The following is an excerpt from "Leading Artists," one of the articles in Developing an Arts Ministry, a new resource now available on BuildingChurchLeaders.com.

Some time ago a pastor from a nearby church called me for advice. He had just fired two of his worship leaders due to sexual misconduct. One was having an affair with a married woman on the worship team and the other, it was discovered, had a secret addiction to pornography. The pastor and I discussed strategies for dealing with the aftermath of the scandals, prayed together, and promised to stay in touch. However, his last words, before we hung up the phone, were very revealing. He said with a bit of frustration, "I don't know the first thing about leading artists."

Now I wouldn't necessarily blame the pastor for his worship leaders' immoral behavior. However, the messy ordeal uncovered a weakness this pastor perceived in his own leadership. By his own admission, he didn't know how to lead artists.

Since then I've heard dozens of pastors admit that trying to lead their more artistically minded staff members and volunteers leaves them baffled and befuddled. Another pastor once told me that he stays clear of those "artsy types." "They're kinda off in their own little world anyway," he added. What did he mean about those "artsy" types? And why did he make being an artist sound so creepy?

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We Americans are a people both fascinated and horrified by the notion of commitment. Note the most common sitcom plots, the predictable trajectories of our celebrity marriages, even the myth of the American hero striking out, away from the familiar, toward an unknown future. What is it about commitment that is so frightening, yet so compelling? Commitment scares us because the truth does. At least Wendell Berry suggests something like that:

"Because the condition of marriage is worldly and its meaning communal, no one party to it can be solely in charge. What you alone think it ought to be, it is not going to be. Where you alone think you want it to go, it is not going to go. It is going where the two of you -- and marriage, time, life, history, and the world -- will take it. You do not know the road; you have committed your life to a way.

Forms join us to time, to the consequences and fruitions of our passing. The Zen student, the poet, the husband, the wife -- none knows with certainty what he or she is staying for, but all know the likelihood that they will be staying 'awhile': to find out what they are staying for. And it is the faith of all of these disciplines that they will not stay to find that they should not have stayed.

That faith has nothing to do with what is usually called optimism. As the traditional marriage ceremony insists, not everything that we stay to find out will make us happy. The faith, rather, is that by staying, and only by staying, we will learn something of the truth, that the truth is good to know, and that it is always both different and larger than we thought."

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Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, we officially find ourselves in the Advent season. While Advent is a time where the church prepares to celebrate the birth of Christ, church leaders must also spend these weeks preparing for the Christmas celebration itself. At BuildingChurchLeaders.com, we have a variety of resources to help you finalize your plans and make this Christmas a true celebration of our incarnate King.

Special Christmas Events & Services offers ideas for impacting your congregation and community during Christmas.

In "Christmas Eve Conversion," Eric Reed explains why he welcomes the holiday-season worship attenders.

David Staal offers practical ideas to "Show People a Different Christmas This Year."

Measuring a person's leadership performance can be a vague business, often veering near the ridiculous, much like overwrought evaluations of wine by connoisseurs: bold, but lacking sophistication; tart, yet without staying power; spicy, with a hint of charm. What exactly are we measuring when we measure leadership performance?

Leadership is often evaluated by the mastery of certain core competencies -- how well we organize, administrate, motivate -- or the net result of our efforts -- the growth of the financial bottom line or the expansion of an organization. We shouldn't discard these important metrics, but we all know from our own experience that leadership is too complex to be reduced to boxes checked off on an evaluation form.

Excellent leadership demands serious inner work.

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Over the past week, the Penn State child abuse scandal has dominated the news and raised serious and important questions about what should have and could have been done to stop and prevent the alleged abuses. (For a summary of the case so far as well as insightful thoughts on what the church can learn from the Penn State scandal, I recommend "Rewriting Paterno's Playbook" by Marian Liautaud, from our sister site ChurchLawandTax.com.) This devastating story has reminded us that child abuse can and does happen in places we would never expect--the more we recognize this reality, the more vigilant we will learn to be wherever children are present. It they are not protected by proper policies and practices, children's ministries can be an easy target. It is essential that churches, in particular, continue to raise the bar when it comes to awareness.

As a leader, it is crucial to ensure that everyone in your ministry understands how to respond when they see, or even hear of, a situation that might compromise the safety of a child. Protect Your Children will help you walk through these issues with your leaders as you address these questions together. Reducing The Risk, a resource prepared especially for congregations by legal expert Richard Hammar, features an interactive, engaging DVD training program with 10 segments. Ministry leaders, volunteers and board members alike will learn first-hand from leading experts on how to screen and select workers, implement solid supervision policies and respond to allegations. In addition, our sister site ChurchSafety.com offers resources on Creating a Child Protection Policies as well as a Child Sexual Response Plan. We also have an interview with Richard Hammar on the legal issues surrounding situations of reported child abuse.

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What is a picture of wisdom born of education meeting wisdom born of experience? The relationship between a new pastor straight from seminary and a longstanding lay leader comes to mind. So does the one between a newly commissioned second lieutenant and a sergeant in the U.S. Army.

U.S. Army Gen. Jim Dubik once told me that the role of the sergeant is a distinguishing mark of the U.S. Army. Freshly graduated second lieutenants supervise sergeants who have 10 to 15 years of experience working in a platoon of 20 to 40 people. Dubik described his first command out of college in which the lead sergeant he supervised was a veteran of four tours in Vietnam. He quickly realized something: Effective lieutenants learn to listen to their sergeants.

My mind went immediately to Mary Lou. In my first week as the pastor of the Mountain Grove Baptist Church -- only three weeks following my seminary graduation -- Mary Lou rushed in my office. She handed me three handwritten 5x7 pages containing names with notes on medical conditions and driving directions. Her ministry was to care for the homebound in the community. This was her way of equipping me to visit them; it was also a straightforward plea, her way of telling me these people would greatly benefit from the new pastor visiting them. The sergeant of the homebound reported for duty.

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This week's featured resource is Church Board Essentials, a discounted collection that includes everything you need to put together a great board, or revitalize your current board. Below is an excerpt from "Disciple Your Board," an article included in "Becoming a Great Church Board," which is included in this pack.

Three years of an intimate, almost unbroken relationship with Jesus prepared 12 men to turn the world upside down. Whether you are starting a new church or beginning ministry in an established one, you will find this fundamental strategy of Jesus to be the key to growing strong, healthy board members.

The Discipling Pastor
When Jesus spent time with the Twelve, the disciples learned from what Jesus did as well as from what he said. His attitude under pressure and his response to those who came to him were constant demonstrations of how to care for those in need. Time with Jesus was an ideal “School of the Spirit.” The pastor needs to seek that ideal with the board.

First, spend time with your board members and motivate the board to do the same. A monthly meeting is not adequate in time or atmosphere, but it can be helped greatly by making time for social fellowship over a meal together or a time of relaxation with families.

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I've been experimenting with ways to grow my church. I know "church growth" is sometimes a bad word, but at its best, church growth is about making disciples of Jesus Christ. So I went with my worship leader, Jeremy, to Michigan State University's campus and tried to hand out worship invite cards to students. This was way out of my comfort zone, but I was asking my congregation to push themselves, and I thought I ought to push myself, too. I found it a lot easier to tack the invite cards up on bulletin boards than hand them out to people, but we did both.

Our expectations were not very high. We hoped that after handing out a couple hundred cards that we'd get at least one person to show up. We waited anxiously on Sunday morning hoping our low expectations might be surpassed. The results: not one new person showed up! So much for growing our church through invitation.

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When is a problem a good thing? When the problem is that your church is growing too fast, you can praise God that more people are being reaching. But growth brings with it a new set of issues: how can your current facilities and programs accommodate an influx of people? And how can you convince your current members that change is not only necessary, but good.

This week we are featuring a new interactive assessment that will help you determine if it is time for your church to add another service. Charles Arn, president of Church Growth, Inc. and member of our Ask the Experts panel, offers practical questions to help you figure out if your church is ready to step out and begin planning another service.

This assessment also asks you to consider whether your people are ready for change. As great as it is to grow and expand your ministries, this can backfire if you don't prepare people for the changes.

When have you experience resistance to change? How did you help move people from resistance to supporting the church's vision?

When the media announced the passing of Steve Jobs, my twitter feed quickly filled with condolences from fans and admirers to the man they all revered as an icon. Hashtags like "#iSad" and "#thankyousteve" -- even a tiny graphic of the Apple logo -- choked the network's stream with a flood of posts coming in at nearly 10,000 tweets per second.

Among the tributes were those from evangelical church leaders who I have come to know over the years, and who spend a lot of time keeping in touch with consumer culture. For them, the gospel involves a missionary imperative to reach people in their everyday lives. They actively orient their ministries to "connect" with rhythms of mainstream culture. It was no surprise that within an hour of the announcement, these pastors and parachurch leaders had also posted their own brief, solemn tributes.

Over time I have seen how Steve Jobs became the patron saint of non-denominational church leaders who value creativity, technology and persistent vision. Jobs accomplished what few are able to do: connect with everyday lives, enrich people's aesthetics with evidence of beauty, and offer tools for exercising personal gifts and talent. Jobs had a single-minded vision for the varied media he designed, making complicated technology supremely accessible and -- more importantly -- desirable. People wanted what he had to sell. He promoted his own genius while striving to bring out the genius of others. And his dedication to his vision was a testimony to unrelenting pursuit of promoting personal standards in the service of others.

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Effective evangelism comes in many shapes and sizes. One form is strategic consumerism.

My day off was on Fridays when I was a pastor. I didn't take off on Monday because I didn't want to feel that bad on my day off.

I picked up my kids after school when they were younger. We would always go to the gas station on Friday after school. The kids could pick out a drink and a piece of candy while I pumped gas.

We went to the same gas station every week practicing strategic consumerism. I learned this from Bill Hybels and Mark Mittleburg in Becoming a Contagious Christian. The big idea is to shop at the same stores so that you can get to know the people who work there and build relationships for sharing the gospel.

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Zooming down the freeway through a major Texas city, I thought I saw a billboard that said, "Finally, a church we can believe in." The next day, heading back the other direction, I confirmed it. There was an older white couple bigger than Dallas, as they say, his arm around her shoulders, smiling down on the traffic and announcing they had finally found a church they could believe in. The church's name and logo were also big and easy to read.

This was an expensive advertisement. No doubt, the tagline came out of focus groups, surveys, and the kind of process professional consultants lead. The phrase-makers belie the assumptions underlying their church growth strategy: people are looking for a safe place to belong, a place of comfort.

The statement is also theological. It begs for exegesis. They are, of course, suggesting churches exist that people "cannot" believe in. But, "A church you can believe in" is also code for something else. "Change you can believe in," Obama's slogan, comes to mind. But based on the billboard's colors, pictures, and fonts, I inferred they are quite intentionally not about change, unless it is a reversal, a going back to the way things used to be, "when God was famous" (as a teenager put it in Christian Smith's Soul Searching).

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How can you leave a leadership position in a way that benefits those you have led? It's easier when we remember leaving is a process, not a point in time. We can be thoughtful about several steps along the way: 1) when we are thinking about leaving but aren't sure, 2) when we are actively looking for another position, and 3) when we have announced our leaving.

First of all, when you begin to think of leaving, your attitude impacts the whole organization. This will affect people even when they don't consciously realize it. When I began to consider leaving the church I had served as pastor for over a decade, more people got angry with me about a variety of issues than ever before, even though I hadn't told anyone what I was thinking.

Most leaders keep their thoughts of leaving secret. They think it will compromise leadership if they tell. "Lame duck" is a favorite phrase. And while I wouldn't recommend that you announce your thoughts via the pulpit or broadcast e-mail, you may find places to discuss it. Are there trusted leaders you could raise the question of your future with? Others may have a valuable perspective on whether you are the right leader at this time--or not. When parents keep a secret from children "for their own sake," children often sense that something is off. In the same way, when leaders keep secrets from followers, it affects the functioning of the whole organization. More openness is generally better for a group than less.

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It's that time of year...vacations are over, you're just settling back into your routine, and all the church's ministries are kicking off. We are just as excited as you are for another year of ministry opportunities...and challenges. To get the year started off right, we at BuildingChurchLeaders.com will be offering a new $1 download, available exclusively through our Facebook page each week for the next six weeks.

This week's $1 Download is What It Means to Be a Woman in Ministry. Carolyn Custis James offers wisdom on the unique call of women in ministry.

You can check out the sale here. You have to first "like" our page to take advantage of this great deal.

While I was an undergrad, I took all the photography classes my small liberal arts college offered. I took them because it helped me remain sane amidst the stress of all the studying. I found evenings in the dark room relaxing (yes, this was in ancient times before digital photography really took off).

While the process of developing and printing film no longer really applies, the image-composition ideas I learned continue to inform my work as a pastor. I remember the time my photography professor, Greg Shchrek, took me aside and told me I had to work on my printing skills. I would spend hours trying to print a negative just right, "burning" (giving more light) and "dodging" (giving less light) different parts of the image. My own eye for what makes an image "good" or "bad" was slowly being trained by my professor's master eye. After four years of toiling in the dark room, I received the ultimate compliment from him. Looking at my final project, he declared that I had made the most of the format that I was using, and that he couldn't expect any better prints or images.

While I didn't become a professional photographer, I do find myself using that well-formed eye to help communicate more effectively with those I lead. We live in an image conscious world. We constantly consume images, but most of us have not had our eye trained to make or pick good ones. We are master consumers, and while we know when an image isn't excellent, we don't always know how to create an image that communicates well. I think a leader who doesn't know how to communicate with images is significantly hindered in today's world.

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