#11 The Twelve Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Church: What is our leadership development process?

 
World famous author and Christian leader John Maxwell has well said, “Everything rises or falls on leadership.” This is one reason it is so important for pastors and church leaders to actually lead instead of simply manage. The temptation for pastors is to put the church on “automatic” and focus on preaching and teaching, and [...]

The Twelve Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Church: #6- What Process Does Your Church Use to Make Disciples?

The key word for this article is “process.” Prior to the twentieth-century, churches saturated their ministries with discipleship rather than treating it as a separate entity. Worship, music, prayer, Bible study, fellowship, and so on, were recognized as being a part of discipleship. A paradigm shift occurred in the twentieth-century when many churches adopted a [...]

The Twelve Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Church

Leaders by nature must lead. I have heard an unusual number of pastors say, “I just want to preach. I don’t want to deal with strategy, planning, administration, counseling, change, and certainly not conflict.” However, this attitude is inconsistent with almost all of the biblical examples from Moses to the Apostle Paul and Elijah to [...]

Ten Commandments for Church Failure: #11- Lose Your Passion

Ok, so the Lord can say it in ten and I cannot—like Donald Keough I just had to add one more. In his book The Ten Commandments for Business Failure he said, “If you really want to fail, lose that passion for whatever it is you’re doing” (p. 174). As a leadership and a church-health [...]

Ten Commandments for Church Failure: #9-Thou Shalt Not Communicate Clear Expectations

In his book The 8th Habit, Stephen Covey used a sports metaphor to relate how ineffective organizations are at communicating expectations to their people. He used soccer for his illustration, but I will use football. Based on a study of 23,000 workers in prominent companies, the Harris Poll organization determined that most organizations are ineffective [...]

Ten Commandments for Church Failure: #8 Thou shalt love thy bureaucracy.

“This is a little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought that Anybody could [...]

Ten Commandments for Church Failure: #2 Thou Shalt Not Change Anything!

A close second to “Thou Shalt Not Take Risks” is this one “Thou Shalt Not Change Anything.” I stated in my previous article that success is often a precursor to the fear of taking necessary risks (http://drthomreece.wordpress.com/2008/12/15/ten-commandments-for-church-failure-1-thou-shalt-not-take-risks/). Success intoxicates leaders into a belief that success will continue and is dependent on doing things the way [...]

Ten Commandments for Church Failure: #1 Thou Shalt Not Take Risks

Last week I offered an introduction titled Ten Commandments for Church Failure (http://drthomreece.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/ten-commandments-for-church-failure/) . The first of the ten stated, “Thou shalt not take risks.” As a rule the longer a church has been established, the fewer risks the membership will take. Church plants begin with a bold dream of reaching people for Christ, and [...]

DWJD Instead of WWJD

Recently I had a conversation with a friend that revolved around the popular acrostic WWJD, which stands for “What Would Jesus Do?” Of course, Charles Sheldon’s book titled In His Steps, popularized WWJD and it sparked a youth movement in recent years. Sheldon encourages Christians to think before they act by asking themselves, “What Would [...]