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New FREE eBook Available Now: Stayin’ Alive

2012-02-22T14:11:47Z

Big news! We recently released the third eBook in the Leisure Suit series. This book is called Stayin’ Alive: Build a Legacy of Leadership. Among other things, this resource includes strategies and practical steps for:

being intentional about leadership development
developing dynamic leadership teams
addressing leadership, vision or strategy gaps
evaluating the health of your organization
making uncomfortable but necessary changes
investigating your personal disciplines and priorities

Like our other two previous eBooks, this resource is FREE. We encourage you to share it with your teammates and friends. The book doesn’t take much time to read and it includes relevant exercises and discussion questions that can be used the next time you connect with your team. We want this resource to help you develop healthy conversations that lead to positive change.

We know that all of you are very busy so we wanted to provide you with a resource that can be used right away. You don’t have to visit a bookstore or wait for the Amazon box to arrive on your doorstep.

Again, I’m grateful for the partnership with Church Community Builder. Because of their generous contribution to Engage Burkina, this entire series is available to you for free.

Our team’s primary mission is to help leaders and churches have a bigger impact. We don’t want you to be stuck. We are praying for this eBook to help you take your next steps in your leadership and ministry. Help us spread the word! We want everyone to benefit from the entire Leisure Suit series.

Meet My Team

2012-02-21T15:26:36Z

Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to serve and lead many dynamic teams. In his book, Jesus on Leadership, C. Gene Wilkes shares six benefits of teams:

Teams involve more people, thus affording more resources, ideas and energy than would an individual.
Teams maximize a leader’s potential and minimize his or her weaknesses.
Teams provide multiple perspectives on how to meet a need or reach a goal, thus devising several alternatives for each situation.
Teams share the credit for victories and the blame for losses.
Teams keep leaders accountable for the goal.
Teams can do more than an individual.

President Woodrow Wilson once said, “We should not only use all the brains we have, but all that we can borrow.” Today, I would like to introduce you to my team. All of us are very excited about working together to help churches get unstuck.

Paul Alexander

Paul Alexander is a ministry consultant at Tony Morgan Live. He is a pastor, speaker and strategist who has a passion for helping churches make vision real. For more than 10 years he has served on the senior leadership teams of some of the nation’s leading mega-churches. Currently, Paul is serving as the Executive Pastor at Sun Valley Community Church, a large multi-site church located in the Phoenix area. He has engaged in training on leadership and ministry strategies with Tony Morgan through coaching and consulting relationships. Paul has been married to his wife Lisa for more than 15 years. Together they have three children Kennedy, Mia, and Lincoln.

Regina Brown

Regina Brown is the executive assistant at Tony Morgan Live. She graduated from Radford University with a degree in Communications. Regina previously worked as an executive assistant at RE/MAX and served on the human resource team at WellStar Hospital. Regina enjoys spending quality time with her husband and their two sons. She loves to read, play the piano, write music and volunteer at her local church.

Jason Vernon

Jason Vernon is the director of marketing and business development at Tony Morgan Live. He graduated from Liberty University with a degree in Marketing and a Master of Arts in Christian Leadership. Jason also received an MBA from Lynchburg College. After spending seven years as a marketing consultant, Jason left his role as the business manager of the marketing firm to focus on his ministry. He is currently the lead pastor of the RTP Community Church in Durham, NC. Jason enjoys reading, playing softball and spending time with his wife and son.

Jason Young

Jason Young is a ministry consultant at Tony Morgan Live. He is an architect of “surprise and delight” experiences. He has worked with LifeChurch.tv, First Baptist Church Woodstock, FORD, Chick-fil-A and other great churches and companies. He has a B.A. in English and Christian Studies, an M.Div in Theology and Greek and is completing doctoral work in Leadership Development. Jason recently sold his leadership company to build three new companies that will help churches and companies to create surprise and delight experiences, which are simply those heroic moments that delightfully serve guests creating epic stories that get repeated. Jason loves to spend time with his wife and two children.

Have you checked out Leaders Book Summaries?

2012-02-20T12:47:24Z

Earlier this month, I wrote about Leaders Book Summaries. The company summarizes books for busy leaders. Each month, they review a couple of books and then send subscribers helpful 10-20 page summaries and a detailed 2-page super summary.

This week, I checked out their free sample summary and was really impressed. The free sample was a summary of the book Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The actual summary was a PDF document with a very professional layout.

The writing was clear, concise and easy to follow. I really enjoyed reading the “Pastor’s Perspective.” This section shared specific ideas for applying the book in a Christian organization.

The company issues thirty (30) summaries of leadership books each year. The books are written by secular and religious authors. Recent examples include…

Integrity by Henry Cloud
Talent is Never Enough by John Maxwell
The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive by Patrick Lencioni
On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis

A subscription is only about $6 a month (cheaper if you pay for an entire year in advance). For the price of three hard-back books, you can receive 30 high quality book summaries.

Leaders Book Summaries is currently offering a free one-month trial for our blog readers. Save time and money as you grow your leadership skills!

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This is a sponsored post from Leaders Book Summaries, one of my ministry partners on TonyMorganLive.com

The Story ESPN Won’t Televise

2012-02-19T19:05:19Z

Two weeks before the NFL draft, Anthony “A.T” Barnes called his agent and told him to withdraw his name. He gave up a career in football for a bigger purpose. These are the stories you’ll never see on ESPN. Check out A.T’s story.

Manifesto

2012-02-19T14:02:11Z

I recently connected with Ted Vaughn, Director of Production and Creative Arts at the Rock Church in San Diego, California. Ted’s team created this manifesto. The word manifesto is defined as a declaration of principles. This manifesto is a great challenge for us not to settle for where we currently are in our leadership and ministry. Where are you settling? Possibly it’s time for your own manifesto.

Catalyst West Is Almost Here!

2012-02-16T05:17:41Z

You don’t want to miss the Catalyst West Conference, happening April 18-20, 2012 in LA, where 3,500 young leaders will converge. The conference will include high-octane speakers, powerful worship, innovative programming, and an experience unlike any other.

Hear from leadership authorities including Andy Stanley, Marcus Buckingham, David Platt, Erwin McManus and Craig Groeschel, along with several innovative thinkers and practitioners like skateboarding legend Tony Hawk, design expert Nancy Duarte, best-selling author Donald Miller, author and adventurer Bob Goff, and Stuff Christians Like author Jon Acuff.

Plus, Catalyst Labs will feature innovative thought leaders like Michael Hyatt, Mark Batterson, Britt Merrick, David Kinnaman, Ryan Meeks, Lysa TerKeurst, Charles Lee, Rick McKinley, and others.

REGISTER NOW. Call 888.334.6569 to speak to a Catalyst Concierge, or register online at www.catalystwestcoast.com. You can use Rate Code FOB for an additional discount off your ticket price. Catalyst will sell out, so make sure to register early!

Click here to see the Catalyst West Promo

8 Reasons Why Your ChMS Isn’t Working

2012-02-15T13:00:27Z

by Steve Caton,Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Church Community Builder

If your church management solution (ChMS) isn’t accelerating your ministry forward, then it is holding you back. There is no neutral position. When your ChMS isn’t aligned with your ministry processes, you are limited in your ability to stay connected between Sundays.

Having worked with many churches and leaders across the country, I’ve observed eight reasons a church’s ChMS isn’t working for them:

Only a few people are allowed access to the system. The whole point of a ChMS should be to facilitate community and maintain connections. If the only time you access your ChMS is for a contribution statement or to verify your address, you’ve missed the point entirely.
It isn’t valued by executive leadership. If senior leadership doesn’t encourage the staff and lay leaders to use the system, then you’ll have an uphill battle from the beginning.
The primary concern is control and not impact. Your ChMS is much more than an address book and a way to track contributions. If that’s all you wanted, you could have saved a lot of money and put everything into a spreadsheet.
Your ChMS is complicated, requires a lot of training, and not very intuitive. If your ChMS is difficult to navigate or impossible to figure out – for the everyday person – then you are sunk. Most people are going to give it one try before they make up their minds. The goal is to get as many people using it as possible.
Your existing ministries are not integrated with your ChMS. Encourage your frontline ministry staff to communicate through the ChMS, utilize online registrations, and sign up for online giving, etc. Streamlining processes helps you and the member have a better experience and avoids human error.
You haven’t changed your ChMS since the Carter Administration. If it’s been five years or more since you shopped for a ChMS, you are in for a surprise. Things have changed…big time.
You’re not promoting member buy-in by offering exclusives. Stop doing paper-based event registration and payments. Send communication electronically. Deliver curriculum or training materials within your ChMS. Connect with people regularly. Give people a reason to stay plugged in and using your ChMS regularly. (One big way to do this is to take your ChMS mobile through smartphones and tablets.
You fail to utilize data and stories of life change. Everything a church does is an investment of time, money, and opportunity. We should know the return on our investment. But it doesn’t end with the numbers. Numbers always represent stories of life change.

Technology and ministry are inseparable. The combination is no longer optional. Just because your current solution isn’t working doesn’t mean you should discount all options. If you’re spending more time working around the limitations of your current ChMS than leveraging it for greater member engagement, then you’re wasting a lot of useless energy.

In what ways is your ChMS holding you back from making better disciples?

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This is a sponsored post from Church Community Builder, one of my ministry partners on TonyMorganLive.com.

Stop and Start Series Recap

2012-02-14T13:21:50Z

Stop and Start 2012

I hope you enjoyed our “Stop and Start” series. I had fun learning from some of America’s top leaders. I would love to hear what some of you have already stopped or started doing in 2012.

Here is a summary of the entire series:

Penelope Trunk, Sam Rainer and Maurilio Amorim

Dan Reiland, Brad Lomenick and Dave Ferguson

Photo by Roo Reynolds.

3 eBooks Now Available on Kindle for Less than $3

2012-02-13T14:09:45Z

At the encouragement of one of my good friends and with the help of Ben Stroup, three of the eBooks that I released several months ago are now available on Kindle. The two most recent were added just last week. Now, you can immediately download these resources directly to your Kindle reader. And, if you’re an Amazon Prime member, you can borrow all three eBooks for free. (I’m still a fan of free.)

Each of the eBooks is straight to the point. You’ll be able to read each one in about 20 minutes. They also are designed to read with your teammates. Each of them contain discussion questions for you to use with your staff or volunteer ministry leaders. Wondering what to do at your next staffing meeting? I just did the homework and preparation for you. (You can thank me later.)

Here are the three eBooks in the order that I would review them with your team:

Developing a Theology of Leadership – There’s a lot of conversation about leadership within the church, but very little of it is based on what the Scripture has to say. This resource was designed to help you begin begin to consider what a leadership development culture might look like in your ministry. It includes simple steps to begin a mentoring relationship.
Big Churches Getting Bigger – Surprise! This really isn’t about big churches. Rather, the eBook challenges church leaders to consider strategic barriers to growth. Big churches may not be healthy churches. No matter what the size, though, healthy churches should be growing churches.
The New Traditional Church – You may not say it, but internally you tend to mock the church down the street that’s stuck in the 1950s. Their methods have never changed. They’re a traditional church. Unfortunately, any ministry strategy that once was effective can become a tradition. Whether your church is 20 years old or 20 months old, you may have some new traditions that are limiting the impact of your ministry.

Speaking of staff meetings, I just spent the day with the staff team at Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Great church!) That’s part of what I do to resource churches. I spent a couple of hours with the staff leadership team talking about trends. Then I presented a very interactive three-hour session with the entire staff on building and equipping volunteer teams. And, finally, I spoke to over 500 volunteer leaders in the evening and encouraged them to take their next steps in their leadership. I’d love to do the same thing at your church. Let’s chat.

What are the resources you’ve recently used with your staff and volunteer leaders to help equip them to take their next steps? Join the conversation by sharing your comment.

EntreLeadership

2012-02-12T21:43:46Z

On one of my recent trips, I finished reading EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey. The book offers practical wisdom from Dave based on his years of experience building a business from scratch. It offers insights on both entrepreneurship and leadership — it’s not an either or proposition when you’re launching a business.

As a leader launching a church consulting business, this book really resonated with me. However, most of the principles Dave outlines also apply to church planters and other church leaders. With that in mind, here are some highlights from my reading:

“If you want employees, then boss them around; if you want team members, explain why you do what you do. If they won’t do what you ask, explain it again and again. Then, if they are simply contrary, they have to work somewhere else. But don’t lead with threats and fear.”
“Just because an idea is a good idea does not mean it is good for you or your company to take it on.”
“President John F. Kennedy said, ‘There are costs and risks to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.’”
“Marketing has to have energy. Logic, while factual, is flat and moves no one to action.”
“You can’t lead, market, and/ or run a company successfully without drawing fire from people who don’t understand. So as you win prepare to be misunderstood and lied about.”
“The fact that someone got on your team who should never have been allowed in the building is your fault.”
“There are some people you don’t need to hire—simply because you don’t like them. That is good enough.”
“I also won’t let a team member stay if they decide to have an affair. If their spouse can’t trust them, neither can I.”
“Owning the wrong location will cause you to stay longer than you should. I’ve seen businesses try to make their business fit their building instead of making their building fit their business.”
“People don’t naturally unify; they must be led to do so. To create a culture of unity you have to get your team to buy into a cause bigger than their selfish motives.”
“As a micromanager you will have a very difficult time attracting and keeping high-quality people because they won’t put up with that trash.”
“When an organization or its leaders begin to dish out responsibility without authority, it is a sign they have people whose integrity or competency they don’t trust. That is a symptom of a company having outgrown the quality of its team, and that is the beginning of the end for them.”

This is just a small sliver of the quality content, so here’s my Amazon link if you’d like to pick up your own copy of EntreLeadership.