Consulting, Coaching & Chatter

I received a question from a recent seminar participant that was buried in one of the comments. I started to answer it there, but when I finished I realized it was way too long to be just a comment … so I repost it here. Read More!!

Over the past several weeks I’ve had the opportunity to speak to various crowds of church leaders and talk about church transformational issues. I’ve noticed that I can generally divide the audience into two groups: those who want to get it and so are open to giving the presentation a listen, and those who don’t want to get it and so they cross their arms and either glare or get glassy-eyed. I’ve not noticed very many folks in the middle. Read More!!

I recently had a great conversation with an older member of a fast-shrinking congregation. She was looking for resources on how to improve communications within her congregation and she was finding precious few resources … could I help? Sure, I could help. But before we went further, I asked her to tell me what she meant by “improving communications” and her response was almost exactly what I expected. Read More!!

Once upon a time, I used to teach. It was a one room schoolhouse with up to twelve kids ages preschool through seniors in high school. I taught the ABCs, 123s, algebra, trig, chemistry, history, social sciences, and pretty much everything else. In order to make this gig work, I was trained in what we called Foxfire. Foxfire was outcome-based-education before anyone had ever heard of OBE. But it was more than that. Lots more. And when I got my certification I had been schooled in many things, but most of all, I was educated in how people get educated. Read More!!

Another one bites the dust. If I had a dollar for every pastor who started the transformation process and ended up leaving the church and/or ministry, I could have retired long ago. But here we go again. Earlier in the month I wrote about a church that was embroiled in battle over transformation and the ethics charges rained down. Charges about monetary mishandling (dismissed), charges about using a bully-pulpit (dismissed), and charges of clergy misconduct (also dismissed). With all those dismissals, you’d think that everything was rosy. That’s not the case. Read More!!

I was involved in a conversation earlier today about hiring a staff member at a church. Hiring staff can be a real sticky situation. In some churches, the denomination does the hiring. That can be a huge issue that I don’t personally “get.” What happens if the Lead Pastor (or in a larger multi-staff church the ministry leader) doesn’t get along with the new staff member … or vice versa? In a healthy church, the immediate supervisor does the hiring (the HR or Staff Parish may have veto power) and they do the firing (period). This curtails a lot of staff problems from the git-go, if the Lead Pastor chooses wisely. Read More!!

Today I’ve spent all day … well, from 10:30 AM until 4:20 … training fifty-two participants the first half of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Evangelism seminar. I’m exhausted (that’s a lot of time up in front doing a lot of the talking) and yet I’m too wound up to sleep. There’s something about watching folks “get it” when it comes to good-newsing the world. What’s most gratifying, is the number of the under-thirties who shared how much they got out of it and that what they heard are tips and tools that they realize will work in their contexts. Read More!!

Just a quick post while I’m on the road. A colleague of mine and I were talking about appropriate follow-up plans for first-time visitors and I referenced a recent thread on the Easum, Bandy & Tenny-Brittian Community Advanced Leadership forum about what was considered a “valuable” gift. I had written about the pastor taking a gift to a first-time visitor within 24 hours of their visit in an earlier blog post and mentioned a coffee mug as a gift. In the “valuable” gift thread, I echoed Tom Bandy’s sentiments that a gift taken to a guest should reflect something of value … and folks, coffee mugs just don’t make it much in that realm. Why, even the local garage and the banks give away mugs and though they can be a “nice” gift, very few people marvel at the gift of a mug from a Realtor, let alone a church. A gift of value is something that sets you apart from the crowd … it makes an impression. Read More!!

Why is it that in a denomination with the slogan “A thousand church plants, a thousand different models” that when it comes to Anglo church planting there seems to be only one model that gets any serious conversation: The Pastor Developer Model. Read More!!

I heard it again today. “Youth are the future of the church.” Whenever I hear that I realize the person saying that means that if we don’t win the youth over to the faith that the future of the church is bleak. It’s a noble thought, but it’s not particularly accurate. Youth programming seldom grows a church with very few exceptions. First let me mention the exceptions and then I’ll elaborate on why youth don’t grow churches. Read More!!