Seven Marks of a Healthy Church

by: Thom Rainer

0

Tweet

I am not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

Indeed, put me in a room with nine other people, and I am likely to be the tenth in intellect.

So, I compensate for my cognitive deficiencies by listening, observing, and researching. The wisdom of others is far greater than any chance of intellect I may have. Indeed, I love listening to church leaders. I love watching what other churches do. And I love reporting these observations to you, my readers.

A member of the Church Answers community recently asked about the characteristics of healthy churches today. Immediately, I began to review churches that were having great community impact, whose members regularly had gospel conversations, and whose leaders faithfully preached the Word with power every week.

I noted several characteristics of the thirty plus churches that I would unequivocally designate as healthy. When it was all said and done, I had nearly fifty different traits. But I was able to put most of these traits into one of seven categories.

1. They truly believe in the power of the gospel. Sure, most church members and leaders would affirm their own belief in the power of the gospel. But few would actually act on that belief. Few actually move into areas and directions that can only be accomplished in God’s power. For most churches, it’s lip service. But not so for these healthy churches.
2. They have courageous leaders. I call them “Joshua leaders.” They are ready to lead the people into the community and storm the gates of hell. They remind the members to be courageous, even as they are courageous. One pastor put it this way: “I don’t want to live a life without making a difference in God’s power. I will accept the challenges, the risks, and the criticisms to be able to make a difference.”
3. They embrace change. Most church members, and some church leaders, fiercely resist change. They idolize the past, the way we’ve always done it. Or they fear the future and God’s provisions for the future. But the healthy churches on my watch list embrace change as long as it does not go counter to biblical truth. These churches don’t spend their energies and resources trying to convince people to move forward. They are ready to go!
4. They are not nostalgic. Sure, these church members honor and respect the past. But they don’t live there. They are constantly anticipating what God will do in the present and the future. They don’t have time to be nostalgic, because they are too busy moving forward.
5. They see reality. They don’t just see reality; they make highly intentional efforts to see reality more clearly. They often have secret guests evaluate their churches. They use tools to help them improve. They don’t fear finding something negative with their churches, because those findings become areas for improvement.
6. They intentionally intersect their lives with non-Christians. They see their weekday vocation as a mission field. They see their neighborhoods as their Jerusalem in Acts 1:8. They intentionally work and do business with non-Christians. They are highly intentional about inviting people to church.
7. They accept responsibility. Too many church members and leaders blame the changes in culture. Healthy churches see those changes as opportunities. Too many church members and leaders blame their denominations for not providing for them. Healthy churches accept their own responsibility for impacting the community. Too many church members and leaders blame other churches for taking their members and guests. Healthy churches realize the fields are truly white unto harvest. They believe other churches are partners in mission, not competitors.

Obviously, my list is not exhaustive. But these are the seven main buckets of traits I saw as I surveyed the landscape of healthy churches.

What would you add to this list?

> Read more from Thom.

Tags: Church Health, Healthy Church, Thom Rainer

| What is MyVisionRoom? > | Back to Vision >

The Big Four Questions of Leadership Development

by: Mac Lake

0

Tweet

I’m not much of a handyman, but in my garage is a tool box. There’s nothing fancy inside. Basically, I have a hammer, screwdriver, wrench and tape measure. That’s it. But I can get a lot done with those basic tools.

In my leadership development tool box, I have a basic set of questions I use. They are my go-to tools. Because I love developing leaders, I do have some fancy questions in my tool box too. Questions that I love to pull out and use on occasion to really drive something deep into someone’s thinking. There are some I like to use that I know will shake them up and make people think at a significant level.

But the truth is, leaders can get the development job done with just these 4 basic questions:

1. WHAT DID YOU DO WELL?

   This question helps you and the leader you’re developing to have a better understanding of the current baseline of their strengths and how to maximize them.

2. WHAT COULD YOU HAVE DONE BETTER?

   This question helps you and the leader see their gaps and learning opportunities.

3. WHAT WILL YOU DO DIFFERENTLY?

   This question pushes a leader to develop action steps that will help them grow in their leadership skill. Identifying gaps without identifying a plan will not produce growth.

4. WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM THIS EXPERIENCE?

   This question enables the leader to articulate critical leadership lessons they’re gaining from their experience.

There are other more fancy questions you can use, but to be honest, you can do a great job building a leader with just these 4 basic questions.

Additional Resources:
Video: 4 Habits that Develop Your Credibility as a Trainer

> Read more from Mac.

Tags: Developing Leaders, Leadership Development, Mac Lake

| What is MyVisionRoom? > | Back to Leadership >

How 30 Seconds Can Change the World

by: Brandon Cox

0

Tweet

There are often crucial moments when we have an opportunity to be vision-casters with people, one-on-one. It may be a car ride making a visit, coffee with a fellow member, or a staff meeting with five extra minutes at the end. It begs the question, could I state my vision for my church if I only had a few floors to travel in an elevator with someone?

You see, vision is great, but it needs to be transferrable. Members of a church should be able to share their church’s vision with their friends, relatives, associates, and neighbors, but they can only share a vision that has been concisely articulated from their leadership. And a vision isn’t “reaching people” or “glorifying God.” Those are eternal purposes, universal to every church. A vision (in an elevator speech format) would be more like…

We’re going to be a church that wraps our arms around the broken with an abundance of both truth and grace. We’ll have a multiplying network of small groups where people can really bear each other’s burdens. And we’ll gather in the middle of the marketplace for passionate worship and relevant teaching each week. The community will be better because we’re here – marriages will be fixed, education will improve, and people with all kinds of hurts, habits, and hang-ups will find healing and recovery in a new life with Jesus.

That’s my elevator pitch. What’s yours?

Read more from Brandon.

Learn more about Auxano’s Vision Clarity Process.

Tags: Brandon Cox, Church Vision, Vision

| What is MyVisionRoom? > | Back to Vision >

A Purpose-Full People. Part 1: Where Purpose Starts

by: VRcurator

0

Tweet

God created you with one-of-a-kind potential and placed you on earth for a specific purpose. Due to the busyness of life, you’ve likely never identified your unique calling in a way that brings life-changing clarity. Most haven’t and like a distinct echo, the promise of a vision-guided life remains illusive, drowning under the demands of life.

Your divine design—God’s design for your life—is more knowable than you realize. You are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which he has prepared in advance, that you should walk in them. With the right tools, you can discover your life vision and align your life vocation. You can and should know your Life Younique—your God-given identity and your God-inspired dreams. Most importantly, you can discern and design the practical next steps to get there.

THE QUICK SUMMARY – The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren

This book has transformed millions of lives. Are you ready for a change?

Since its release, The Purpose Driven Life has been translated into eighty-five different languages and has become the “Bestselling non-fiction hardback book in history” according to Publisher’s Weekly, all because of the Christ-centered approach the book takes to answering life’s most fundamental question: What on earth am I here for?

This new softcover edition is reimagined for a new generation, with four new features including:

• Video introductions by Rick Warren to chapters 1-42
• An audio lesson at the end of each chapter, with more than thirty additional hours of teaching by Rick Warren
• Two new bonus chapters on the most common barriers to living a purpose-driven life
• Access to an online community where you can discuss your journey to purpose, get feedback, and receive support

On your journey you’ll find the answers to three of life’s most important questions: The Question of Existence: Why am I alive?, The Question of Significance: Does my life matter?, The Question of Purpose: What on earth am I here for?

Living out the purpose you were created for moves you beyond mere survival and success to a life of significance—the life you were meant to live.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION – Acknowledge that your purpose starts with God

As we consider our purpose in life, it is only natural that we start with ourselves. We ask self-centered questions like “What do I want to be?” and “What should I do with my life?” and “What are my goals, my ambitions, my dreams for the future?”

That’s the wrong starting point for understanding our purpose in life.

Focusing on ourselves will never reveal our life’s purpose. In spite of the hundreds of self-help books found in the bookstore shelves, you can’t discover your life purpose by looking inward.

You must begin with God – your creator.

Your were made by God and for God – and until you understand that, life will never make sense.

It’s not about you.

The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It’s far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were born by his purpose and for his purpose.

God is not just the starting point of your life; he is the source of it. To discover your purpose in life you must turn to God’s Word, not the world’s wisdom. You must build your life on eternal truths, not pop psychology, success-motivation, or inspirational stories.

Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life

A NEXT STEP

We learn a great deal from stories of other people’s lives. Auxano Founder and Team Leader Will Mancini points to a great source for understanding how God is the source of our life by looking at five biblical principles for discerning your personal vision from the Scriptures.

In material taken from Chip Ingram’s book “Good to Great in God’s Eyes,” Will looks at Ingram’s “Sanctified Dreaming.”  Ingram does a great job of anchoring his insights in Scripture and is sensitive to the problem of chasing dreams for self-fulfillment rather than God’s glory.

Here are his principles for dreaming God-sized dreams, each taken from the life of a biblical character.

#1 God commands us to step out of our comfort zone (ABRAHAM)

#2 God puts his dream in your heart (JOSEPH)

#3 God allows us to fail in our attempts to accomplish his dream in our own power. (MOSES)

#4 God teaches us through adversity to love the dream giver more than the dream. (DAVID)

#5 God clarifies our calling in times of crisis and often uses our worst failures as the platform for his future fulfillment. (PAUL)

Over the next week, invest some personal study time in each of the above character’s lives, making specific application to lessons needed in your own life development.

Ask a close friend or trusted mentor to share this personal calling journey with you. Discuss your discoveries from the above exercise with them and prayerfully establish one next step to take over the next few weeks.

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 75-1, published September 2017.

This is part of a weekly series posting excerpts from one of the most innovative content sources in the church world: SUMS Remix Book Summaries for church leaders.

SUMS Remix takes a practical problem in the church and looks at it with three solutions; each solution is taken from a different book. Additionally, a practical action step is included with each solution.

As a church leader you get to scan relevant books based on practical tools and solutions to real ministry problems, not just by the cover of the book. Each post will have the edition number which shows the year and what number it is in the overall sequence. (SUMS Remix provides 26 issues per year, delivered every other week to your inbox). 

>> Subscribe to SUMS Remix <<

Tags: Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren, SUMS Remix

| What is MyVisionRoom? > | Back to Vision >

4 Critical Questions to Make Great Decisions

by: Dan Reiland

0

Tweet

Decision-making is an essential skill for effective leadership. It’s non-negotiable for making progress in a healthy organization.

• Insecurities can cause you to procrastinate in making a decision.
• Fear can prevent you from making a decision at all.

No leader wants to make a wrong decision, but you can’t avoid risks. You will make mistakes. The goal is to make many more good decisions than bad ones.

The encouraging news is that decision-making is a skill, you can practice and get better at it.

There are two key factors in decision-making.

1. Accuracy: making the right decision at the right time.
2. Speed: making the decision as quickly as reasonably possible.

The first factor involves making the best decision. There will be several potentially good choices, and your job as a leader is to make the best choice at the right time.

The second factor is about making the decision as quickly as prudence will allow. You can’t rush the process, but it’s far more common to go too slow than too fast. In fact, it’s not uncommon that a leader knows the right decision but just won’t pull the trigger.

What prevents making the decision?

Two primary components:

• The objective component — insufficient information.
• The subjective component — lacking in wisdom.

Insufficient information and a lack of wisdom result in a lack of confidence.

In question form, they look like this:

1. Are you not making the decision because you need more information?
2. Are you not making the decision because you are not sure what to do?

There is a significant difference between needing additional information and having all the information you need, but you still don’t know what to do.

Gathering relevant information is a finite process and can be done with relative speed. It is not necessary to accumulate infinite amounts of data to make a good decision.

Wisdom is different, it’s more subjective, but it’s not elusive. You can have all the information, but still be unsure or unwilling to make the decision. However, when you include your best advisors in thought and prayer, you can gain the wisdom you need.

Then it’s about courage. Make the decision.

It’s fear and or insecurity that shuts decision-making down at this point in the process.

When you know you have all the information you need, and your wise counsel gives a green light, make the decision and act!

I know it’s still not easy to make a tough decision. So, let me offer four good questions that are helpful in the decision-making process.

4 helpful questions:

Does it matter?

I can’t tell you how much time I’ve wasted on deciding whether a training meeting should be on Saturday morning or Monday night. You could probably give an example or two of things you have deliberated on that were just not that important.

And remember, if you decide and no one gets upset, you just made a decision that doesn’t matter.

What are the risks?

Is the risk worth the reward?

Write down the risks you see in play. Are there other alternatives to lessen the risk that still provide the results you want? If not, are you willing to take the risk, yes or no?

Any important decision you make has a risk factor. As I’ve said, risk is inescapable.

Evaluating the risk also requires the incredibly important factor of writing down the potential results of not taking the risk. Avoiding the risk may seem safer at the moment, but in the long run, it can be disastrous for the church.

Do you know all that can be known?

• Have you done all your homework?
• Is the research complete?
• What is left that you need to know?
• Can you get this information on your own or do you need help?
• Do you need to hire a consultant to help you accurately gather all the information you need?

When you know you have enough information, make a mental declaration, or a public one to your key leaders that “We have all the info we need.”

“It’s time to decide, so team, do we have a sense of the right decision? Do we have the wisdom we need?”

Again, like information, if you don’t have the wisdom, get it from other sources. God does not lack in wisdom; it is available if you ask.

Does the decision require soak time?

There are a few decisions that even when you have all the information and wisdom, you still need some time to let it marinade.

My practical advice is that you usually don’t need long to decide. Sometimes a few days, maybe a few weeks, on very rare occasions a few months.

Take the time you need to soak and pray. Make sure you know God’s mind, but your decision is not a mystery to God, and if it’s about His work, He’s not likely to withhold from you.

If it’s an issue of timing, you can still make the decision and put a date on when you activate the decision.

Ultimately, following the practical guidance in this post will help you not only make decisions, but make better decisions, and increase your confidence for future decisions.

> Read more from Dan.

Tags: Dan Reiland, Decision making

| What is MyVisionRoom? > | Back to Execution >

Ministry to the Few is as Important as Ministry to the Many

by: Daniel Im

0

Tweet

God is more concerned with your faithfulness than your fame. Ministry to the few is as important as ministry to the many. While these two phrases might get you plenty of likes and shares on social media, they actually represent two of my deepest ministry scars.

“Can we please just play pool and hang out today?” said Joel.

I had crafted an epic eight-week sermon series on discipleship. I literally believed the heavens would open up, revival would break out, and my student ministry was going to triple in size. My city was never going to be the same! These students would almost instantaneously become like Christ. This sermon series was going to go down in the records of history and be canonized into thick, leather-bound books on the shelves of every seminarian—right alongside the sermons of Charles Haddon Spurgeon and the Matthew Henry commentary.

So instead of following my normal pattern of dismissing whatever Joel said—because he was the lovable clown that didn’t know what the five-second-rule was—I actually agreed with him.

“Well, I was planning on starting our new sermon series today, but since—for some odd reason—you, Simon, Christina, and I are the only ones here today; sure, let’s do it. Let’s skip the sermon and just hang out!” And at that, I schooled everyone at a classic game of eight ball. (My dad owned a billiard hall while I was in high school, so I had a bit of experience when it came to pool.)

Typically, on a good Sunday, we had a few dozen students that showed up, so when Joel asked if we could hang out instead of learn, I thought to myself, Why waste this epic sermon on one student? I would then have to catch everyone up the next week, since this was part one of eight in this series. The logical thing to do was hold off on preaching this sermon until next Sunday. Also, this way, I could get one week ahead in sermon preparation. So not only did this benefit me, but it also made me look like the cool student pastor. It was clearly a win-win.

Until that afternoon.

Have you ever felt slightly off?

It’s like that moment, after entering the grocery store, when you suddenly feel like you forgot to lock your car doors. Or like that moment when you’re joking around with your friends and you take it too far.

Well, that’s how I felt when I returned home that afternoon. Something wasn’t right, and though I felt like I knew what it might be, I didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t want to walk back to the car and lock the doors. I didn’t want to apologize to my friends for taking it too far. So I just tried to ignore that feeling.

No matter what I did to try to suppress that feeling, it just didn’t go away.

So I took a deep breath and decided to pray and ask the Lord why I felt the way I did. In that moment, I sensed the Lord saying, “That sermon that you worked so hard to prepare for was actually for today, not next week! It wasn’t for the masses; it was for the few.”

What at first seemed like a wise and common sense decision, ended up being the wrong one. And it was all because of my motives. I wanted to start the sermon series off with a bang and create momentum. I didn’t want to have to play catch-up with the majority of the students in my ministry. I wanted the sermon to have as big of an impact as it could. So naturally, I didn’t want to waste the sermon on a couple of people!

After repenting to God for being more concerned about my fame than being faithful with the message that he had entrusted me with for that Sunday, I ended up calling Simon, one of our leaders, to apologize. While it definitely felt awkward to apologize for not preaching and instead schooling him at a game of eight ball, during that call, as I listened to what he was going through, it clicked. That sermon was actually for him.

And that’s when I discovered that ministry to the few is as important as ministry to the many.

From that day forward, I promised myself that I would try to be faithful regardless of the size or perceived impact that any ministry opportunity had. Whether there was one person or ten thousand, I committed to choosing faithfulness and always bringing my A-game.

Instead of seeing every opportunity as a blessing from the Lord for Kingdom impact, I was judging effectiveness by attendance. My metrics were totally off. That experience, as minor as it may seem, was actually foundationally influential in shifting my perspective on success and effectiveness in ministry.

Now when it comes to developing a plan for discipleship and growth in your church, the one is as important as the many. In fact, the only way to see your entire church grow spiritually and numerically is to start by discipling one person at a time.

But how do you know when someone is mature? When someone’s been discipled?

Are there metrics or things that you can do that can predictably influence the formation and maturity of an individual? Actions that balance the tension between faithfulness and fruitfulness? Our work and God’s?

In No Silver Bullets: Five Small Shifts that will Transform Your Ministry, I unpack a different metric for maturity—one that’s based on one of the largest research studies done to date on discipleship. Pick up a copy today to learn more.

> Read more from Daniel.

Tags: Daniel Im, Faithfulness, Fame, ministry

| What is MyVisionRoom? > | Back to Leadership >

The Biblical Call for Hospitality

by: Trevin Wax

0

Tweet

How should Christians stand out in a society increasingly fragmented and polarized, isolated and lonely, embittered and embattled?

Too often, the temptation is for the church to allow these forces to overwhelm us until we retreat to the safety of a fortress that shuts the door to doubters. But despite its façade of faithfulness, this option is worldly. It’s exactly what you’d expect in a society like ours, where ideological tribes keep people with significant disagreements from ever interacting anywhere but online, where epithets and arguments are hurled from Twitter towers and Facebook fortresses.

Instead, we must follow the path of the ancient Christians in their countercultural practice of hospitality. Hebrews 13, Romans 12, the example of Jesus, not to mention the many Old Testament commands to welcome the stranger—all of these prompt us to welcome people into our homes and churches. Like the early church, we ought to display a welcoming posture—confident in our affirmation of orthodoxy and compassionate in our embrace of people made in God’s image. The church welcomes.

What makes welcoming difficult these days is that many believe this posture requires an affirmation of identity and behavior. We see this belief most often in matters related to sexuality, but it is increasingly true of political affiliation, whether on the right or the left. That’s why I’ve written that churches should welcome everybody and affirm no one. The church does not exist for the affirmation of its members but for the transformation of its people into the image of Christ.

Still, we welcome. But what does this welcome look like? And what role does hospitality play?

Healthy Hospitality

In traditional Christian circles, we tend to see faithfulness and health in terms of a clear and unequivocal position of orthodoxy on doctrinal and ethical matters. But surely this definition is inadequate. What good is orthodoxy without compassion, or moral standards without love? The sign of a healthy congregation is not merely its statement of faith but also its hospitality toward those who are not members.

Think about the home. A healthy home environment makes space for human flourishing, by inviting people who do not belong to the family to visit and find themselves refreshed. When a family welcomes visitors to the table, the dynamic of the home changes. Yes, the family remains the core, but this outward focus of hospitality renews the visitor and family members alike.

If a family were to see itself only as “us against the world,” with windows and doors boarded up and everyone huddled together for fear of contamination, the home would turn into an unhealthy fortress, where foibles would develop into pathologies, and where pathologies would hinder the flourishing of the family members. Hospitality is important for the visitor and family member alike; it brings health to the home.

The same is true of the church. Hospitality toward those who are not church members (even toward those who have radically opposing political or ethical views) should be normal, not unusual. This is not a step toward compromise; it’s a powerful weapon in our spiritual arsenal. Feasts are explosions of joy on the battlefield of good vs. evil.

The challenge to Hospitality

The challenge today is this: many people assume that hospitality demands a “come just as you are” posture that accepts and leaves alone the people who are welcomed. To truly welcome someone means you put aside any intention to change them, any push to convert them, any persuasion to convince them. According to this way of thinking, true hospitality means full acceptance, no questions asked.

This idea that hospitality means unqualified acceptance was the position of philosopher Jacques Derrida, and it seems to be “common sense” in this day and age. But we cannot embrace this definition, because it is incompatible with the Great Commission.

What if hospitality, properly understood, welcomes people in order to renew them? Peter Leithart makes this point in Traces of the Trinity: 

I love this idea of hospitality for the sake of renewal. But there’s a danger here. If we begin to see people as projects, and hospitality as merely a tool that is geared toward “fixing” someone in need, we dehumanize the people we’ve opened our arms to. We turn people into projects.

Hospitality For The Sake of Renewal

So where does that leave us? The idea of hospitality as universal approval is problematic, but so is the idea of hospitality for the sake of renewal if it turns people into projects. So what do we do?

The answer is to ensure that hospitality for the sake of renewal has in mind not only the renewal of the person being welcomed, but also of the group doing the welcoming. Hospitality leads to our renewal as well.

When we open our arms to people less fortunate, or when we welcome people with whom we have significant disagreements, we open each other to the possibility of renewal. A hospitable congregation serves the people being welcomed and is transformed in the process. This is the kind of church that will stand out. This is hospitality that renews.

> Read more from Trevin.

Tags: Hospitality, Trevin Wax

| What is MyVisionRoom? > | Back to Execution >