Category: Church Leadership

  • Business Models in the Church

    We celebrate businesses acting more like ministries.

    • We love TOMS Shoes buy one give one mantra.
    • We adore that Chic-fil-A is closed on Sunday in observance of the sabbath.
    • We show all our friends that In-N-Out has bible verses stamped on the bottom of their cups.
    • We got teary eyed watching Undercover Boss when the CEO of Frontier got involved in a co-workers homeless ministry.
    • We love when businesses embrace a holy inefficiency for Kingdom impact.

    If you hang out with ministry types, you’ll discover that they celebrate ministries who make their churches more like businesses.

    • Churches hire HR professionals.
    • Churches lay people off.
    • Churches acquire other churches.
    • Churches hire MBAs to be “Executive Pastors.”
    • Churches hire CPA’s to run their finance departments.
    • Churches hire advertising executives to run their marketing departments.
    • Churches have departments!
    • Churches have board rooms, safe rooms, and even war rooms.
    • We love when churches a mantra of efficiency.

    The Problem

    Churches acting more like businesses has lead to reaching less of the population. (Read more here and here.)

    Businesses acting more like ministries has lead to those companies growing in a down economy. (Read more here and here.)

    Statement of the Obvious

    Why don’t we celebrate ministry leaders who just want their ministries more and more like a ministry?

    Let’s embrace some holy inefficiency and grow the Kingdom!

  • Observing vs. Engaging at Church

    I first made this discovery at work but then noticed it in my own life.

    As you can imagine, I’m a little schizophrenic at the National Youth Workers Convention. I hold several different roles simultaneously, which keeps me constantly moving and shifting from one role to another. And during our general session– I’m all over the place in that room. I’m welcoming people as they come in. I’m backstage saying hello (and thank you) to our speakers and artists. I’m making sure we’re capturing all the media we’ll need for the next year. On and on.

    The net result is that I’m typically working during the entire general session… I have to be very intentional about sitting down and listening to the speaker. (This year I need to listen to the speaker since I’m interviewing them right after their talk with some follow-up questions.) It’s a crazy transition to have my mind moving at a million miles per hour and then to just sit down and listen at 100-120 words per minute.

    It’s in that hectic, moving about the room, that I made this discovery.

    There’s a big group of people who willfully don’t sit in chairs during general sessions. It really is like a middle school dance. The vast majority of the people are having a good time, laughing and dancing and highly engaged in what happens on the stage. And the “teachers” are all hanging out on the fringes loosely engaged at what is going on– but firmly in observation mode. My movement around the room is completely invisible to those engaged in the general session. But to those who are just observing on the outside, utterly disengaged, they watch me. They wave at me. They wave me over to say hello.

    Those observing and not engaging are present but not connected. The implication is that the session isn’t for them… they are just present.

    That discovery has haunted me the for weeks as I realize how many times I slip into observation mode during church.

    • I engage in worship, but disengage during the message.
    • I engage during the social times, but disengage during communion.
    • I engage when we do announcements in Spanish, but disengage when they are given in English.

    Sure, I don’t sit in the back of the room. But I willfully disengage as if to say, “This isn’t for me.”

    Problem #1

    This habit of disengaging began as I worked at churches. Much like I have to work during general sessions at NYWC, most people who work at churches are working during the church service. Sure, the staff may be present… but they often have a million things on their mind. They are thinking about the lesson they just taught or are about to teach, or what they will say when they have to go up front, or keeping their head up to make sure that stragglers make it back in the room… if they are gone too long they feel they ought to go see what’s going on.

    The end result is that few people who work at church ever get to fully participate in church.

    Problem #2

    Problem #1 leaves us with a pretty strong contradiction. We want to create an atmosphere where people engage with God and yet our staff is utterly unable to do so in the same space. So, our actions are actually teaching people that if they want to be leaders in our ministry they need to be really good at looking engaged when, in fact, they are merely observing.

    The end result is that our actions are teaching people that in order to be a leader you need to be able to disengage at church.

  • Lead Me

    • To lead is to serve.
    • To lead is to listen.
    • To lead is to suffer.
    • To lead is to give.
    • To lead is to offer yourself.
    • To lead is selfless.
    • To lead others means taking people where they would otherwise not go.

    To lead isn’t to tell others where they need to go or what they need to do in order to be like you.

    To lead is a willingness to go to that place I’m afraid I can’t go on my own, and ask others to go with you. Their action of following is what makes you a leader.

    Until they follow you’re just a dude waving his hands and saying some words.

    Too many people think that they are leaders. They think that because they have a microphone in their hand they are a leader. They think that because they got hired to a leadership position, they are a leader. They think that because they have a great education or once led people somewhere great, they are a leader. They think because they have a skill set or a nice smile, they are a leader.

    The world is full of fake leaders.

    And the world is in desperate need of men and women who are willing to lead.

    The only measurement of a leader which truly matters is whether or not people are following.

    Want to be a leader? Figure out how to get people to follow you somewhere they need to go, but won’t.

  • When your kids hate church

    When your kids hate church

    My kids don’t get excited about going to church most Sunday’s. That’s putting a nice bow on it, isn’t it?

    Let’s take the pretty bow off for the sake of this post.

    They hate going to church.

    Yesterday, I sat in the car with a child who refused to participate. Not all Sunday’s are like that. But sometimes the feet literally stop moving and the tears start flowing. It’s hard to look in your child’s eyes and see them tearfully say “please don’t make me go,” and then force them to go.

    I can’t stomach it. That is, clearly, not the type of relational connection I want my children to have with Jesus.

    To my dismissive friends– it’s not just our church. It’s pretty much any church we’ve tried out. Trust me, we tried to blame the churches we attended. It’s not their fault. And it’s been going on for a very long time. Yeah, they even hated churches I worked at.

    I don’t know any other way to say it. They hate going to church.

    [Insert our painfully banging of heads against the wall.]

    [Insert the fear of all the comments I’ll get with suggestions for how to make them love going to church. I know, it’s easy for you. Thanks in advance for reminding me I’m a failure.]

    [Insert Freudian comments and Freudian comments veiled as Bible verses– trust me when I say we’ve thought them all already.]

    As a parent I could get lost in the emotions of this. I mean, how is it that mom and dad can have a first love… Jesus and his church… and our kids aren’t loving what we love?

    This is where the rational side of our brains takes over and comforts us.

    • We don’t want them to fake it for our sake.
    • We want to raise independent, critical thinkers. That includes giving them the freedom to question us within the boundaries of our authority over them.
    • We believe Jesus wants to capture their heart, not their body. It’s OK if that takes time. Jesus’ offer to love the church stands the test of time, he is patient.
    • We recognize that there is a difference between rejecting Jesus and not liking the action of going to church. They don’t hate Jesus, they hate going to church.
    • We believe ultimately that it’s more important that the kids go to a church their parents love than one that the kids love and the parents tolerate. I find church strategies that try to hook parents with a McDonald’s approach to kids ministry often have equally crappy methodology elsewhere.
    • We recognize that some of the reason they don’t like church is that daddy used to work at one, like 60+ hours a week. And repairing the equation that church equals dad loving other people’s kids and making other people’s kids a priority over them will take years to repair.
    • We are willing to find expressions of church they might love. We’ve introduced Awana on Wednesday nights. It is is so developmentally appropriate for them that they are really digging it. (Even though it makes dad cringe a bit.) And this summer they will go to camp. For Kristen, Awana was a big part of her middle childhood. And for me, camp was huge from about 4th grade through high school. (Even though letting them go for a week makes Kristen cringe a little bit)
    • We are willing to look in the mirror enough to recognize that being compliant at church does not equate to loving church. When I went to church as a child, I hated it and swore that I’d hate it forever.
    • We aren’t going to give up simply because they don’t count down the days until Sunday. Their attitude towards church doesn’t drive us to make stupid decisions as parents. So it’s not like we’re going to stop going to church as a family.
    • We are willing to lose the occasional battle for the sake of hopefully one day winning the war. That’s a crude way of saying we don’t force them to participate. We expect that they will, but allow them some ability to say no.

    Maybe I’m not supposed to talk about this? Maybe writing this makes me look bad? Or maybe, just maybe, my kids are normal?

  • Hit Me with God’s Hammer Today

    A few weeks back I wrote about something I call, the Pastor Man Up Movement. (PMUM) There’s something about PMUM that annoys me and I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what it is.

    • Is it that its mostly men and I have a strong desire to see women lead? Maybe a little.
    • Is it that its mostly racially homogenous? Maybe a little, but I’m a white male too. So what do I know?

    While both of those things annoy me a tad about PMUM speakers/writes I can’t say that its contributing to the distaste I get when I hear one of these people talk about leadership.

    I’ve been trying to search myself so I can articulate it. (And I want to be careful that I use words like “annoy” and “distaste” so people aren’t thinking I’m just some bizarre hater of well-known PMUM leaders.)

    But here is one thing that I know doesn’t resonate with me when I listen to them talk about leadership:

    Leadership isn’t about celebrating yourself.

    Leadership is about moving people to do something or go somewhere they couldn’t go on their own.

    Ultimately, one thing that bothers me so much is the celebration of self. You hear introductions that laud how much they’ve accomplished. How much money they raised. Where they went to school. How many people go to their church. That they are the founder of their congregation which is larger than yours. How often they meet other famous leaders. And why you should believe that every word flowing from their mouth is like little leftovers that the Holy Spirit forgot to include in the canon saved especially for you, as if it were milk and honey saved just for you… this one time.

    Want to know who I want to admire? I want to admire a person who leaks transparency. I want to hear from a person who doesn’t want the microphone. I want to admire a person who doesn’t know how many books he’s sold or how many people go to his church or how many staff members he has.

    I want to hear a speaker who stands up and tells the audience as her into, “Want to know why people follow me? Me too. I haven’t got a clue. God is doing it through me. I’m just a knucklehead. Know that I’m a sinner and it’s by grace that I’m standing here today. My husband and I argued about me making this appearance, but I guess we just need the money. And the message I’m about to deliver this morning– don’t get hung up on it. I have a staff who helped me and I have delivered it for 14 times. I call this my $22,000 sermon. After today, it’s my $22,500 sermon. Don’t be impressed with me today, be impressed with how God is using me to minister to you today.”

    I know that isn’t exactly inspiring to most. But its the kind of leader I like to follow. (And its the kind of leader I aspire to be.) I don’t know if people would spend $100 to listen to a series of speakers talk like that. But I do know it’s worth $100, for me at least, to hear the truth over and over again.

    Just hit me with the hammer God has gifted you to hit me with.

    Honesty preachers to me.

    Transparency preaches to me.

    Humility preaches to me.

    Checking what I assume against what is clear in Scripture preaches to me.

    Chest-bumping doesn’t.

  • Level of Difficulty

    Does your skill level match the level of difficulty in your ministry?

    I’ll admit it. I’m a recovering video game junky. Up until Madden 2005 I used to incessantly play anything football EA Sports produced.

    One of the fun things about the Madden games is that you can adjust the level of difficulty to match your skill level in the game. So, if you were new, you could set it to easy and still have a good time. Then, theoretically, as your skills improved you could turn the game up so that it remained challenging.

    One of the great injustices in the ministry world is that there is often a disconnect between the skill level of a staff member and the level of difficulty in a ministry setting.

    In general, those who have a low skill level (new to ministry) are only able to get jobs in ministry locations labeled difficult or expert. Meanwhile, veteran church workers tend to flow towards jobs on larger teams in healthier ministries where the level of difficulty is significantly better matched to their skill level. (Not easy, per se. But ministries which match their skill level.)

    In the past few years I’ve had countless conversations with pastors in way, way over their head. They’ve been in ministry a short amount of time and are in situations with no support, politics leaning hard against them, and socially isolated from people who think like them. They slump their shoulders as we sit down for breakfast, “Adam, am I crazy? Why does serving Jesus hurt this bad?”

    Why are these people hurting?

    Because they are in ministry settings where the level of difficulty is a miss-match.

    The Way it Works

    We have a Darwinian approach to ministry jobs. Our church culture dictates that the newest, greenest, and least capable among us serve at the gnarliest of ministry sites. A youth pastor takes her first time job, replacing a youth pastor fired for sleeping with a student. A worship pastor hired from a larger church to lead a ministry from traditional worship to contemporary. A senior pastor right out of seminary replaces a long-tenured wise owl who retired after 40 years of successful ministry. A children’s worker will accept a calling to a church plant where they have to go out and raise their support while somehow trying to create a children’s program from scratch.

    All expert level ministry jobs performed by newbie staff members. They don’t stand a chance.

    A large majority of these newbies will get washed out of their first jobs in the first 2-3 years. Battered and bruised, about half will lick their wounds and find non-ministry vocations before they’ve even paid off their seminary loans.

    Yet, a small minority will learn their lessons from these impossible ministry situations and move to more healthy levels of difficulty. Eventually, through survival of the fittest, a small minority manage to work their way into roles that are matched with their skill level… or maybe a little mismatched so that they are in jobs significantly easy compared to their skill level. (You know who you are.)

    In other words, those of us with high levels of expertise gravitate to the easier jobs while our success in roles made to look easy encourages countless others into the flames of despair at the hard jobs.

    The Way it Ought to Work

    Ministry experts should flow to the expert level jobs. Jobs in healthy ministries should hire more newbies for shorter periods of time in order to increase their skill level and help match them with jobs that best suit their long-term skill level and interest.

    This would perpetrate a mantra of healthy churches helping unhealthy ones instead of visa versa.

    But that would be too much like right.

  • Leading Your Church to Reflect its Neighborhood

    It’s been more than 40 years since Martin Luther King, Jr. quipped, “Eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week.”

    If we are honest with ourselves– churches are nearly as divided today as they were 40 years ago. We call it culture and we call it personal preference. But the truth of the matter is that we just don’t want to rock the boat. (We like the comfort, staff members like their paychecks.)

    So we allow racism, sexism, and a lack of cultural diversity to run rampant in our congregations.

    It’s time those of us called to lead, lead our churches into a new paradigm.

    And it starts with a sober assessment of where our congregations are at.

    Simple measurement tool

    Make a written observation the demographics of your congregation this Sunday morning. (Age, marital status, socio-economic status, race, gender) Then compare what you observe at your church against what the data set of your churches zip code as provided by the U.S. Census Bureau.

    • Does your congregation reflect its neighborhoods demographics?
    • Does your church staff reflect the demographics of the zip code?
    • If there is a disconnect, is your church leadership making serious, active efforts to close the divide?

    Cutting to the chase: While most evangelical congregations don’t have white, middle class theology. They predominantly attract white, middle class congregations. And it’s scary how many church staffs are filled with white, middle class males. (Go ahead, look at the staff pages of 10 of your favorite churches.) That disconnect you observe should lead you to make changes!

    Changing your behavior: If you are like me, a child of the 1980s, you were raised in a dogma of multiculturalism.

    From kindergarten I was taught that all the cultures in my community have value, deserve equal rights, and should be given access to the same things I am given access to as a member of the dominant culture. That value may have been taught to me from a secular perspective, but I believe it also reflects a biblical perspective on how Christians are to live in society as well!

    If you want to express that same value on Sunday morning you need to take some steps (maybe radical ones) towards that value.

    In other words– Maybe you need to change churches? Maybe you need to stop funding something that doesn’t reflect your values and start funding a congregation that does? Maybe you need to lead the way and stop waiting for church leadership to lead you?

    Personal testimony– This is what I’ve done. For the past 2+ years my family has been a part of a congregation that works hard to reflect its neighborhood. At times, it is simply beautiful and at other times it is wholly awkward. But it’s been a radical transformation for my walk with Jesus. So, know that I’m not just pushing an idealism, I’m encouraging you to participate in something that I’m finding tremendous joy in.

    If you are a church leader who is taking a serious look at bridging the divide between the Sunday morning demographic you have today and the one you’d like to see in 12 months, may I suggest some action steps?

    5 Radical Steps Towards Becoming a Congregation which Reflects its Neighborhood

    1. Hire staff members that reflect the demographics of your zip code. (Race, gender, marital status, age)
    2. Require all paid staff, from the janitor to the senior pastor, to live within the zip code of your congregation. (Give them a few months to move, make it financially possible, remove staff members who won’t move within 12 months.) Take it a step further by requiring all board officers to do the same.
    3. If you live outside of the neighborhood, lead the way by moving into the community your church is trying to reach. Don’t contribute to the disconnect– lead the way!
    4. Get involved in neighborhood issues. Lead the way on issues of justice, advocate for the poor, let your congregation be a voice in the community. (Here’s 10 suggestions for your church to be good news to the neighborhood)
    5. Adopt a local public school. The local schools are the access point to the people your church is called to reach. Get involved, not as an agent of adversary, but as a community partner. (Here’s 10 suggestions for your church to be good news to the local schools)

    Is this a magic growth formula? Of course not. But as you take these steps you will earn the trust of a community who has learned to ignore you. When you care about what they care about and when you reflect who they are, you will be amazed at the social currency this will earn your congregation.

    I recognize that these steps may seem extreme. (And I’m certain someone will tell me that firing staff for this is unbiblical) But that’s the nature of leadership, isn’t it? Sometimes God asks you to push past what you are comfortable with or what feels right to do what is right. Remember the rich young man in Matthew 19? He asked Jesus how he might enter the Kingdom of God, but he left disappointed because the cost was too high.

    The reality is that if those in leadership don’t take radical positions so that their actions reflect their theology, the church will never change.

    We simply cannot survive as a viable faith if we continue to act as agents of discrimination on Sunday morning. The church cannot be the most segregated place in our culture. It is time that the church take a good, hard look at who they are in their community and make some radical changes.

    It’ll never get any easier or cheaper to do so than it is today.

  • The Power of Calling

    Yesterday, I spent some time thinking about the calling of Abraham and Moses. (Genesis 15; Exodus 3) I was comparing the discomfort those men went through as a result of their calling to a community and the relative ease with which I question my calling to the community I live in and the work God has clearly called me to do at YS.

    Why am I so quick to question while they spent decades grinding out their calling?

    I’m glad I spent time with Moses and Abraham yesterday. I somehow associate “being called” with “being easy.” It reminded me that being called somewhere brings great pleasure, but also involves sticking it out through times of doubt, turmoil, angst, and pressure.

    A few week’s ago I ruffled some feathers with a post called, Youth Workers: Don’t Punk Out. I’ve known too many people called to a task but have given up for a different task. They will wrestle with the guilt the rest of their lives. They will work out justifications that make it sound like they weren’t “running to Ninevah” but in their hearts they know they are just trying to save face when they need to repent.

    God may bless them in other capacities but the guilt of their mistake will always haunt them.

    When I think of Moses and Abraham I think about their contemporaries. Certainly, God called other men and women living at the same time to do things. But their stories didn’t get recorded in history. Why? Did they cower? Did they hide from their calling? Certainly, they didn’t outshine Moses or Abraham.

    The thing about being called to a task in life is that you know you are called. Hence the phrase calling. Calling implies that their was an invitation and a RSVP to that invitation. It was sent and it was received. You know you’ve been called because you answered the phone! God asked you if you’d do it and you willingly (and maybe with much trembling) said “Yes, Lord I hear you. I will do that.”

    You will know you have been called when the power of the calling exhibits itself

    • Calling haunts you.
    • Calling wakes you up early in the morning and lays your head down late at night; it provides more energy than sleep.
    • Calling and vocation are two different things. Calling isn’t about a paycheck its about the reward.
    • Calling applies in every context you find yourself in. You can fulfill your calling living next door to your mommy, and you can fulfill your calling living in a third world country.
    • Calling and longsuffering are kissing cousins.
    • Calling can release you; it can spit you up; it can drive you to madness; but it is unchanging and seeming unchangeable.
    • Calling is affirmed by people in your life and by results measured in Kingdom impact.
    • Calling is about short-term suffering and long-term rewards. Abraham’s descendants are numerous beyond belief. Moses faithfulness to God was only surpassed by Jesus.
    • Calling looks like foolishness to some.
    • Calling isn’t something soft. If you’ve been called you know it. You might not be able to articulate how you were called but if you were called you would know it.
    • There is general calling, we are all called to love God and love others. And there is specific calling.
    • Calling releases energy, resources, and results that defy the laws of economics and physics.

  • 4 Things to Do With a Legit Opportunity

    Let’s face it, success is about being opportunistic.

    Here’s my simple outlook on opportunities. I’m thankful that I’ve made more right steps than wrong ones so far. But having the right outlook on the various ideas I’m presented with makes a huge difference.

    1. Pause to ask questions, hard ones. If you don’t ask how something will help you no one else will.
    2. Think about how you want to tie it in. You know what they say… if you don’t have a defined target you’ll miss it every time.
    3. Be audaciously bold. Wimps need not be opportunist. Go after things, with gusto!
    4. Go. Sitting on the sidelines will never get you anywhere. Nor will being shy or nervous about failure. Jump first, ask for forgiveness later.

  • 3.2 steps for dealing with crazy people

    If you serve in ministry than there’s a good chance you have one or two crazy people regularly occupying your time. (I don’t mean mentally ill people, I just mean irrational people who bring undue stress to your daily life.)

    For example:

    • A homeschooling mom who constantly tells you she doesn’t want her teenage son influenced by non-Christian boys despite the fact that she has a raging addiction to prescription pain killers and her children know it.
    • A group of parents that won’t let their kids go to a Christian concert because crowds are dangerous and terrorists are likely to attack.
    • A couple in the church who calls together the elders because I was teaching kids how to pray. And we know there’s only one kind of acceptable prayer, and the kind Adam teaches must be emergent and he’s leading kids to hell because their friend from the other Baptist church gave them a tract that said that Rick Warren and Tony Jones had a secret arrangement to destroy the church in America. And Adam has read Purpose Driven Life and he has a Tony Jones book on his bookshelf.

    The question for those of us in ministry isn’t, if we can avoid these people as the church somehow magically attracts them. The question is “What’s a strategy for dealing with these crazy people that works while not eating up all of your time or disrespecting a child of God acting irrationally?”

    Here’s how I handle it.

    Step .2: Tell your boss

    It’s always a good idea to let your boss know that someone is behaving irrationally. If you don’t manage the situation well than the situation may just handle you. (Many, many church staff lose their jobs annually because crazy people complained to the right people.) There’s a good possibility this person/people are going to tell everyone how you are mistreating them or ignoring them or whatever. So, it’s just good to go ahead and put it on your bosses radar early.

    Step 1.2: Breathe deep, remain calm, and smile when you see them

    I know these people are making your life uncomfortable. But you are still a minister of the Gospel called to love all people. One way I’ve tried to adjust my attitude towards the crazy people in my life is to label their behavior, “misplaced care” or “something they can control in a life spinning out-of-control.” My observation is that these folks aren’t driving you batty simply for the sake of that, it’s somehow fulfilling something they are passionate about. And it’s a good thing to be passionate about their kids, their kids faith development, their church, and the integrity of the church they attend. Changing my attitude towards their behavior helps me remain professional for the next step.

    Step 2.2: Explain your thinking or your philosophy behind their concern

    Fear, by its very nature, is irrational. And while it may merely fuel the fires I always try to backfill irrational behavior with my rationale. It might not help very much in the end but I find it best to schedule a time to sit down with the person and overload them with kindness and information. I’ll explain what I am doing, why I am doing it, I’ll fill their hands with books and documents, and most importantly– I will listen intently to their concerns. Listening validates their personhood without you having to change or agree with their perspective. Next, I’ll invite them to talk with someone else on the church staff or even an elder. Then, when the meeting is over, I document the meeting and share the notes with my boss. If the situation explodes later, everyone who needs to know will know that I treated that person with respect, I gave them all the information they wanted, and I acted professionally.

    Step 3.2: Minimize your time invested in crazy people

    Once you’ve done the first steps it’s probably best to just move on. There’s no need to rehash the thing with co-workers and waste their time. If you’ve followed the steps above, the best thing to do is stop talking and/or thinking about the situation and just get back to the task at hand. Don’t allow someone else’s irrational behavior to distract you too much.