our congregation died. The impact of their loss to our small-membership church was immediate in their respective places of congregational leadership.…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Considering the Context of Worship

When I was appointed to pastor a new church start, I began to dream of what “my” new church would look like. By the time I hit the ground as pastor of a church with no name, no building, and no people, I had a clear vision of what worship would look like:  what we should do and how we…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Building Community through Ministry Teams

As wonderful as our worship gatherings are, everyone sitting in long rows facing a pastor is not real community. Large gatherings of people for corporate worship and teaching are important, but it isn’t Christian community. Real community doesn’t happen in rows of chairs, but in circles. Real community happens when people sit eyeball-to-eyeball, knee-to-knee. When I can see you cry,…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 That Would Never Happen Here

One of the great blessings of my life is knowing W. Clark Randall. Before his retirement, Clark spent his professional career as a senior executive with Hallmark Cards in Kansas City. Clark is gracious, wise, and, when necessary, can speak the truth with utmost understanding and love. I came to learn quickly that what shaped the Hallmark workplace culture was…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Keys to Effective Financial Ministry

Not surprisingly, church consultant Clif Christopher’s new book, Rich Church, Poor Church: Keys to Effective Financial Ministry (Abingdon Press, 2012), makes many of the same points that he makes in his first book, Not Your Parents’ Offering Plate. Both books emphasize giving to mission, the importance of the pastor knowing what people give, and especially the importance of effectively thanking those…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 The Missing Person in Worship Planning

Every congregation begins as an outwardly-focused group of believers, intent on reaching out to those with whom they want to share the Gospel message. Without being such a mission-focused group, they would not have become a congregation at all. The temptation for a church in times of change, however, is to turn inward and become more of a members-focused organization,…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Building Trust for Effective Team Ministry

Trust is probably the most oft-mentioned and common ingredient within great ministry teams. Experts from all fields of team building agree on this essential. All team values have their roots in trust or team trust. For example, honesty is an essential team value, but on what is it founded? It is founded on trust. In order for me to be…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Take Your Ministries Outside the Walls

How do I get my church started on the missional path? The simplest way is often the best. What would happen if every ministry of the church began to give some of its effort to an outside-church experience? For example, what if the Trustees Work Day at church also included an hour of picking up trash in the surrounding neighborhood and,…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Do New People at Your Church Need a GPS?

Have you ever asked for directions? The practice was much more common in pre-GPS days. As a pastor in small towns and rural areas of Mississippi, I often asked for directions, especially when new in the community. I quickly learned that directions that sound so clear when hearing them become quickly confusing once you start out to find the location.…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Giving our Best to God?

A phrase made popular by management writer Philip Crosby is “quality is free.” It reminds us that efforts to ensure that work is done right do not cost us time and money. It is the errors that cost. Just think how much extra time and effort are required to correct a mistake or redo something not done properly in the…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Stop Complaining about Sunday Morning Sports

It’s a common complaint among clergy types, “Sunday morning sports are taking people away from worship!” This lament and the exasperation that accompanies it go deeper than just whether a family shows up on a particular Sunday. It is the lament of the loss of the privileged place that the Church — and clergy — once enjoyed in our culture.…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Listening: A Key Team Building Skill

It just may be that the best way to make people feel truly honored is to listen to them with rapt and sincere attentiveness. Few practices are more meaningful than the person who will give you undivided attention; few oversights are more demeaning than when someone makes you feel that listening is an unwanted chore. One reason some groups never…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Unclutter Your Church

What needs to die in your church? We begin the journey of restarting your church by allowing for, even encouraging, places of death. We choose to have a memorial service for what worked in the past, to honor the prior period of time, and to make a decision to move forward. We choose to let the past set us free…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Finding Focus in the New Year

Often New Year’s resolutions tend to be grand and unrealistic. Perhaps that is why the failure rate is so high. Sometimes we do the same with our church plans. In the hope of covering all bases and avoiding criticism that plans are too narrow or neglect an important dimension, we try to cover the waterfront. There is a place for…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 The Theology of Social Media

Social media outlets have become indispensable resources to church leaders seeking to be faithful to the Gospel in the modern world. While there are practical reasons for implementing social media as part of our ministry models, the more fundamental reasons are theological. We were created to be in relationship with one another. Our need for relationship is part of the…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Working with Committees and Boards

One of the least glamorous jobs of any church leader is attending board or committee meetings. Understanding the purpose, vision, and goals of each ministry board or committee is immensely helpful in making the most of time spent in meetings. Meetings are inextricably linked to church work, and everyone desires that their meetings be effective. Yet few leaders are taught…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Limitations of an Annual Review

December is often the time when congregations and denominations require annual evaluations of clergy and staff. Evaluation is a good thing. But when the only feedback provided is in the once-a-year formal evaluation, the limitations often exceed the benefits. There are two basic types of assessment. The required once-a-year review is an example of “summative” evaluation. Usually these are required…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Developing Your Own “Undo Send” Button

Have you ever sent an email and immediately regretted it? Most of us have. Google added a feature to its Gmail system called “Undo Send” just for such occasions. Originally the sender had five seconds to “undo” the send command. Five seconds seems not very long. In fact, immediately pressure came for Google to extend the time to 10, 20,…

Read More
Leading Ideas
0 Mission-driven Church Mergers

In their book Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work (Jossey-Bass, 2012), Jim Tomberlin and Warren Bird examine the recent wave of church mergers. The book makes the bold claim that mission-driven mergers have the potential to transform the church world by expanding the impact of strong churches while revitalizing plateaued or declining churches. Mergers today succeed when there is a united,…

Read More
1 … 40 41 42 43 44 … 57

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.