1. Plan For Facilities From Day 1 – If you just planted, in 5-7 years you’ll need a building or a new job!
2. Build A Long Runway – “Church Building - How long does it take…really?
3. Track Everything – Good financials and attendance numbers put the bank’s bean counters at ease.
4. Define “Healthy” Early - If you aim at nothing you’ll hit it every time. Understand what the metrics of healthy are for your church.
5. Measure “Healthy”- What gets measured gets done.
In the last few weeks I’ve met with a couple of pastors who’ve managed to dig their church out of, what seemed like, certain financial ruin. These men made me realize how closely tied vision and money are in building the church as well as church building. Think about it. How many organizations have you seen kill it who stunk at managing their cash-flow and balance sheet?
Bottom line: If your church is going to change the world, YOU have to be a next level money manager. At church and at home.
What makes your church stronger? How do you measure it? Is it being bigger? Growing faster? Giving more? Baptizing more people?
All of these are metrics churches use to measure strength. Your church probably has a few of these along with other, better, metrics to help you track progress. With those metrics in mind answer this, can your church grow stronger through disruption? Should it? Disruption can take on many forms in a church, however, there are few things we willing do that cause disruption like adding ministry space.
Here are 5 ways to leverage church construction for a stronger church:
1. Hire pros like you hire staff - I always encourage churches to hire people to partner with during construction using the same methods they use to hire staff. The people leading your project will fill a critical ministry leadership role for 2 to 4 years, which is longer than the average tenure of most church staff. If you wouldn’t hire someone to be on staff, don’t hire them to lead your project. Continue Reading…
The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. That’s why banks rely heavily on a credit scores. Its also why obtaining those often elusive goals is so dang hard. So how can you create change? Here’s the 3 Critical Elements To Accomplish Anything!
A Written Goal
I mean a compelling and specific written goal with a due date. By compelling I mean something you want to achieve and you know why you want to achieve it. To simply say you want to “read the bible through” or “lose 10 pounds” doesn’t carry enough weight (pun intended) to get you to actually change your behavior. You have to have a compelling “Why” or reason for moving in the direction of your goal. Keep it positive. Focus on what you want to gain and not what you want to lose.
A Solid Strategy
My good friend Mark Cole defined strategy this way. “If your goal was to occupy Normandy your strategy might be to use the air force the navy and the marines for a Continue Reading…
Recently I was on a flight where the flight attendant delivered his safety instructions over the PA and finished with this statement, “Please be careful when you open the overhead bins because, in flight, shift happens”. Clever, huh? I don’t care if you’re a pre-school teacher or the Pope, in this life, things don’t always go as planned.
Here are 7 ways to leverage disruption and thrive when shift happens to you.
1. Don’t make things worse: You won’t make your best decisions when things are on fire… so just don’t! The easiest way to worsen any complicated situation is to make major life decisions before the shock of the situation has worn off. If you just had a bomb dropped on you, give yourself some time to let the concussion wear off before you dive into a solution. Making promises, good or bad, or offering forgiveness too early may come back to bite you. Promises made during disruption are almost always formed out of anger. Premature forgiveness can lead to bitterness on your part or on the part of the person who thought they were forgiven.
2. Decide ahead of time how you’ll leverage disruption: You must decide ahead of time how you’ll be affected and perfected through disruption. Disruption that is certainly coming. Yes I know that’s hard to do when you’ve lost your job or your marriage. This isn’t an easy step. Most of the time the lesson is only obvious in the rear view mirror, but still you have to be committed to the lesson.
3. Take as much responsibility as you can: My pastor, Andy Stanley, claims that counseling has never been his strong suit but that he knows one thing with absolute certainty. If he couldn’t get people to focus on THEIR CONTRIBUTION to the problem at hand, they weren’t making progress. Continue Reading…
Ok maybe this isn't an official law but maybe it should be. The Costa Concordia was only a few hundred yards from where it should have been. Given the number of miles they'd traveled, how much of a problem could it be to deviate from the path a few hundred yards. Apparently huge!
Pastors, that's why a little flirting may not seem like a big deal now but can causes a 3 mile island situation if it isn't eliminated. Great news! You guys have the opportunity to crash your job and your marriage in one simple step. Nobody wakes up one day and says "today's the day I throw it all away". You have to understand the path that leads to destruction and then determine if you're on it or not.
I have no doubt Captain Francesco Schettino had crisis decisions made for him by people farther up the food chain. To reach his leadership level he must have been drilled on emergency procedures and systems, but apparently he never committed to them. We'll never Continue Reading...
For the past few weeks one of the audio books I’ve been listening to is the Four Hour Body by Tim Ferris. (Caution there is some adult language and a couple of very adult topics included)
Overall the book has been pretty good but there has been one phrase that really grabbed me. Tim does a lot of strategic testing of supplements and exercise strategies using himself as the test subject. In one experiment he tried a certain dosage of a natural supplement and reported:
This is a post a friend of our family made recently. I’ve changed some of the names to protect their anonymity but this lady is rockin some Jesus by using a temporary situation to glorify a permanent God!
I turned 41 today, and while I have learned a lot this past year and grown in many ways, let’s be honest…..what I’m really thinking is “Goodbye 40, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out!!!!!!!!!” Really ready to begin a new year.
It was a great day and began with me laying in bed a little later than usual. It was pouring rain, and I spent a long time talking with God this a.m. The sweetest way to begin any day!
Then, I made my daily trek…nothing says “birthday celebration” like a good dose of radiation! I had my fifth treatment today. (5 down, 28 to go!) Still doesn’t hurt, still don’t have side effects, and still listening to 80′s music being played in the “radiation room.” Lori went with me and got to meet a new friend I’ve already made there. There is the sweetest little old lady named Mary who gets her treatment the same time as me each day. We talk about everything except for cancer. Her husband looks exactly like the old man in the movie “Up”, and he seems to take good care of her. Mary thinks that I’m cute, and I think she is even cuter! I already look forward to seeing her each day. So, my radiation treatment that involves driving pretty far down to the hospital, sitting in a waiting room with other patients, and having to lay still on the radiation table in a dark room isn’t that strange of a birthday celebration if you think about it….basically, I got to go out of town, spend time with friends, and even lay down to rest! It’s all in how you look at it, right? Continue Reading…
If you’re this far into the year and still fine tuning your goals for 2012 congrats!! You’re in a very small crowd. Here are a few things I’m working on that you might consider as you move through your best year ever.
Hi, My name is Richard and I’ve spent the better part of the last decade serving the church through leadership and consulting roles with the Catalyst Conference and Injoy under Dr. John C. Maxwell‘s guidance. Learn more about me »
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