What Your Church Sign May Say About Your Church Vision

by: James Emery White

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I recently heard a pastor compliment another church for being a church that was actually moving forward, being “alive” and “contemporary,” brushing away the ecclesiastical cobwebs and making a Kingdom impact. Leaning in to hear the breakthrough, he said: “What was it, 13 years ago? Why, they were the first church in the county to have a digital sign out front!”

Oh my.

It would be easy to hear such a statement and snicker.

I didn’t.

I grieved.

I could imagine that small church sacrificing to invest in the digital sign. Discussing it at business meetings. Experiencing growing excitement when installation began, and coming that first Sunday after its launch expecting new attenders and a fresh wind of the Spirit. I could imagine them feeling proud that their church was actually doing something; that life had come to their sleepy enterprise. Even something “modern.”

Again, I don’t write a single word of that in condescension.

I write it as a lament.

Why?

We all know the sign did next to nothing. There isn’t a sign in the world that could—not in the face of the American church’s situation.

A new study from LifeWay Research has found that “6 in 10 Protestant churches are plateaued or declining in attendance and more than half saw fewer than 10 people become new Christians in the past 12 months.” Approximately one out of every 10 had none. The study also found that most Protestant churches in America “have fewer than 100 people attending services each Sunday.” One out of every five has fewer than 50.

There are many reasons that could be cited for this declining state of affairs. But let’s state one of the more obvious ones:

The digital sign mentality. 

Let’s paint the church, restripe the parking lot, put in new carpet, freshen up the landscaping. And if we want to be radical, put in a digital sign out front that can flash service times and pithy spiritual sayings. The sentiment is that whatever the church needs is cosmetic. 

It’s an alluring idea. Cosmetic touches are easy on the existing constituency. They cost nothing in terms of the real sacrifice needed, which is dying to themselves and living for a mission. Cosmetic changes do not represent real change, only the illusion of it.

The problem with the American church today is simple: It’s turned inward toward the already convinced instead of outward toward those far from God and, as a result, does nothing of an informed nature in terms of strategy or tactics to reach those far from God. Even those growing are, for the most part, doing it through transfer growth at the expense of other churches.

Shameless plug: We’re offering a pair of identical Pastor’s Workshops at Meck on how to improve communication to the unchurched, raise strategic resources for Kingdom expansion, and grow numerically from the unchurched. I hope that sounds like something worth an afternoon. You can get details HERE.

So mourn a digital sign.

Not simply for the squandered expense,

… but the squandered vision.

> Read more from James Emery White.

Tags: Church Communication, Church Signs, Communication, James Emery White

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The Shape of Your Influence – Part 1

by: Eric Geiger

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Winston Churchill is credited with the insightful quote, “we shape our buildings and our buildings shape us.” He was correct; the buildings we gather in shape the culture of those in the buildings. The statement can be applied to other influences as our ministries and organizations are shaped by more than the buildings we utilize. Here are ten things that leaders shape that in turn shape the organizations those leaders lead.

1. Values

Values that are celebrated, championed, and reinforced shape the culture of a ministry or organization, and leaders set the tone and pace for how those values are emphasized. Unwise leaders arrive and declare a new set of values, as if they can speak a set of values into existence and immediately declare a culture out of nothing. Only the Lord can declare something out of nothing, but leaders can shape the values and shape how the values are operationalized.

2. Mission

Values are about identity and “how we live around here,” and the mission is about what the ministry or organization does. Whenever a leader clarifies mission, the clarity shapes the activity of the ministry or organization. An unclear mission shapes the culture too, but in adverse ways. When the mission is not clear and not consistently heralded, confusion and conflicting goals abound.

3. Strategy

The strategy is how a ministry or organization works to accomplish the mission. Leaders shape the strategy; they lead the team to decide where time and resources are allocated. That strategy shapes how the ministry or organization serves people. It shapes how people’s time is utilized and where energy is invested. Leaders shape strategy and strategy shapes organizations.

4. Measures

Leaders are partly responsible to decide what is measured, and what is measured as most important. What is evaluated and measured shapes the priorities and activity of a team in a ministry or organization. A scorecard impacts how people behave. If the wrong things are measured, the wrong behaviors are rewarded. If nothing is measured, then people invent their own priorities. If what is measured is closely connected to the mission, then the scorecard helps focus people on what is most important.

5. Leadership development

Leaders are responsible to develop future leaders. How leaders form future leaders greatly impacts the future of the ministry or organization. The values, skills, and beliefs that are poured into future leaders today will be poured out in the organization tomorrow.

Leaders must care about the values, mission, strategy, measures, and approach to leadership development in the organizations they lead because the organization today and the organization tomorrow are formed by those things. As you read the list, are there 1-2 items that require more of your thinking and focus? Shape them well as they shape the team you are leading.

> Read more from Eric.

Next week: Part 2

Tags: Eric Geiger, Leadership Influence, Team Influence

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The ABCs of Avoiding Ineffective Meetings: Advance Output Using an Agenda

by: VRcurator

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Meetings are a powerful tool for organizations. Secretly, though, you enjoy those Dilbert comics that feature the pain and frustration of poorly run meetings. It seems as if Scott Adams, the brilliant author of Dilbert, was a part of your last meeting!

Let’s face it; meetings can be a real drag. We all hate doing them, but we also feel they are a necessary evil to ensure people work well together. For such a straightforward concept – essentially a group of people gathered to discuss an idea – we really do make a mess out of it sometimes.

While statistics vary widely on the amount of time spent in meetings, successful organizations know their teams spend so much time in meetings that turning meeting time into sustained results is a priority. Actions that make meetings successful require direction by the meeting leader before, during, and after the meeting.

Whether you are organizing meetings or simply attending them, you owe it to yourself to become more effective at this skill – especially if you are the team leader!

THE QUICK SUMMARY – Meetings Suck by Cameron Herold

We all know that meetings suck, right?

You hear it all the time. It’s the one thing that almost everyone in business can agree on.

Except it’s not actually true. Meetings don’t suck; we suck at running meetings. When done right, meetings not only work, they make people and companies better.

In Meetings Suck, world-renowned business expert and growth guru Cameron Herold teaches you how to use focused, time effective meetings to help you and your company soar.

This book shows you immediately actionable, step-by-step systems that ensure that you and everyone in your organization improves your meetings, right away.

In the process, you’ll turn meetings that suck into meetings that work.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

A simple meeting agenda, distributed in advance, is perhaps the most important tool in ensuring a successful productive meeting, even when the meeting is between only you and one other person.

If you can’t personally create a meeting agenda for the meetings you convene, at least delegate that responsibility to one of the participants. That way, you’ll get all of the benefits of having an agenda without having to do the work!

The difference between meetings with and without agendas can mean chaos, ruffled feathers and very few accomplishments. An agenda communicates to attendees that the meeting will be conducted in an orderly fashion and that productivity is the goal.

Organizations hold meetings to get things done, share information, develop plans, document progress, provide clarity and make decisions. An agenda can ensure that the meeting stays on track and that special projects and routine operations proceed as intended. An agenda can help a group of employees function as an effective team.

Without question, every meeting must have a clear agenda distributed to attendees in advance. If you skip creating an agenda, then your meetings can quickly go off track, get hijacked by a random topic, or include people who shouldn’t be attending.

By taking the time to plan, prepare, and distribute an agenda before the meeting, you will reap considerable benefits.

Benefit 1: Introverts are engaged

When it comes to your more introverted team members, more often than not they won’t speak up unless you ask them a question directly or they’re passionate and engaged in the subject. Giving them an agenda in advance allows them the time they need to think through answers, frame their thoughts, or whatever else they need to do to raise their ideas.

Benefit 2: Time is maximized

Creating an agenda in advance gives you the distinct advantage of maximizing your time. Including time allocated for each item helps you realize whether you have too much or too little, and gives you the flexibility to adjust and split topics before the meeting begins, instead of trying to navigate this on the fly.

Benefit 3: Only essential employees participate

Creating your agenda in advance forces you to think critically about who you’re inviting. It’s highly likely that only select individuals need to discuss certain items on the agenda.

Benefit 4: People learn to opt out

An agenda distributed in advance helps people feel like there’s a good reason for them to attend. But it also gives people the chance to opt out if they don’t feel they can provide or extract value.

Benefit 5: Your team comes prepared

When you include the meeting style (information sharing, creative discussion, or consensus decision) in the agenda, then you tell your team what to expect and how best to prepare.

When your agenda includes all items being considered, a purpose, and possible outcomes, then people will know exactly why they have been asked to attend the meeting and what they will be expected to accomplish during it.

Cameron Herold, Meetings Suck

A NEXT STEP

If you already prepare an agenda for meetings you lead, congratulations!

However, if you do not prepare an agenda or know yours could be better, consider the following ideas to help you develop an agenda for your meetings.

• Create the agenda at least three days in advance, to allow everyone time to review it and prepare for the meeting.
• Seek input from team members.
• Create a list of any pre-meeting work required by participants.
• Start with simple details: time and place and attendee list.
• State the meeting objective or goal.
• Create a list of meeting topics or questions to be answered.
• Add a realistic time allotment for discussion of each topic.
• If appropriate, list discussion leader for each topic
• Choose only topics that affect the entire team participating.
• Other pertinent information as required.
• Plan to end each meeting with continuous improvement by asking 1) What did we do well? and 2) What do we need to different for the next meeting?

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 90-1, released April 2018

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

Each issue 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: Cameron Herold, Meetings Suck, SUMS Remix, leading meetings

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How an Actionable, Gospel-Centered Plan Makes the Difference in Your Life

by: Kelly Kannwischer

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The Exponential 2019 conference rebooted the age-old conversation in the church about personal call. Unlike Elvis, we at Younique don’t want “a little less conversation,” but we do want to see a lot more action.

Since the beginning of the Jesus movement, disciples have been exploring what it means to be faithful in their families, in their communities, and even in their work. Redeeming the Greek notion of work as a curse, Christian thought leaders throughout the centuries declared the dignity of work and the importance of bringing justice to social and economic systems.

Unfortunately, today’s culture has fallen into the ditch on the other side of the road from the ancient Greeks. For many modern people, work has become a religion, an identity unto itself. In a recent article in The Atlantic entitled “The Religion of Workism Is Making Americans Miserable,” Derek Thompson describes how people are turning to their work instead of their faith for meaning and fulfillment.

Meanwhile, the church is becoming attuned to both the need and the power of helping our people name their personal calling. For example, model Hailey Bieber (wife of popstar Justin Bieber) is one of many celebrities featured in a docu-series from Hillsong Church hosted by Christian businesswoman Natalie Manuel Lee. The show explores how purpose and identity play out in the modern world. In addition, many of us read books that explore these questions, from The Call, by Os Guinness, to Culture Making, by Andy Crouch, and more besides.

Believers also go to the Bible for answers. At Younique, we lean into Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 2. Paul begins by celebrating the power of the resurrection and the life we have inherited through faith in Jesus. Then he goes on in verse 10 to describe our new life through Christ as one that has purpose and potential. We are portrayed as God’s masterpiece—the Greek word is poema. We are a one-of-a-kind work of art that is full of possibility for partnership with God in His Kingdom purposes.

This portrait of a believer’s potential is so beautiful and compelling that we naturally begin to wonder, “What about me? Who am I, and what are the good works that God has prepared in advance for me to do?”

Yet here is where the disconnect begins in the church, because it is much easier to talk about “being,” “doing,” and “going” than it is to create an actionable, gospel-centered plan to make it happen in our lives.

I recently read James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. Clear notes that there is a sharp difference between motion and action. It is easy for us to be in motion and convince ourselves that we are making progress. We run lots of programs and offer great classes believing that we are making headway in helping our people on their discipleship journey. While some of these may be effective actions, many fall into the category of mere motion—activity without impact.

Younique is our answer to the problem of how to take action in the realm of personal call. Younique is a replicable process for helping people to design their lives according to their Ephesians 2:10 calling.

We believe the vision of your church won’t be fully realized until each person in your church is released into their own personal calling. They are the hands and feet of Jesus, and God has prepared good works for them to do since before the creation of the world. Instead of asking individuals to plug in to events or programs based on the need for volunteers, what if you had a process to engage their special assignment from God where they live, work, and play?

Stop intending to help people—take action! James Clear continues to help us understand where we fall short by talking about the difference between goals and systems. Goals are where we start, but they are insufficient to deliver results. “Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win. Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.”

Younique is the system to help people be, do, and go. We are committed to installing into the local church a sustainable disciple-making process that you lead with your people. The church is the hero, empowering and equipping people to step confidently into their best for what is next.

If you haven’t yet experienced the power of Younique’s life design system, then I invite you to join us at an upcoming Younique Accelerator or one of our free webinars.

Tags: Gospel-centered, Kelly Kannwischer, LifePlan, habits, younique

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Four Biblical Principles of Giving

by: Art Rainer

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What does it mean to give? How does it look? You may know intuitively that you should give but not know much beyond that.

The good news is that the Bible tells us what our giving should look like. Our generous God reveals to us four giving principles throughout Scripture.

Principle 1: Giving is to be a priority.

We are given resources so that we can give resources.

For most, giving is an afterthought. It’s what takes place after all of the needs and wants are taken care of. But in the Bible, giving is a priority.

The Bible repeatedly shows us that we are to give our first and our best to him. For example, Proverbs 3:9 says, “Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first produce of your entire harvest.” For the Israelites, this meant that whatever crops or livestock were produced, they were to set aside the first and best of their crops or livestock for God.

What does this mean for us? For most of us, it means that we are to give some of our gross income to God. Before taxes, before retirement savings, before debt repayment, and even before bill payments, we give.

In God’s economy, amount sacrificed always supersedes amount given.Click to tweet

Principle 2: Giving is to be done proportionately.

This means that those who have more give more, and those who have less give less. Your giving should be proportional to what you have been given.

Proverbs 3:10 says, “Bring a full tenth into the storehouse so that there may be food in my house…,” says the Lord of Armies. ‘See if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out a blessing for you without measure.’” Throughout Scripture we see the idea of proportional giving. As God blesses us, so should we be blessing others.

Principle 3: Giving is to be done sacrificially.

In God’s economy, amount sacrificed always supersedes amount given.

When King David went to offer God a sacrifice, a man tried to give him land and animals at no cost. In 2 Samuel 24:24, we read King David’s response: “No, I insist on buying it from you for a price, for I will not offer to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”

He knew that God would find greater delight in an offering that cost him something.

In Luke 21:1-4, we find Jesus pointing out a widow who gave two coins as the person who gave most. Why? She gave all she had. She sacrificed. Jesus is less concerned about what is put in the offering plate and more concerned about what is left at home. God tells us to give sacrificially.

God designed us not to be hoarders, but conduits through which his generosity flows.Click to tweet

Principle 4: Giving is to be done cheerfully.

In 2 Corinthians 9:7, Paul says, “Each person should do as he has decided in his heart – not reluctantly or out of compulsion, since God loves a cheerful giver.” God does not want a bunch of grumpy givers. You would refuse a gift if it was accompanied with bitterness and reluctance. God is not interested in those types of gifts either.

What I love about these four principles is that God does not only tells us how to give; he leads us. God gave his first and best, his one and only. He gave us Jesus. Giving was a priority. The creator and owner of all things gave us an unfathomable gift, one that can never be matched. He gave us Jesus. He gave proportionately. The Father sent his one and only Son to die on a cross for our sins. He gave us Jesus. He gave sacrificially.

At times the principles of sacrificial giving and cheerful giving may seem to contradict each other. How can you give out of sacrifice and still be happy?

God shows us how.

Isaiah 53:10 reads, “Yet the Lord was pleased to crush him severely. When you make him a guilt offering he will see his seed, he will prolong his days, and by his hand the Lord’s pleasure will be accomplished.”

God found pleasure in the crushing, or the crucifixion of his Son. But how? How can God find delight in the midst of the pain?

He focused on eternity.

He focused on the lasting outcome that would result from the crushing of Jesus; his seed, us, will be with him for all eternity. And it is through the lens of eternity, storing up treasure in heaven, that we can be cheerful givers, even in the midst of sacrifice.

God designed us not to be hoarders, but conduits through which his generosity flows. Giving is to be a priority. We are to give proportionately and sacrificially. We are to give with cheerful hearts. We are to reflect the generosity of our generous God.

> Read more from Art.

Tags: Art Rainer, Biblical Principles of Giving, Giving

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These Reasons Are Why Giving is Down in Your Church

by: Thom Rainer

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You are trying to comprehend why the giving levels in your church are down. You may know several possibilities, but you aren’t certain. As I have worked with several congregations, we have isolated the issue to one or a few causes. See if any of these causative factors may be at work in your church.

1. Lower attendance. Okay, I may be stating the obvious here, but it is worth noting. I spoke with a pastor whose church’s giving is down 15 percent from a year ago, and the attendance is down 12 percent. There is a high correlation between attendance and giving, even if you have a strong online giving component. It is also worth noting that attendance frequency is down in many churches, if not most churches, as well. The family who attends three times a month is more likely to give more than the same family attending two times a month.
2. Generational shifts. Builders, those born before 1946, are more likely to give to the church out of institutional loyalty. Boomers and Gen X have the highest family incomes, but their giving is not as consistent. Millennials thus far are not strong givers in our churches. In many churches, the Builders are being replaced with Millennials. In other words, more generous givers are being replaced with less generous givers.
3. Giving to purposes rather than organizations. From the Builders to the Millennials, there has been a dramatic shift in the motivations for giving. The Builders, as noted above, are more likely to give out of institutional loyalty. Thus, church leaders could exhort this generation to “give to the church,” and they would respond positively. The Millennials, however, give to purposes rather than organizations. Church leaders must demonstrate with specificity how the funds in the church are being used for a greater purpose. And that greater purpose must be real, personal, and compelling.
4. Little teaching on giving. The pendulum has swung too far. In an overreaction to the constant pleas for money twenty years ago, more church leaders are hesitant to even mention the spiritual discipline of giving. Frankly, many of our church members do not comprehend that giving is both a mandate and a blessing, because they have not been taught about it in their churches.
5. Not as much discretionary income among churchgoers. Before you object to this point, I know fully our discretionary income should not be the basis for our giving. God should get the first fruits, and not the leftovers. But the stark reality is that many people who do give to churches only give their leftovers, or their discretionary income. Though the economy has improved over the past few years, most of the growth in discretionary income has been in the top 20 percent of household incomes. Yet those who attend our churches are more likely to be a part of the other 80 percent. Simply stated, most of our church members have not seen increases of any size in discretionary income.

There are obvious actions we can take toward this challenge. We can teach and preach unapologetically on biblical stewardship. We can be clearer on the purpose or the “why” behind the giving. And we can offer different mechanisms for giving to make it more like a spiritual habit rather than a negligent afterthought. My church, with under 200 in attendance, offers traditional giving, online giving, and text giving. Many churches still do quite well with envelope giving.

> Read more from Thom.

Giving is just one part of a culture of Generosity. Learn more by connecting with an Auxano Navigator.

Tags: Giving decline, Thom Rainer, church giving decrease, cultivating generosity, giving decrease

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Learn to Navigate Conflict from this Biblical Character

by: Rick Warren

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In Nehemiah 5, the Israelites faced conflict for one of the same reasons we do today: selfishness. So, what can we learn from Nehemiah about handling conflict?

1. Take the problem seriously. (v. 6)

Nehemiah didn’t ignore the problem; he took it seriously. When the unity of your church gets challenged, it’s your job to protect that unity. It’s serious business.

In times like this, a certain level of anger is completely appropriate and right. Leadership means knowing the difference between the right kind of anger and the wrong kind of anger.

2. Think before you speak. (v. 7)

If you only do step one and ignore step two, you’ll get in lots of trouble. Nehemiah 5:7 says, “I pondered them in my mind” (NIV). Nehemiah stopped, got alone with God, and thought about what he was going to do. He asked God, “What do you want me to do?”

You should get angry when disunity threatens your church, but you have to think before you act. You can’t just act on that anger. James 1:19-20 says, “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires” (NIV).

I’ve seen a lot of leaders who were highly effective for the Lord blow their ministry in an impulsive moment. Don’t let that happen to you. Get angry, but then take some time to think and pray about what to do next.

3. Rebuke the person individually. (v. 7)

Go directly to the source. You don’t deal with somebody else about it. You don’t talk with five or six different people to get everybody on your side. You don’t say, “I’ve got a prayer request . . .” and then spout it out.

Instead, you go directly to the person causing the disunity. Nehemiah did that: “I pondered them in my mind and then accused the nobles and officials. I told them ‘You are exacting usury from your own countrymen!’” (Nehemiah 5:7 NIV).

Nehemiah wasn’t making a polite social visit. He was angry, and he didn’t gloss over the fact that these guys were ripping off other people. He wasn’t watering it down. He was confronting the troublemakers. You and I are called to do that, too, when disunity threatens our churches.

Titus 3:10-11 says, “Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him. You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self‑condemned”(NIV).

Warning troublemakers is an important task of ministry.

4. Publicly deal with public divisions. (v. 7)

In Nehemiah’s situation, everyone knew that the rich people were ripping off the poor. He had to deal with it publicly. Nehemiah 5:7 says when going privately to the rich officials didn’t work, he called together a large meeting to deal with them. It must have been a tough conversation because it was probably the rich officials paying most of the expenses to rebuild the wall. It took guts to confront them publicly.

You, too, have to deal with problems to the degree that they are known. If the problem has spread to the whole church, then you have to deal with the problem publicly.

5. Set an example of unselfishness. (v. 10)

Nehemiah led the way in unselfishness. It was the foundation of his leadership. When he asked them to rebuild the wall, he was out on the wall rebuilding it. When he asked them to pray, he had already been praying. When he asked them to work night and day to get it built, he did the same. When he asked them to help the poor, we find out in verse 10 he’d already been doing it.

Nehemiah never asked anyone to do what he wasn’t already doing or wasn’t willing to do. Leaders only ask others to do what they are already doing or are willing to do. If you cannot challenge someone to follow your example, whatever you say to them is going to lose its impact. Churches have fewer conflicts when their leaders live unselfishly and model that to the congregation.

You’re going to have disagreements in your church. There’s no perfect church. But God wants us to minimize disunity in our churches for his glory. The testimony of a church should not be the beautiful buildings, great sermons, or lovely music, but how the people love one another.

> Read more from Rick.

Tags: Conflict, Handling Conflict, Nehemiah, Rick Warren

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These Seven Things Are Keeping Your Church from Growing

by: Dan Reiland

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The number one topic in the local church over the last 30 plus years addresses the question, “How do I grow my church?” How can we break through to reach more people for Jesus?

The words change, but the issue remains the same. Years ago, we called them growth barriers, and now the question sounds more like “How do I get unstuck? How can we get unstuck to reach more people?

There was about a decade when we switched from church growth to church health, but it always comes back to growth. The reason for that is that healthy things grow!

There is nothing new under the sun, right? But it’s up to us to remain fresh, relevant and innovate our way forward for the sake of the Kingdom.

With that as context, here are some “fresh” thoughts for today.

Seven Big Barriers:

(with insights for growth)

1) Diminished faith

It’s possible for church leaders to stop believing. I’m not referring to faith in Jesus, but the potential for a pastor, staff member or key leader to lose faith that their church will ever work.

It’s all too common that a leader can lose heart and slide into discouragement. This is the enemy’s strategy!  Discouragement is the breeding ground for complacency and maintenance. As a leader, you may remain faithful, but without any fire.

Vision is then lost. Whether the senior pastor, a children’s staff member, or a small group leader, etc., when the leader loses vision, it’s not long before growth slows or stops.

Fight for your faith. Fight to believe again. Who do you know that believes in you? Get some time with them. Borrow their faith in you. Reflect back on when you believed in yourself, and remember that God is with you. It’s His Church, it’s His idea, and what you’re doing matters.

2) Ministry over Strategy

Those of us who lead in the local church are in it to see life change for the people we serve. Therefore, serving people for their spiritual growth is a priority, it’s what we do. But doing ministry for the sake of ministry can be a colossal waste of time if it’s not strategic.

The goal of ministry is not to be busy; it’s to realize a Kingdom productivity that results in changed lives for eternity. For too many years I’ve watched church pastors, staff and volunteer leaders exhaust themselves with little results.

The selection of your ministries must be strategic, not random. Your ministries should be lean and on purpose, not merely at the whim of anyone’s ideas. Alignment as a team is essential.

(And we know strategy without God’s power doesn’t work.)

3) Inward focused

Inward focus is like a subtle bear trap. Of course, there is nothing subtle about a bear trap, except that it’s hidden. It’s not obvious. But when you realize you are caught in one, you then know you’re in big trouble.

No church starts out inward focused. A church turns inward from a good thing gone bad. Community, love, care, discipleship, family, etc., these are all great things and part of the healthy and functioning body of Christ. Until essentially, they become the sole focus of the church.

The result is evangelism drops off, programming becomes all about what the Christians want for themselves, and the worship service begins to cater only to those in the body of Christ.

The scary thing is that all churches drift in that direction. All churches drift inward without the intentional effort to keep an outward focus on those who are far from God. It’s not easy, but it is that simple.

The leaders of the church must agree and align with a ministry that intentionally commits time, resources, effort and energy to reach out.

4) Programs over people

Programs over people can become a reality in a church of any size, but this tends to be a more common barrier in larger and mega-churches. It’s not intentional, in fact, it comes from the natural pressure to bring excellence to programming.

Ministry program excellence is important, but we can’t let it crowd out love and care for individual people.

Program over people shows up in little things that are important things. Such as phone calls not being returned, it becomes difficult to volunteer, and the systems for next steps are complicated.

There is no perfect solution here. It’s impossible for very large churches to give large amounts of time to everyone. The most important thing we can do, however, is to give genuine individualized care to as many as we can. That helps ignite the culture so that this caring attitude has a way of continuing amongst the people.

5) Slipping from relevance

Change is essential. The message of Jesus never changes but our methods, style, and approach must always adapt to the needs of the current culture.

In more extreme cases, when entering an outdated church environment, it’s like walking into a time warp. It causes those who visit to question if the leadership understands how to navigate current culture.

There has never been a greater time or higher need for innovation in the church. From digital opportunities to new approaches in church planting,

Talk with people who don’t attend church and brainstorm new ideas. It might be technology, your worship service, or your kid’s ministry, etc. What needs to be done to remain salt and light in your community?

6) Underdeveloped leaders

Without more and better leaders, your church can’t continue to grow.

If your vision is big and bold, it requires more leaders to help realize that vision. These leaders need to be developed and empowered.

Your leaders need continued training, development and encouragement to keep rising to their potential as well as remain aligned with the vision of the church.

Here are a couple of posts that will help you develop your leaders:

1. Develop Your Leaders
2. Empower Your Leaders

7) Jesus is sidelined in all the busyness

At a theological level, it’s impossible for Jesus to be sidelined in any way.

¹⁵ The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.

Colossians 1:15-18

And yet, it’s true that a church can become so busy with people, processes, programs, problems, etc. that Jesus is no longer the recognized head of the body and the established supremacy. When this happens, certainly unintentionally, we lose the Holy Spirit’s power that is needed for true spiritual change and subsequent growth.

Jesus must always be lifted up!

> Read more from Dan.

Tags: Church Growth, Dan Reiland, growth barriers

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6 Yellow Flags of Using Too Much Data

by: Eric Geiger

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Data can be a leader’s friend as it is wise for leaders to leverage data in their decision-making. While it is foolish for leaders to ignore data, it is equally unhealthy for leaders to obsess over it. Here are six problems with obsessing over data:

1. You can find your worth in the numbers.

There are some leaders who find their worth in their weekly or daily dashboards. Ministry leaders are not immune to the temptation. In our sinfulness, a desire to reach people can become about the number and what that number says about our effectiveness. Having served in a rapidly growing environment, I learned the sinfulness in my own heart and needed God’s grace constantly to rescue me from finding my worth in a spreadsheet.

2. You can allow one metric to drive you.

Leaders who wisely use data look at more than one metric, as it is possible to allow one metric to drive you and lead in ways that are not healthy for the whole. For example, in church ministry, if a leader is consumed only with the weekend attendance metric, investments will be heavily weighted toward the weekend and away from focus on leadership development, discipleship, and sending others.

3. You can miss the bigger picture.

Some leaders analyze and analyze and miss the proverbial forest for the trees of data that consume them. By living in the data, they can fail to deliver overarching direction.

4. You can miss small data.

With all the emphasis on big data (learning through looking at data in multiple ways), Martin Lindstrom released his book Small Data to emphasize the importance of observing real people and not simply looking at numbers. If you obsess over data, you can miss the stories of the real people that are more than just data. If you obsess over data, you can lose your heart for the people the data represents.

5. You live reactively instead of proactively.

Those who obsess over data are likely to react continually to it instead of proactively charting a course and letting the data speak into the execution of that course. Those who obsess over data don’t lead with conviction but can allow the data to lead them in a myriad of different directions.

6. You can re-create what has already been created.

In software development it has become common to release iterations, gather customer feedback, and adjust to that feedback. Some have pointed out that while the approach is valid, it results in creating what has already been created. If you are going to lead a team that meets a different need, data is important, but you have to look at data in light of your overarching mission.

Look at data. Learn from data. But don’t find your worth in it, and don’t obsess over it.

> Read more from Eric.

Tags: Eric Geiger, church data, dangers from too much data, data obsession

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How to Measure Real Church Growth Using Your Ministry Outputs

by: Will Mancini

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These days I’m trumpeting a battle-cry to bring back church growth. We shouldn’t blush at it; we should be bold for it.

But I also assert that the assumptions of church growth as we know it lead down a dead end. Instead, we need real church growth.

In our era of cultural wildfires, technology tsunamis, and attendance landslides, I’m comforted that this is not a new problem. All the way back in the first century believers got confused about what church growth really is.

What God Measures

When church leaders think about church growth, our default setting is to measure growth in program attendance, especially weekend worship. If we’re a little more advanced, we might measure baptisms.

The church at Corinth measured the same things. Look at how we’ve all been baptized, Paul, they said with confidence. Look how we’re showing up to take the Lord’s Supper (in other words, weekly worship attendance).

Paul’s reply? Big deal. The ancient Israelites “all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,” he replied. “They all ate the same spiritual food [manna] and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them” (1 Cor. 10:2-4 CSB).

But how much good did their baptism and attendance do them? Not a lot. “God was not pleased with most of them, since they were struck down in the wilderness” (v. 5).

Ouch.

Paul said that the saga of the ancient Israelites “took place as examples for us” (v. 6). We have to learn the lesson that God measures his people by their production, not their participation. I’m talking about fruitfulness. I mean the faithful character exhibited by holy people, the kingdom-service they perform, and the disciples they make.

Let me ask you a critical question. Is it possible for someone to go to your church for ten years, participate in everything the church has to offer, and NOT grow with Jesus?

You see how important this is? Real church growth demands that we go beyond measuring participation to measuring production—beyond measuring ministry inputs to measuring ministry outputs.

The Ministry Machine

Think of all your church’s activities put together as your “ministry model.” It’s your disciple-making engine.

Measuring inputs means measuring what you dump into the intake funnel of your ministry machine—namely, people. This is almost all that leaders commonly measure, the biggest reason being that attenders are pretty easy to count.

For most leaders today, charting attendance is less fun than ever. Not only are fewer people nationwide attending church, but more people are attending less frequently.

So alarmed voices are proposing we stop caring about attendance and start caring about “engagement.” But what do we really mean by “engagement”?

Unfortunately, for many leaders “engagement” simply means counting how many attenders also go to a small group, how many serve as a volunteer, or how many give money to the church. In other words, we’re just going from measuring ministry inputs to measuring throughputs: how far people make it through the bowels of the ministry machine.

But what’s coming out the back end of the machine? How are the people poured into the hopper on the front end of your programs being changed by them?

Is your ministry model built to change anyone at all?

You won’t know the answer until you start measuring ministry outputs. That’s at the heart of what I mean by “real church growth.”

How to Measure Ministry Output

Let me give you an example of what I mean by ministry outputs.

We can all agree that genuine biblical community is something God wants to see in his people. So how will you measure that?

You could ask people, “Are you in a small group?” That’s an input or throughput question.

But instead, you could ask, “How many ‘2 AM friends’ do you have?” That’s an output question. It’s a result that we want a mechanism like small groups to produce.

See? The question you ask makes all the difference to the answer you get.

“2 AM friends” is an example of real “engagement”—not just people’s engagement with the church program apparatus, but engagement with each other in the most sensitive spaces of life.

Organized disciple-making generates results like this. And that is what I mean by “real church growth.”

A Shift of Focus

Your results mainly stem from from your ministry model, not from your preaching. We can urge the importance of biblical community week in and week out without it ever really growing. Meanwhile, we justify our activity to ourselves by pointing to the number of people attending small groups. As I wrote in my book Innovating Discipleship, “We allow generic output language to validate our intent while we use input data to validate our success.”

But imagine if we shifted our focus to discipleship outputs. Imagine if we measured not just the number of people engaged in our weekend services but the number of people engaged with the Bible every day. Imagine if we measured not just the number of baptisms but the number of believers who influence people who end up getting baptized.

When we focus on outputs, we focus on the value we pour into people. And when the church provides value, attendance tends to take care of itself.

I realize that this raises all kinds of questions about how to measure outputs. One of the most important things we do at Auxano is to help churches define their disciple-making outcomes. Then we teach them how to capture the wealth of data of this kind sitting in their churches right now. Finally, we help them do something with what they learn.

Real Church Growth

Do you know why I gave my consulting organization the unusual name “Auxano”? The name is Greek for “I grow (it).”

Paul told the Corinthians that there’s really only person who can say auxano: it’s “God who gives the growth” (1 Cor. 3:7). So what does God want his harvest in your church to look like?

Tags: Ministry Outputs, Real Church Growth, Will Mancini

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