Learning to Listen to the Whole Counsel of God

by: Kevin DeYoung

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What does Jesus want to say to the church in the West? To the church in North America? To the church in the South, or in New England, or in the Midwest? What does Jesus want to say to your church?

That all depends: what is your church like? Where are you strong? Where are you weak? We live in a big country with hundreds of thousands of churches. If you think the issue out there is too much law, you’d be right. If you think the issue is cheap grace, you’d be right about that too. Jesus wouldn’t say just one thing to the church in this country–let alone in the West or in the world–because the church in this country is diffuse and diverse.

If Jesus had seven different letters for the churches in Asia Minor, I imagine he’d have more than one thing to say to the churches in North America.

Ephesus was your listless, loveless church. They were orthodox, moral, and hard working.  But they weren’t concerned about the lost and may not have been too concerned about each other. They were doctrinally sound, naval-gazers. To them and to us, Jesus says, “Love.”

Smyrna was your persecuted, 10-40 window church. They were afflicted, slandered, and impoverished. But they were spiritually rich. They were vibrant, but fearful. To them and to us, Jesus says, “Be faithful.”

Pergamum was your ungrounded, youth-infused church. They were faithful, passionate witnesses. But they had compromised with the world and accommodated to their sexually immoral and idolatrous culture. They were missional, but misguided. To them and to us, Jesus says, “Discern.”

Thyatira was your warm-hearted, liberal church. They were strong in compassion, service, and perseverance. But they undervalued doctrinal fidelity and moral purity. They were loving, but over-tolerant. To them and to us, Jesus says, “Think.”

Sardis was your flashy and successful, but ultimately shallow megachurch. They were like your big Bible-belt churches chocked full with nominal Christians. They had a great reputation. But in reality, they were spiritually dead. They were the church of the white-washed tombs. To them and to us, Jesus says, “Wake up.”

Philadelphia was your small, storefront, urban church. They felt weak and unimpressive. But they had kept the word of God and not denied his name. They were a struggling, strong church.  To them and to us, Jesus says, “Press on.”

Laodicea was your ritzy, influential church out in the leafy part of town. They thought they had it all together. But they were as spiritually poor as they were materially rich. The church was filled with affluence and apathy. To them and to us, Jesus says, “Be earnest.”

We all tend to see certain errors more clearly than others. Nothing wrong with that, as long as we see our own dangers most clearly and don’t presume that every church has the same problems. We must pay attention to the whole counsel of God. We need to study all of it and preach from all of it, not just the stuff that hits our sweet spot. God has a word for all of us—if we are willing to look hard enough and willing to listen.

Read more from Kevin here.

Tags: Kevin DeYoung, Kingdom Concept, Local Predicament, Scripture

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The Story of the Table and Understanding Your Audience by Seth Godin

by: VRcurator

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Brilliant simplicity from Seth Godin:

The person who invented the banquet table, the round table for ten, wasn’t doing it to please those at the banquet or even the banquet organizer. He did it because this is the perfect size for the kitchen and the servers. The table for ten is a platonic ideal of the intersection of the geometry of bread baskets, flower arrangements and salad dressing. Bigger and you couldn’t reach, smaller and there’s no room.

But, here’s the thing: the table for ten isolates everyone at it. You can’t talk to your left without ignoring your right, and you can’t talk across the table without yelling. And so, the very thing you’ve set up to engage the audience actually does the opposite. This is even true if you’re taking nine people out for dinner–ten at a table undermines what you set out to do.

Worse, if you’re brave enough to have a speaker or a presentation at your banquet, you’ve totally undermined your goals. Half the audience is looking in the wrong direction, and there are huge circles of empty white space that no microphone can overcome.

In my experience–I’m sharing a hugely valuable secret here–you score a big win when you put five people at tables for four instead. Five people, that magical prime number, pushes everyone to talk to everyone. The close proximity makes it more difficult to find a place for the bread basket, but far, far easier for people to actually do what they came to do, which is connect with one another.

Thousands of speeches later, I can tell you that the single worst thing an organizer can do to her event is sit people at tables for ten.

If you want to let the banquet manager run your next event, by all means, feel free. Just understand that his goals are different from yours.

>> At your next event with table seating, are you ready to take a risk and change the dynamics of connections?

Read more from Seth here.

Tags: Connection, Seth Godin

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Understanding the 4 Common Places Bright Leaders Often Get Stuck in Their Development

by: VRcurator

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Todd Henry, founder of the Accidental Creative consultancy and author of the books Accidental Creative and Die Empty, wants us to redefine work: Work is any way in which you contribute value to the world using your available resources. Your body of work comprises the sum total of where you choose to place your limited focus, assets, time and energy.

If we redefine work as Henry suggests, then work is core to the human experience. In a recent post on his website, he adds the following: Our goal should be to give our best work every day and to not leave it inside or take it to our grave with us like so many people do. We all have a unique contribution to make to the world through our life and work, but unless we are purposeful about getting to it, others may never experience it.

There are three kinds of work that we engage in as we go about our day. They are Mapping, Making, and Meshing.

• Mapping is planning your work. It is when you strategize, conceive, think, plan, and plot your course of action. It’s the “work before the work” that helps you stay aligned.
• Making is actually doing the work. It is when you are creating the actual value you are being paid for, or doing the tasks you devised while mapping.
• Meshing is the third kind of work, and it’s often overlooked in the hustle of daily activity. It is all of the “work between the work” that actually makes you more effective when you are working. It’s comprised of things like following your curiosity, study, developing your skills, and asking deeper questions about why you are doing your work.

Depending on how diligent you are at engaging in these three kinds of work, you will occasionally fall into one of four “productivity profiles”.

To read the rest of this article, and discover your productivity profile, click here.

To read more from Todd, go here.

Check out our free SUMS book summary on Todd’s book The Accidental Creative. You can sign up to receive future release of SUMS here.

Tags: Accidental Creative, Die Empty, Leadership Engine, Staff Development, Todd Henry

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Illustrating How Elevation Church Tells Its Mission Story

by: VRcurator

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“So that people far from God will be raised to life in Christ.” That is the mission of Elevation Church. It’s the reason we exist. We want to present the Gospel and allow people to respond.

For our series Raised to Life, we gave those who hadn’t, the chance to stand with Jesus and be baptized. That day. Right there on the spot. No hesitations, no excuses. And as the saying goes, “We can show you better than we can tell you.”

– Pastor Steven Furtick

>> Click on the image below to play video.

Elevation Church understands the importance of Intentional Communication. As the video above illustrates, they are clear about their mission and are creative in delivering it to a media-savvy, graphics-saturated world.

With minimal words, quietly inspiring music, and powerful images, Elevation Church understands how to communicate vision visually.

What about your church?

Tags: Brand, Elevation Church, Raised to Life

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What’s More Important: A Culture of Mission, A Culture of Discipleship, or a Culture of Leadership?

by: Will Mancini

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It’s amazing how “a culture of” lingo has been trending over the last couple of years. And for good reasons. The understanding of culture, especially with regard to congregational leadership, is very helpful. In fact when I pitched Church Unique in 2007, there were no popular leadership books with the title “church and culture” in the title. My working title for the book’s contract was:

OOZE VISION: How to Shape Church Culture to Guide Church Growth.

Since Church Unique, there have been at least five significant book titles (there are several others)  that have tried to leverage the idea of “culture” in the title:

• Cracking Your Church Culture Code, by Sam Chand
• Building a Discipling Culture, by Mike Breen
•  Look Before You Lead, How to Discern and Shape Church Culture, by Aubrey Malphurs
• Creating a Missional Culture, by JR Woodward and Alan Hirsch
• Contagious Generosity (Culture of Giving) by Chris Willard and Jim Sheppard

So, the natural question seems to be, what kind of culture is most important? Does a culture of leadership trump a culture of discipleship? If I am working on a culture of mission, do I need to work separately on a culture of generosity? How many “cultures” am I supposed to be working on anyway?

Let’s start by eliminating the easy ones. As much as I believe in a culture of leadership and a culture of generosity, these are clearly subordinate to the biggest ideas of the church’s identity. Simply put God does not command us to go into the world and make leaders or centers of generosity. (More on Jesus’ use of leadership terminology.)

That leaves us with a culture of discipleship or a culture of mission. What is more important?

I don’t think there is an objectively correct answer to this question as much as there is a practically useful answer depending on your context. In the current context of North America in 2014, I believe the more useful answer is a culture of mission.

Why? There are four primary reasons:

• Most churches can easily mistake a programmatic culture for a culture of discipleship. Therefore the terminology doesn’t wake them up to their problem. A culture of mission has more teeth.
• The term discipleship tends to connote contextually, although not biblically, an inward or internal church focus. A culture of mission forces you to grapple with the people far from God whom you are poised to reach.
• A culture of mission subsumes a culture of discipleship so directly and clearly, but gives broader application to the nuances of each church’s application of mission. Mission is a bigger idea than discipleship in this regard.
• A culture of mission more clearly integrates all of the functions of the church better than a culture of discipleship. Again, this is not necessarily true at all times and places, but I believe there is a slight advantage to seeing it this way today.

Clearly a culture of mission and a culture of discipleship should take us to the same place. But I think it is more possible for a church to think of themselves as good at making disciples and be unclear on mission, than for church to be crystal clear on mission and not be focused on making disciples.

Another way I would support this point, is to ask the question, “What was in Jesus’ mind when he selected his first disciples. Mission or discipleship?” I did a fun post on this looking at three disciple-making catalysts in the life of Jesus. 

I am dying to hear your thoughts. What do you think?

Read more from Will here.

Tags: Culture, Culture of Discipleship, Culture of Leadership, Culture of Mission, Will Mancini

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Trends in Church Buildings – Why Bigger is Becoming Smaller

by: Ed Stetzer

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The megachurch has been a topic of interest for years. There are more every year and their growth rate is increasing. In other words, it’s not just that there are more, their rate of increase is growing.

Yet, when most people think of megachurches they not only think of mega-numbers, but also mega-facilities.

I thought it worth a moment to consider megachurch BUILDINGS—and what trends in such buildings might mean. Interestingly, some mega churches have begun to think differently about their facilities. These trends are not only fascinating, but I also find them encouraging several ways.

The last church I pastored had a 3,000 seat sanctuary. That’s a big room. But, what is interesting is that the church would not build that building if they could do it again—and that’s a theme I consistently hear.

What are the Trends in Big Church Buildings?

One of the trends I have observed in a qualitative way is that fewer churches are building large spaces specifically meant to accommodate thousands of people. In 2009 I posted a blogpost expressing our findings as we searched for gathering spaces of 5,000 seats or more. It would seem that being a megachurch does not necessarily imply having mega-facilities even if they maintain mega-numbers.

While the number of megachurches has increased, my (unscientific) observation is that sanctuaries have not grown at the same pace. At the time I wrote that post (2009) the average main sanctuary seating capacity in the typical American megachurch was 1,400 at most. This is large, but nowhere near 5,000. It seems that gathering spaces of growing mega-churches continue to get smaller. There seems to have been a substantial shift from the days of several thousand-seat sanctuaries to smaller venues. There are certainly exceptions, but I’m sensing a trend—and I’ll do more formal research on that later.

From Mega-Facilities to Multiplying Facilities

The decline of large church buildings points to a shift in ministry methodology. Many of the largest churches have begun to favor multisite expansion or church planting partnerships. While the large, larger, and largest churches continue to grow ever larger, they do not require larger spaces in the process—just more spaces (which tend to still be large!).

Simply put, implementing the multisite model compresses down the magnitude of the cavernous sanctuary. And, I do wonder if such buildings might be combined with a better multiplication strategy for a greater community impact.

At least in the American context today, the gigachurch, consisting of 10,000 or more members or attendees, often grows by adding sites and services rather than square footage to their buildings. New Spring Church in South Carolina provides a prime example. Pastored by Perry Noble, New Spring runs about 23,000 people on a given Sunday. However, their campuses do not seat 10,000 or even 5,000. Instead, there are multiple services and multiple technological means to distribute the message to other campuses.

Similar models like Saddleback implement video technology on many different sites, which allows those models to have 20,000 or more people attending their church on a weekly basis. Ultimately, the growth has shifted drastically away from continual building expansion to continual site expansion. As Rick Warren explained to me recently, their growth happens like a tree—not at the trunk, but at the branches. My guess is we will hear more thinking like that in years to come—smaller (but still very big) buildings, with more locations that are also smaller.

This trend is not only true of gigachurches, but seems to the trajectory of megachurches also. One example is Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, NC. Calvary is an older established church that has little room to expand at their central campus. Under the leadership of their former pastor Al Gilbert, Calvary voted to open a second campus in an area of town where over 30% of their existing members already lived. The attendance at Calvary’s new campus has more than doubled over the last 3 years, many of the new members having no prior connection to Calvary. That would have been unheard of a few decades ago.

The Benefits of Multisite Mega-Ministry

Part of the point is not really “new” news: more and more giga and megachurches are multiplying their ministry through multi-campus ministry. Perhaps you remember Warren Bird’s recent research that concluded;

• Multisite churches reach more people than single site churches.
• Multisite tends to spread healthy churches to more diverse communities.
• Multisite churches have more volunteers in service as a percentage than single site.
• Multisite churches baptize more people than single site.
• Multisite churches tend to activate more people into ministry than single site.

However, my additional point is that multisite may very well lead to smaller (and, I hope) recyclable buildings that does not lead to a proliferation of large, empty church caverns when neighborhoods change.

Also, part of the megachurch debate centered on whether or not the model could sustain itself in years to come. Since then, megachurches have shifted their philosophy from building bigger and bigger to spreading further and further through multisite ministry. I imagine that will improve sustainability as well.

Will the Megachurch Movement Endure?

It is quite possible that the evangelical landscape will include more megachurches than ever in the future. Why? Well, churches grow. Then they grow more…and then they grow some more.

While the evangelical landscape will include more mega-churches than ever, I would contend that the vast majority of those megachurches will be multisite churches. Whether you like the megachurch or not, the trends point to the fact that the megachurch phenomenon is not over, but it actually increasing in its growth.

Furthermore, I think it is now beginning to get its second wind through the multisite expansion model. When it comes to the megachurch the model of bigger church buildings is declining, but new campuses are springing to life all over the landscape.

There are lots of implications here—some good and some bad. But, it appears that bigger churches are having smaller buildings—and more locations.

I’m not sure I know all the implications of this yet—and I’d like to hear your input in the comments, but a new reality is emerging and—with all such shifts—it promises both challenges and opportunities.

Read more from Ed here.

Tags: Church Buildings, Ed Stetzer, Mega-church, Multisite, Physical space

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3 Helpful Rules for Pastors Using Twitter

by: Anthony Coppedge

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If your pastor is new to Twitter or hasn’t found a good rhythm of how to use it, try my 30/50/20 rule for Pastors using Twitter:

30% message application: Drop hints in your weekend message that you’ll be tweeting life application from the sermon topic every day for the upcoming week. This helps engage those in audience (especially those via broadcast) who can be encouraged and have practical application for the past weekend’s message M-F. It also, obviously, has the added benefit of increasing followers.

50% family/personal life: People want to feel like they know their pastors. Since you live in a glass-house anyway, offer them the view you want to share as you live life transparently. Not everyone can get to spend 1-on-1 time with you. Yet when you share “life”, they do feel like you’re more their pastor than just a pastor.

20% inspiration/information (including ReTweets): You don’t have all the answers, and you’re learning, too. Be human and share what’s inspiring/challenging you and who you’re learning from. This applies to all of us. Those who only tweet their own thoughts, promote their own events and don’t reply to others from time to time are missing the point of social media: engagement.

What other helpful practices have you found in using your personal Twitter account?

Read more from Anthony here.

Tags: Anthony Coppedge, Attention, Awareness, Social Media, Twitter

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3 Costs to Constant Ministry Imitation

by: Carey Nieuwhof

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If you’re like me, you like to track with people who are ahead of you in age and stage, and probably ahead of you in their level of ‘success’.

Chances are you do this in real life (I hope you have mentors) but you also do this online. Thanks to social media, smart phones, tablets and access to anything anywhere all the time, almost everyone tracks with some ‘celebrity’ type leader.

Please hear me. This is a great way of learning and growing.  I do it too.

But have you ever found yourself imitating others—in style, in content and in strategy?

Do that often enough and guess what happens?

You’ll kill something God given inside.

In fact, you’ll eventually stop innovating.

Ultimately, imitation kills innovation.

Is Imitation Always Bad? Well, No

Imitation isn’t all bad.  There are instances when imitation is just wise and expedient.  Here are a few:

• When someone else has done something better than you could and you are free to use their material, strategy or approach.
• When someone has figured out a smarter, faster way to get things done.
• No one on your team has the creativity to create a better mousetrap.

But imitation as a habit can be a big mistake, not to mention soul killing.

But Now the Shadow Side

Imitate long enough, and imitate hard enough, and there won’t be much innovation left in you or your organization.  And for those of us who are Christians, there may not be much of God’s voice left in you either.

If you only listen to others, you will eventually stop listening to God.

And let’s take that a step further.

While this doesn’t always happen, just level with me. When you follow someone who is a better leader, better communicator or better writer than you, it stirs up some envy, doesn’t it?

If it doesn’t for you, as much as I hate to admit it, it does for me from time to time. And when that happens, I need to confess it and address it.

Envying someone else’s gifts will cause you to neglect your own.

3 Ways Imitation Kills Innovation

So what does constant imitation kill?  More than you might think. Let’s look specifically at three ways innovation suffers at the hands of imitation.

Constant imitation:

1. Kills your unique voice.

If you are always trying to be someone else, you will never be yourself. And that’s a shame, because God actually created you.

It’s not that you shouldn’t learn from others (you really can’t learn all by yourself anyway), it’s just that you should stop trying to be someone else. So just stop that. Develop your own voice. Learn from others, but be yourself.

2. Stifles Your creativity.

Some of the best ideas you’ll ever have seem dumb when you first have them. And sometimes they stay dumb. But often they don’t…what’s crazy to begin with can become powerfully effective.

6 years ago a group of us left an almost paid for building to start a new non-denominational church that was 100% portable. A year after I sat down with a colleague I really respected and he told me he thought we were crazy when he first heard of the idea. Why leave what’s safe to move into the unknown? Truthfully, I hadn’t thought about it that way until he mentioned it. Glad I didn’t. We weren’t imitating anyone at the time…we were just doing what we believed we were called to do. And 6 years later, I’m so glad we did it.

3. Stunts your true potential. 

Imitators are always one or two steps behind. They have to wait for the next product, approach or strategy to be revealed. Then they madly copy.

If you are always imitating, your trajectory will never be greater than the person you’re copying. Ever. It will always be a shadow of theirs.

Remember too, that the last thing the innovator you’re copying thought about when creating what you’re looking at was “Now what should I imitate next?”

Innovation is messy, uncertain, scary and fraught with failure. Which is why it’s so much easier to imitate. And so less rewarding.

So…two questions for you personally:

• What (or who) are you imitating?
• How much time do you spend innovating or trying something new?

And now a question for commenters: How do you straddle the tension between learning from someone and imitating them?

Read more from Carey here.

Tags: Carey Nieuwhof, Imitation, ministry innovation

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What Happens When Your Elegant Strategy Meets the Minefield of Execution

by: VRcurator

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Setting strategy is elegant. It’s a clean and sophisticated process of collecting and analyzing data, generating insights, and identifying smart paths forward. Done at arm’s length in an academic fashion, tight logic is the only glue needed to hold ideas together. The output is a smooth narrative in a professional-looking document made up of Venn diagrams, 2×2 matrices, and high-level plans of attack. Jettison this business. Focus efforts here. Build up this organizational capability. Executives buy into the plan. The strategists, confident in their intellectual prowess, quietly recede into the background.

Then the trouble starts. Execution is a minefield. The clean and elegant logic of strategy gets dirty in the real world. Agendas compete. Priorities clash. Decisions stall. Communication breaks down. Timelines get blown. It’s never a question of if these problems will happen; it’s a question of when and to what degree. Managing these challenges takes street smarts and muscle. Overwhelming success means you take a few punches, but still make the plan happen. The process is always a little ugly. The executors’ dirt-in-the-fingernails view on the ground is much different from the strategists’ high-minded view from the air.

The best strategists, executors, and leaders stand up and say, “I’m responsible for it” even if it isn’t in their job description. It’s doubly powerful when both strategists and executors do this, meeting in the middle.

To understand the complimentary viewpoints of both strategists and executors, read the rest of the article by leadership and strategy consultant Doug Sundheim in hbr.org  here.

Tags: Strategy

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Beyond the One Dimensional Scorecard: Count Vertically AND Measure Horizontally

by: Anthony Coppedge

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Disclaimer: I’m not a certified church growth expert. I’ve not written a book on growing churches, nor do I pastor a large church that’s had a ton of numerical growth. But in talking with a very good friend of mine I’ve thought through some ideas and wanted to share my thoughts on measuring growth. – end of disclaimer

Previously, I’ve blogged about the Fellowbackgrangepoint Church model as a way of trying to describe what I’ve seen happening with churches. You might have your own church model that might look more like the Willoharvesttemple Church or the Friendshipcommunityofbible Church or any other mash-up of churches that your leadership has tried to emulate.

At the end of the day there’s a lot of ‘me too’ churches that are honest and sincere in their application of proven lessons. But the results are an overlay of formats that are missing the key ingredient: who God called your church to uniquely be.

There seem to be a couple of prevalent schools of thought floating around:

1. Measure attendance, because each number is a life in need of Christ
2. Measure discipleship growth, because life change matters most

Why is it either/or instead of both/and? If a church has 10 people that go very deep in studying Scripture and are a tight-knit fellowship of believers, but never reach people in need of Jesus, they’re ignoring the Great Commission (go and make disciples). Conversely, if a church has a huge front door with thousands coming in and nearly as large back door with thousands going out, why aren’t they discipling those people who are in and out?

So here’s the question I want to posit:

If we count involvement vertically (attendance) and measure growth horizontally (how many serving/changing lives), our metric system is holistically valid.

Obviously, measuring attendance is a lot easier than measuring changed lives. But isn’t that worth the effort? I think it is.

We have to be careful in implementing this process, as it would be very easy for a leader to stop counting and begin judging those who are growing and serving with personal life-change. Yet, with a solid leadership infrastructure and a commitment of group leaders, capturing both anecdotal as well as tangible data is very do-able. In the end, I don’t think we should look for a hard and fast number for the horizontal growth, but maybe more of a barometer that gives an honest and accurate sampling of the result.

Given the plethora of church management systems software packages available, I know first-hand that the right reporting tools exist. The question is, are we being trained to use them to capture both the vertical and the horizontal?

How about your church? Is this honestly what’s happening? Or do you find yourself in an either/or situation?

It’s time for a new scorecard – one that counts vertically AND measures horizontally.

How can you move from where you are to the genius of the and?

Read more from Anthony here.

Tags: Anthony Coppedge, Leadership Engine, Measurement, New Scorecard

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