This is an updated and expanded version of a previous article.

Let’s start with the basics: we should keep our guests in mind all the time. When they show up on the weekend, they are our honored guests (that’s why we call ’em guests, and not the V-word).

But there are strategic times during the worship service when we should especially address our guests. When we do so, we serve not only our guests, but our members and regular attendees as well. Addressing guests reminds a growing church that there are newcomers in the midst, and reminds a plateaued or declining church of our evangelistic responsibility.

Dr. Tim Keller said it like this in Center Church:

Almost every Christian, if they pay attention, will be able to sense whether a worship experience will be attractive to their non-Christian friends. They may find a particular service wonderfully edifying for them and yet know their nonbelieving neighbors would react negatively, and so they wouldn’t even consider bringing them along. They do not think they will be impressed or interested. Because this is their expectation, they do nothing about it, and a vicious cycle begins. Pastors see only Christians present, so they lack incentive to make their worship comprehensible to outsiders. But since they fail to make the necessary changes to adapt and contextualize, outsiders never come. The pastors continue to respond to the exclusively Christian audience that gathers, and the cycle continues. Therefore, the best way to get Christians to bring non-Christians to a worship service is to worship as if there are dozens of skeptical onlookers. If we worship as if they are there, eventually they will be.

As you plan your weekly worship service, you should plan with your guests in mind. Specifically, you should plan specific times to address your guests from the stage. I don’t mean that you should say every single thing every single weekend. To do so would be repetitive, formulaic, and boring. But I do think you need to have these in a regular rotation.

Here are 9 scenarios and mini scripts to help you do that:

1. At the start of the service

Within the first five minutes – either before or after an opening song – someone should deliver a welcome. Most all churches do that, but not all churches do it with an eye towards the first-time guest. So welcome them. Let them know you’ve planned the service with them in mind, and you’re glad they showed up. 

“Some of you may be with us for the very first time. We want you to know that we’re especially glad you’re here. We’re grateful that you’ve trusted us with your time, and our prayer for you is that this service will help you see and experience the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.”

2. As you worship

Can I say the quiet part out loud and get in trouble with worship pastors everywhere? Singing in public is odd. Unless you’re a teenage girl at a Taylor Swift concert, a character in a Broadway musical, or that one off-key co-worker that everyone secretly wishes would get laryngitis, few of us break into song in front of others. And yet every weekend, we ask large groups of people to sing many songs in a row. For our first-timers, that can feel odd. The songs are likely unfamiliar. And the whole experience can be unsettling. So telling the why matters.

“You might wonder why we sing when we gather. It’s because we’re commanded to throughout scripture. Psalm 100 tells us to come into his presence with singing. Ephesians 5 reminds believers to speak to one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. When we sing, we are telling the story of Jesus, reminding ourselves and others of his great love for us.”

3. During corporate prayer time

At our church, we have a regular rhythm of breaking into smaller groups of two and three people to pray for specific needs. Again, quiet part out loud: this can be terrifying for someone new to the church. On the other hand, we are called to pray with and for one another, so the local church doesn’t get a pass, even when guests are present. On the other other hand, we always give our guests the chance to opt out.

“In a moment we’re going to gather in smaller groups all around this room and pray together for the needs I just mentioned, and you can see the bullet points on the screen. If you’re new, you’re welcome to join in. But if praying with others makes you uncomfortable, you can simply drop your head and that’s our universal symbol to leave you alone.”

4. During the sermon

Your preaching shouldn’t be exclusively focused on the guests in your midst, neither should it be exclusive to the seasoned saints among you. So every weekend in every sermon, give context. Provide background. Catch them up on the previous three messages in the series-in-progress that they missed. And take time to address the common doubts, questions, and “so what?” moments that your guests are certainly having. There are any number of ways that you can do this, but this statement covers a lot of ground:

“If you’re new to the idea of Christianity, this [passage / point / statement] can be confusing. Here’s the context in which the author was writing. Here’s who he was writing it to. And here’s how that informs and directs the life of the Christian today.”

5. Prior to communion

Whether your church offers communion weekly or quarterly or anywhere in between, you have a responsibility to “fence the table” appropriately and explain the significance of the event. 

“This church offers many things that are wide open to you. But if you’re here today and you’re not yet a believer, the Bible is clear that this one act of worship is not yet intended for you. As the elements come by, we respectfully ask that you let them pass you, and rather use this time to reflect on the sacrifice that Jesus made for you.”

6. Prior to baptisms

If anything is more confusing to an outsider than the Christian verbiage of “eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus,” it’s putting a fully-clothed person under the water while people cheer. (I mean, think about that.) So we explain what’s happening and why. [Related post: Explain Yourself]

“Baptism is an outward sign of the inward work that Christ has completed for us, and the way an individual publicly identifies themselves as a believer in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The act of baptism is a picture of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, as well as our own death to sin and resurrection to new life.”

7. Prior to the offering

Nothing ruffles a newcomer’s fur quite like the money bucket coming around. So give ’em a pass before it’s passed. Let your guests know that the service isn’t about what they should give, but what they can receive. 

“The offering is a time for the people of God to give joyously to the mission of God. If you’re a guest, we don’t want you to feel compelled to give in any way, we’re just glad that you’re here. In fact, we have a gift for you at the first-time guest tent, and we’d encourage you to stop by as you leave.”

8. At the end

As you’re dismissing the service, remind guests of an appropriate next step. For your church, that might mean a stop by the welcome center, Next Steps table, first-time guest tent, whatever you call the place where people can connect. We mention the tent specifically a couple of times during the service. And whenever we remind guests of that opportunity as a final step, we always see an uptick in those that drop by. 

“Maybe you saw the First Time Guest Tent when you entered. That’s set up especially for you. We have a gift there for you and would love the opportunity to get to know you.”

9. Any time something is unclear

We covered baptism and communion, but there are so many other areas where our insider language and curse of knowledge needs a little explaining: missionary commissioning. Congregational votes. Church business meetings. Small groups. Acronyms like VBS or SBC. Responsive readings. Who’s who on stage. “Spurgeon,” “Keller,” “Paul,” or any other one-named individual that someone may not know.

When you begin to watch and listen to your service through the eyes and ears of someone new to your church, new to the Church, and new to Christianity, you’re going to uncover all sorts of “Aha” moments where clarity is kind. Which of these nine areas can you start to examine – and explain – this weekend?

Related posts:

• [Series] Guest Services from the Stage
• 10 Ways Your “Curse of Knowledge” is Impacting Your Guests (part 1)
• 10 Ways Your “Curse of Knowledge” is Impacting Your Guests (part 2)
• Five Questions Your First-Time Guests Are Asking

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Every so often we dip our toes into a series called Danny Recommends:, posts that tip you off to the stuff that I…you know. The recommendations might be products for use in your ministry, resources that will help you develop leaders around you, or just fun stuff that you need. Want. Whatever.

My wife and I have hit that age and stage of life where we do less “Let me surprise you with the gift I think you want” and more “Hey I just ordered something and that’s what you’re giving me for Christmas / my birthday / whatever.” (Marriage pro-tip: romantic? Nope. Practical? You betcha.)

Anyway, during last year’s lead-up to Christmas, I set my eyes on a new Bible. And “set my eyes” is a highly-appropriate term, because the eyes – well, they ain’t what they used to be. I needed (clears throat, wipes a single tear) a large print Bible, which – if we are true biblicists – is the way Paul meant all Bibles to be written.

And so began the search, which included deep dives into online reviews, bookstore visits, stealing borrowing from friends’ bookshelves, and seeking out personal recommendations. And now, I can finally – heartily! – recommend to you the ESV Preaching Bible.

I’ve now gotten nearly ten months of use out of it. It’s a daily-grab resource for me. Here’s why I love it, and think you will too:

Translation

I was introduced to the English Standard Version in my second year of seminary. It quickly became my favorite translation, and – while I will occasionally sub in other translations just for variety in my devotional time – I always come back home to the ESV.

Aesthetic quality

I’ve also hit the age where I just really appreciate a well-crafted book. I knew the kind of Bible I was looking for wouldn’t necessarily be cheap, because I wanted it to be high-quality enough to last (more on that in a moment.)

The goatskin leather cover just seems to get prettier and more supple the more I use it. The design is simply gorgeous. And while I was first thrown off by the “Preaching Bible” moniker (because I planned to use it for personal devotions, not preaching), these are the specific features that won me over:

• 10-point font. Still not quite as large as I’d like it some days, but good enough (and keeps this particular Bible weighing slightly less than a sack of potatoes).
  
  
• Single-column format. I’m not sure where the double column came from or why we lived with it for so long, but man I love a single-column.
  
  
• Minimal footnotes. I am a big fan of my ESV Study Bible that I’ve had for years, but this was not designed to be that. There are just enough to be helpful without taking over the page. I will typically use my Preaching Bible to kick off my study time, and then open my ESV app (also highly recommend) to supplement with Study Bible notes and nearly 20 other resources in that app’s library.
  
  
• Wide(ish) margins. When it comes to personal Bible study, I’m a consummate underliner, but I’m not a great note-taker. However, I wanted to be. That’s why a wide margin was important in my search. This one fits that bill, and the margins are wide enough that I can jot down thoughts and insights to my heart’s content. (And while I’ve never found a Bible that completely prevents bleed through of hand-written notes, these pages do an okay job, and I use my favorite pen to take those notes.)

Durability

Let’s circle back to both the aesthetic quality and the “I’ve hit that age” theming of this post: I’ve hit the age where things I can pass along really mean something to me. Some of my most prized possessions are Bibles that were used and loved by my Mom and Dad: reading their notes and scribbles are an incomparable treasure. I wanted a physical Bible which would outlast me and might play the same role in the lives of my kids and grandkids.

If you’ve hit that age where you like to pick out your own Christmas gift, this might be something you want at the top of your list.

Order the ESV Preaching Bible

See all posts in the Danny Recommends series.

Disclaimer: unless specifically noted otherwise, the books and resources I recommend are ones I’ve purchased, benefited from, and believe will benefit you as well. If you buy through one of the Amazon links on this site, I may receive a small affiliate commission at no additional cost to you. If that bugs you, feel free to bypass my link and buy from the vendor of your choice.

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In a recent article I talked about how I use (or don’t use) AI in my writing process. As stupidly-long as that article was (in the bots’ defense, they would’ve probably cut words, had I let ’em), there’s an entire other side of the AI sandbox that I’ve been playing in (or avoiding) over the last year, and that’s speaking and teaching.

I would classify “speaking and teaching” as anything that involves me (or a writing project with application points) being in front of a group of people: leading a training, preaching a funeral, running a breakout at a conference…all of those things and more would fall under that category.

How I don’t / won’t use AI in speaking and teaching is nearly identical to how I don’t / won’t use it in writing. I’m not going to generate a talk from scratch. I’m not going to re-work someone else’s work. I believe that speaking – like writing – comes from a very personal part of a creator’s soul, and outsourcing that seems like a step too far to me.

AI and the speaking / teaching process: how I use it

As I’ve toyed with the new tools, there have been a few use-cases that have been outrageously helpful. Before I list them, here’s an overarching principle: I will only use AI to assist in re-shaping material that I’ve already created, not to build something out of nothing. (This principle will make more sense as I go.)

Further, I have tried to make it a regular habit to notate any document that got an assist from AI-shaping. Even if I’m the only one who ever sees that note, it at least gives me a record and a paper trail on how I used other tools to create that work.

Here’s are my use-case scenarios:

• Voice transcriber. I have the blessing – or potentially curse – that my writing voice and my speaking voice are nearly one and the same. I speak how I write and write how I speak. For that reason, utilizing a transcription tool to “talk out a talk” and let the app do all of the writing has been a massive time-saver. (I’ll admit that ChatGPT is pretty horrific at this…if any of you tech nerds have solutions, I’m all ears.)

• Transforming articles into talks. I’ve been occasionally successful at taking pre-existing articles from this site and asking ChatGPT to rework them into a talk, suggesting the proper order and transition statements. I say occasionally, because this hasn’t worked 95% of the time, and it’s proven easier to do the work myself. My prompt is always “Don’t change any of my words, just rearrange paragraphs and articles in a way that would make sense in a speech.” …and then Chat goes on to change all of my words, in which case I go Yosemite Sam on its robotic rear end. Because this violates my overarching principle, it’s a process that simply hasn’t worked for me.

• Transforming articles into podcast interviews. This was my first – and most mind-blowing – use of AI in this realm. A co-worker and I were asked to put together a limited-run podcast-style interview for our staff on the topic of guest services. The staffer who asked us to do it had already selected articles from this site that he thought would be a good fit. After over-thinking it for a few days, I plugged the articles into ChatGPT, asked it to change it to a podcast style, and boom – the end result was a near-perfect preservation of the article content, but in a conversational Q&A style.

• Creating application guides out of talks. This has been another big time-saver for me. An organization asked me to create some training videos for church staff members and volunteers, and provide an application guide for each. The first part was easy enough. The second was doable, but one of those time-sucking annoyances that I allowed the machines to play around with. A few prompts produced one and two page documents that walked participants through the implementation of what they just heard.

In full disclosure, there’s one more use-case that violates the principle I outlined above. This year my team has been going through a book that has any number of study guides available online. I used those guides and the material in the book to create assessment guides and a series of brief discussion and teaching points for us to cover in meetings. Creating something out of nothing, not based on my work? Yes. Time saver? Also yes.

ChatGPT as a formula-filler

I’m putting this use-case in its own little category, because this one will require a bit of explanation.

I am occasionally asked to officiate a funeral for someone I don’t know at all or don’t know well. In those situations, I have a fairly standard formula that I use: a eulogy with stories about the person that gradually transitions into a gospel message.

Several months ago, I decided to experiment with the first half of that formula to see how AI would handle it. I plugged in several examples of previous funerals, plus facts and stories I’d gathered from meeting with the family, and the end result was a first-half that got me 80% of the way to my standard in a fraction of the time. (I then spent some time cleaning it up and making it right.)

To be clear: my research. My gathering of stories and anecdotes. My typical “formula” for the first half. But ChatGPT took my work and stitched it all together.

And yet…if I’m honest, something about that, even with the guardrails and guidelines, felt like it was cheating an otherwise-serious and sacred process. So will this particular experience become a regular occurrence? My gut is still unsettled, but I’m leaning “no,” even as a time saver. That said, it was interesting experiment to see how a process that is already a formula could be shortened with a little help.

The bottom line

To repeat the last post: early-2025 Danny is surprised at how late-2026 Danny has incorporated AI into the speaking and teaching process. Are there time-saving tools? Certainly. But I stand by the fact that speaking to an audience or teaching a group comes from a personal part of the creative soul. There are some great uses of AI that saves time and energy and sanity. There are also uses that – for me – cross a line that erodes my own creativity and hands the process over.

Those lines are my lines, not necessarily yours. I recognize that different people will draw different lines. (And ironically, just a few hours after I drafted this post, The Gospel Coalition released their own guidelines for AI and writing.)

But I’m curious: how do you use AI in speaking and teaching?

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Somewhat-long-time readers know my love for Will Guidara’s Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect. It released in 2022, and it was one of my favorite books I read that year. (See the Top Ten Quotes post here.)

When Guidara announced Unreasonable Hospitality: The Field Guide, well, of course I pre-ordered it. If Unreasonable Hospitality was the why, The Field Guide is the what and how. The design of this book is inventive, playful, and fun: it’s set up like an extra-thick Moleskine notebook, with full-color interior and lots of room to take notes, reflect, and develop an action plan. If you’ve read the first, don’t hesitate to purchase the second. It’s an excellent companion piece to a fantastic book.

Here are my top ten favorite quotes:

• Hospitality…is how I make you feel.

• There’s a fine line between courage and recklessness.

• The best way to respect and reward the A players on your team is to surround them with other A players.

• Excellence first, then hospitality.

• Your passion is contagious. High energy begets high energy – it’s cool to care. Don’t dim your flame to match those around you.

• Most people react to tension in one of two ways: They back away and avoid the awkward interaction entirely, or they try to bulldoze the other person into agreeing with them. 

• Hospitality really is the most selfish pleasure.

• If praise is affirmation, criticism is investment.

• A well-managed mistake can strengthen the bond between you and your customer.

• You determine when your customer’s experience starts and ends.

Order Unreasonable Hospitality: The Field Guide

See all posts in the Top Ten Quotes series.

Disclaimer: unless specifically noted otherwise, the books and resources I recommend are ones I’ve purchased, benefited from, and believe will benefit you as well. If you buy through one of the Amazon links on this site, I may receive a small affiliate commission at no additional cost to you. If that bugs you, feel free to bypass my link and buy from the vendor of your choice.

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I am what you’d call a late adopter to the AI movement. My large language model of choice is ChatGPT, and I only first started using it in spring 2025 as I was preparing for an overseas trip. The ability to plug in agendas and airports and sightseeing options proved to be invaluable, and that trip was a good gateway experiment into daily use-case scenarios.

Fast forward to today. I’ve listened to and read multiple pastors, authors, and armchair writers talk about their use of ChatGPT. Interestingly enough, just a day or two after I initially drafted this post, The Gospel Coalition published their own guidelines on AI and writing, which set off a mini firestorm on Christian Twitter (but let’s be honest: what doesn’t set off a mini firestorm on Christian Twitter?).

For me and AI (AI and I?) I use it daily to craft formulas for spreadsheets, shape agendas for meetings, and troubleshoot this thing we call adulthood. Example: even this paragraph was interrupted by asking about something weird my washing machine is doing.

But for all the help that AI offers in certain realms, I still think there is something unique about how we should use it in the creative process – in my case, the writing process (in a future post, I’ll talk about how I use it – or don’t – in speaking and teaching, which carries slightly different rules for me).

Because exactly zero people have asked, I thought it might be helpful to outline the way I’ve decided I will – and will not – use it. But first…

…let’s remember not to be too self-righteous about AI.

When tools like ChatGPT first galloped onto the scene, I indignantly thought it would destroy the creative process as we know it. As in, no author worth his or her salt will shoulder-tap a robot to do this work.

But then I remembered that I’ve been dependent on someone else’s intelligence for years: any time I did a Google search for an article, any time I used thesaurus.com to find just the right word, any time I turned to the internet overlords to shave a few minutes off of book-lookup research time … maybe I’m missing something, but shouldn’t we view that as at least assisted intelligence? (And don’t get me started on the World Book Encyclopedias of my childhood…many a middle school research paper was saved by those tree-killing devices.)

I get it: World Book and Google didn’t actually have the ability to do the work for me, to mimic my voice and writing style, or to converse until the finished product was just right. But those were still research tools that assisted in making my final product better than it would’ve been on my own.

AI and the writing process: how I use it

There are a few specific ways that ChatGPT (and I would assume future tools not yet in my tool belt) have proven helpful in my writing process. 97% of these have to do with the process before and after the writing, not the writing itself. Some of the ways that I am currently using it:

• Identifying topical gaps. If my count is correct (using the assisted intelligence of my master index built in Google Sheets, mind you), this is post #2,838 since this site’s inception over 18 years ago. That’s a lot of time to write on a lot of topics, forget about certain articles, and overlook certain subjects that would be a good fit for this site and my typical readership. So from time to time, I’ll prompt ChatGPT to search my site for a specific topic such as parking or volunteer culture, and tell me micro-niche areas that I might have missed. That question will usually yield a handful of ideas. Many I’ll trash from the jump, but a few tickle my fancy, and I’ll build them out into an actual article.

• Thematic tie-ins. Over the years, I’ve tried to link smaller ideas in a stand-alone article to a deeper dive into the archives. With 2,800+ posts, it has proven increasingly difficult to remember that this one sentence echoes an article from 2016 (some might say that is a blessing). But Chat can often identify that this A would connect nicely to that B. (I say “often” … it gets it wrong about 80% of the time. But that 20% is pretty helpful.)

• Generating photos and graphics. One of the ways that ChatGPT has proven itself invaluable is by acting as my own personal graphic designer. Posts like this one were punched up with a visual breakdown of a concept, and this post needed a header photo that my normal stock photo site just didn’t provide. Plus, Chat is great at taking a photo and resizing it to fit what I need, no Photoshop skills necessary.

• Social media post generation. I will very occasionally take an article, dump it into ChatGPT, and ask it to come up with a variety of posts for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. It’s a rare use – and I typically end up rewriting it anyway because it doesn’t capture my voice – but every once in a while it gets it right.

• Article review and polish. Once I’ve written an article and personally, manually proofed it, I will usually pass it along to ChatGPT for another look. That will identify grammatical errors, sentence structure, and the occasional re-shaping of a sentence or two that makes it pop a little better. It’s like having an editor to say “Here’s what I think you’re trying to say, and here’s how you could say it better.” But of course, turning your work over to a bot carries some dangers, which leads me to…

AI and the writing process: how I don’t / won’t use it

There’s still some indignant part of my creative soul that thinks “This will destroy the creative process as we know it.” There are certain things I read – be it news articles, blog posts, or social media screeds – that just scream that an author leaned a little too heavily on AI to help them. I don’t want to be guilty of outsourcing my work to a ghostwriter, artificial or otherwise. So there are a few self-commitments I’ve made in how I refuse to use it:

• Going any further than an idea prompt. I mentioned above that ChatGPT helps me identify topical gaps, and will often highlight a few ideas and concepts for potential articles. But I believe that the fleshing out of that article, the major points, the applications … all of that should be my own work.

• Generating a written work from scratch. This is a huge nope for me, as I hope it would be for any writer. In my mind, this is the first step in an incredibly slippery slope. Doing this once makes it all too easy to do it again. Writers are always one stressed-out deadline away from cheating the process. And ultimately, this particular process cheats both the writer and the reader.

• Re-writing someone else’s work. This is called plagiarism, kids.

• To reshape my voice. Like it or not, hate it or not, I’ve developed somewhat of a writing voice over the years. Chat has often tried to remove the soul of an article by removing some tiny irrelevant point or insane tangential aside from a paragraph. Again, hate it or not, insane tangential asides are what I’m good at (or so the insane tangential voices in my head tell me). And while I’m on this topic, I should say that I’m certainly not a fan of my ChatGPT assistant saying weird things like “I was thinking about this on my walk, and that line is very ‘Danny.’ You should keep it.” Stop being creepy, bot.

The bottom line

I’ll make a confession here: early-2025 Danny is surprised at how late-2026 Danny has incorporated AI into his writing process. And who knows? Late-2026 Danny may be surprised by what mid-2028 or early-2034 Danny comes up with as a helpful assist. (I’ll do my best to update this article with any major new revelations.)

I have found AI tools to be helpful bookends: occasional assistance on the front end, and regular maintenance on the back end. But like a written product itself, what’s in the middle should be the work of a human. In this case, this particular human.

I want you to trust that what you read on this site – aside from the occasional paragraph restructure or sentence tweak – is my voice. And when I do use AI in a more elevated way, like graphic generation or something beyond a minor grammatical adjustment – I’ll disclose that.

In a future post, I’ll return to this topic and specifically talk about how I use AI in speaking and teaching. Until then, if you use AI in your creative process, I’d like to hear from you about what is helpful. But be truthful: the bots are listening.

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This is the next installment in our ongoing “Large Church” series, which looks at guest services through the lens of the larger congregation: those with an average attendance of 800 or more. While any church can deal with these issues, they seem to especially be true of larger churches.

See the entire series here.

Take out a pen and paper, kids, you’re gonna want to take some notes on the following earth-shattering insight:

Larger churches have larger staff teams.

(That’s as earth-shattering as it gets with a free website. This ain’t Patreon.)

Anyway. Larger churches have larger staff teams. And while larger staff teams don’t necessarily have more frequent turnover, there’s turnover, nonetheless. And when leading a staff team feels like – as my pastor puts it – hugging a parade – that’s where we begin to see the blessings and burden of organizational memory.

Organizational memory is an accumulated set of historical knowledge which is used to guide present decisions. In the business world, this can look like minutes from the executive team’s monthly meetings, notes from shareholder calls, even archives of marketing campaigns. In the church world, I’ve found that organizational memory tends to be more unwritten than written, an assumed code of “the way things are done around here.”

But like all things, there are pros and cons of organizational memory. Let’s explore how OM can serve as both an oracle and an obstacle.

Organizational memory as an oracle:

I just checked my notes from my somewhat-sheltered childhood, and I’m as uneasy using the word “oracle” (Webster: “a person (such as a priestess of ancient Greece) through whom a deity is believed to speak“) as I am reading Harry Potter or saying “gosh” when we all know that’s a gateway word to violating the third commandment.

But let me use oracle in the most charitable sense, and draw on Webster’s secondary definition: a person giving wise or authoritative decisions or opinions.

I have two friends on our team who have a combined 75 years of ministry experience, just on our staff. That is three-quarters of a century of learned skills, lived experiences, and time-tested wisdom within our organization. They’ve seen some stuff. They saw the sausage made. They’ve gone through the highs and lows and lived to tell the tale.

These men are oracles. When they speak, we do well to listen. When they caution, we do well to ask why. They’ve been in the ditches we’re often heading towards, and they can keep us on the path. I encourage our younger and newer staff members to schedule lunch with one of these guys, ask them the question, “What have you learned during your time here?” and then shut up and take notes.

Your oracle may not have that kind of mileage. Your longest-tenured staff member might not have been around quite that long. But you certainly have a church member who has. You certainly have access to an accumulated set of knowledge that can keep you out of the ditches, on the path, and give you understanding on the historical threads that has made your church into what it is today.

Organizational memory as an obstacle:

We know that organizational memory isn’t always used as a helpful tool, but as a manipulative weapon. We’ve all heard “It’s never been done that way before.” We’ve all felt “That just won’t fly here.”

Usually those statements and sentiments are built on organizational memory: that was tried back in the 70s and failed. That same thing was attempted by your predecessor. If you do this, people aren’t gonna like it.

To be clear, there’s something to be said about protecting your church’s vision and being wary of alternate agendas. Similarly, I think “We’ve never done it that way before” can be a slippery slope and an unnecessary hoop to jump through.

What I appreciate about my friends I mentioned above is their humility in the midst of our history: sure, they’ll give caution, but they’ll consider current context. Of course, they’ll talk about how this idea crashed and burned in the past, but will acknowledge that a tweak here and an adjustment there might be the thing to make it work this time around.

In other words, they don’t let their accumulated wisdom serve as the de facto veto arm of our organization. It’s a tool in the tool belt, it’s not the access code to the workshop.

No matter the size of your church or the longevity of your staff, organizational memory is a real force to reckon with. So today, ask yourself one of the following questions, depending on whether you’re an oracle or you’re on the receiving end. Oracles have to ask “Am I stewarding our history with humility?” Receivers of the oracle must ask “Am I interpreting this as wisdom rather than law?“

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I am what you would call an intermittent walker.

To be clear, I don’t mean that I walk for 15 feet, rest for 12 minutes, and then walk another 20. No, I’m more the guy who will decide one evening “I’m gonna walk tonight.” then crank out three miles. Then do it again every night for eleven weeks. Then the dead heat of summer encroaches and stepping outside in North Carolina feels a lot like taking up residence in a used gym sock and who really needs this active lifestyle anyway and besides that my Cheetos have never betrayed me with crippling humidity.

Anyway.

Whenever I do walk, I use a walking app that will track my route, distance, speed, and estimated calories burned (farewell, low humidity Cheetos!). And every fifteen minutes or so, a polite lady will interrupt my audiobook to whisper a few crucial facts into my ear: how far I’ve walked, how long it’s taken, and what my pace is. It’s a low-friction way to stay informed of my progress, but a high-friction way to raise my hackles by interrupting Andy Serkis just when he was getting to the good part of The Fellowship of the Ring.

But here’s what my polite in-ear walking companion doesn’t do: she doesn’t tell me where to go. She simply tells me how far I’ve gone and and how long it’s taken me to get there. And if my mile takes 16 minutes one night when it normally takes 15, that serves as a gentle reminder to pick up the pace.

Editor’s note: speaking of gentle reminders to pick up the pace, your point is…?

Here’s the difference between my walks and your church’s guests: your church knows the ideal pathway. Your guests don’t. I know my neighborhood. I know that taking a right out of my driveway takes me to The Hill of Wheezing™. I know that a left and another left takes me down a quiet, winding road with the occasional friendly deer. (I almost exclusively choose to turn left.)

In the church world, I think we’re too often guilty of offering our guests a walking app when what they really need is something like Google Maps.

Your guests may know what they’re looking for, but they don’t know how to get there. That’s your job. Define the route. Remove unnecessary turns. Make the next step obvious.

But here’s a caution: while you should define the pathway, they should set the pace. It’s okay to have a sixteen step process between a first visit and full membership. It’s even okay to cheerlead them along and nudge them towards completion. But you let them go at their own speed, in their own time, at their own comfort level.

You own the pathway. Let them own the pace.

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If you’re a person who loves details…who loves crossing every t and dotting every i…who needs a standard operating procedures manual just to get out the door in the morning…

Well, welcome to the circle. My name is Danny. And I’m a details nerd.

There’s only one problem with people like us (actually there are so many problems with people like us, but let’s focus on one):

More detail does not always mean more simplicity.

Think about it: sometimes – not for lack of trying – we have too few details. Or we overthink it and gather way too many details. The details we have don’t answer enough questions, and the details we need are the ones we don’t have.

Patrick Lencioni offers a helpful corrective in The Five Temptations of a CEO:

…make clarity more important than accuracy.

Those of us who like details like to have all of the details. We don’t like to be caught off guard. But those of us in leadership know that a clear decision is often better than a delayed decision. Lencioni goes on to say:

Remember that your people will learn more if you take decisive action than if you always wait for more information.

In one of my very first annual reviews in this role, my then-supervisor gave me a critique that I’ve pretty much always agreed with and pretty much never forgotten:

Your desire for perfection always leads to procrastination.

Ouch.

He was right. I do often wait to pull the trigger because I want to make sure I have all the facts.

But what if we act, and then new details emerge and new decisions are needed? One last word from Lencioni:

…if the decisions you make in the spirit of creating clarity turn out to be wrong when more information becomes available, change plans and explain why. The only real cost to you of being wrong is loss of pride. The cost to your company [or church, or organization, or family] of not taking the risk of being wrong is paralysis.

What decision are you delaying because you’re chasing one more detail?

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In leadership, in parenting, in marriage, in friendship, we have an annoying tendency to jump to conclusions.

(Well, I have an annoying tendency to do that. I’m sure you’re just fine. Enjoy sitting back and judging me over the next few paragraphs.)

Here’s how the jump usually works: we observe, and then we interpret.

They were late for the meeting. They’re not committed to this team.

They didn’t see the first-time guest walk past. They don’t get the vision.

They left in the middle of the service. They’re really inconsiderate of others around them.

His text ended with a period rather than an exclamation point, and there was no emoji. He’s mad. Why is he mad? Didn’t he like the meme I just sent? That meme he sent last week didn’t even make sense. Who is he to grade my humor? This friendship is doomed.

Visually, it looks a lot like this:

But there’s a crucial step we miss when we make the Olympic-size long jump from observation to interpretation. Somewhere in midair, we begin making decisions on someone else’s behalf. We attribute meaning that may or may not be true. We assign a label or blame where none is deserved.

So rather than observation -> interpretation, what if we tried something like this:

The observation -> conversation -> interpretation track is a better space to live in, because the conversation reveals things that our assumptions do not: maybe they were late because their kid’s carpool line was backed up. Maybe they already talked to the first-time guest, or knew that the previous six volunteers had done so. Maybe he thought the meme was hilarious, but he was driving and Siri decided a period was more appropriate.

(A very important side note here: not all of our observations deserve a conversation. Maybe we’re running scripts in our head that – given four extra seconds of thinking about them – we realize have no real merit and aren’t worth pursuing. We can make the situation worse by bringing up something that was not a deal, but by bringing it up we make it a deal. Rather, we can choose to make the charitable assumption, give grace for instances, and save the conversations for patterns.)

In leadership, in parenting, in marriage, in friendship, we should be quick to observe. Observation helps us to see those right in front of us. It helps us to notice the things that are worthy of celebrating, worthy of slowing down for, worthy of a occasional and gentle course correction.

But in leadership, in parenting, in marriage, in friendship, we should be slow to interpret. We dare not engage the fundamental attribution error in haste, lest we erode the trust of those we lead, those we parent, those we love.

Today, where do you need to have a conversation before you make an interpretation? Maybe more importantly, where do you need to forsake a conversation with others, and have one with yourself? Where do you need to talk yourself off of an unnecessary ledge?

Thanks to my friend Kyle Wilkinson for the leadership lesson that inspired this post!

header photo credit; article images created with the assistance of ChatGPT.

If you live in multi-site world, the chances are good that you’re either part of the central resourcing team (aka central staff), or you work with such a creature.

As a central staff member / central ministry head for well over a decade now, I’ve come to realize that every day when I head out to the office, I have the choice of four hats I can put on.

Editor’s note: are we going to talk about the fact that you were always in the 99th percentile of skull circumference, and in your entire life you’ve never found more than one hat that actually fits that ginormous noggin?

Let’s ignore the cap size debacle for a moment. As I was saying…

There are four caps that a central team member will choose from:

1. Creator

As a central staffer, you are primarily a resource hub. You likely are responsible for the DNA of your ministry. You might have been the original practitioner before your church went multi-site. And so there is a ton of creation that comes along with the job: you create policies. Curriculum. Training options. Documentation. Your goal is lots of options – lots of resources – that your campus counterparts can unbox and use without having to reinvent the wheel.

2. Broker

I’ve found that a lot of central resourcing staffers are what the business world would call middle managers. We usually get to call the shots on the culture and practice of the teams we lead, but we answer to other teams higher up the totem pole: steering teams, lead pastors, directional elders, etc. And when you’re a middle manager, from time to time you’ll find yourself in the following scenario:

Big vision handed down by the executive team … actual execution of the vision by front-line staff members.

And that “…” is you: right in the middle. So your hat of the day may be that of broker: taking vision and strategy and trying to get the two to play nice together.

3. Messenger

Similar to broker is that of messenger. But where brokers tend to take a fairly doable vision and create action steps out of it, messengers sometimes have to take a task that’s not going to be popular, and pass it along to their campus counterparts. I’ve never ever ever had to do this, mind you. But on the off chance that I have (and I absolutely have), being the messenger is rarely fun. Sometimes you have to take a big vision that may take you in a different direction, might change the wildly important goal of the season, might ruffle a few feathers, and you have to lead your team to do something that even you are not necessarily excited about. (Again: has never happened to me except when it has.)

4. Collaborator

But there’s a fourth hat that you dare not forget. And this should be the hat that you attempt to put on every time you go into a meeting with your steering team, your supervisor, or your campus comrades-in-arms. You might not always be able to be a collaborator, but if you can continually champion the spirit of collaboration, it helps the occasional donning of the other three hats go over a little better.

The goal of collaboration is early and often: don’t say you’re collaborating if you’ve already made the decision. Don’t decide to collaborate if you’ve already fully created something you expect to be rolled out. Get your campus directors in a room. Involve some high-capacity volunteers. Let them ideate and iterate right alongside you. Figure out what works and what doesn’t on the front lines.

Tomorrow, as you’re walking out the door or into a meeting, ask yourself one question: which hat does this moment require?

Header image created by AI.