Today, I’m proud to announce a brand new lineup of coaching opportunities. If you would like to learn more about connecting up with me for an evaluation and estimate, don’t hesitate to give me a call at 585-582-2790 or by email at whedlund@transformingleader.org. My rates are specifically priced to accommodate small to mid-sized churches. Additionally, if your church is part of the Elim Fellowship Network of Affiliated Churches you will receive a special discount.

Church Health & Strategic Coaching

The most popular coaching I provide to churches has to do with church health and strategic planning. Church Health & Strategic Coaching takes place in three phases and starts with a 6 month commitment. Most churches choose to participate for 12-18 months in the end.

PHASE 1: Information Gathering
In this phase I will spend time interviewing the key leader(s) of the organization, will review the website and other materials and attend a Sunday service as a “mystery guest”, if applicable.

PHASE 2: Church Health Analysis
In 1-2 sessions I will roll out a general church health analysis of your church, including my recommendations on the primary areas of focus for the duration of the coaching experience. You will make the final call on what areas you would like me to provide strength and support to. I will utilize that information to develop a strategic plan for us to follow together.

PHASE 3: Ongoing Coaching
The remaining coaching sessions will focus on the areas identified in Phase 2. I will offer ongoing strategies for each area of focus as well as accountability with the monthly goals we identify. When appropriate, I will also meet with key leaders in the church to offer supportive teachings to supplement the strategic plans.

Guest Friendly Coaching

When it comes to church strategies and systems, the area of guest friendliness is one of the most important to me, personally. I believe a guest friendly culture and environment will facilitate outreach and evangelism in your community. People need the Lord and I am hopeful they will find them at your church. The problem is that many guests don’t stay long enough to find Him. I have helped many churches strengthen their Guest Friendly strategy and would be very happy to do so for you as well. Guest Friendly Coaching will require a 6 month minimum commitment. After an initial evaluation, I will give some instructions and assign tasks to strengthen this area in your church. Each month we will meet and evaluate your progress and troubleshoot barriers you face together.

Hosting Exceptional Services Coaching

For most churches, the Sunday morning experience is the front door for biblical discipleship for the congregation and community. Supplemental discipleship will take place via classes, small groups, and events, but those will not necessary provide a regular spiritual diet to many of your attendees like the morning service does. So it’s critical that every church hosts exceptional Sunday services every single week. The methods and strategies to prepare for the message, worship, announcements, offering and how to pull it all together will decide whether the services are just ‘good’ or ‘great. My primary responsibility as Executive Pastor at Elim Gospel Church was to strengthen the Sunday morning experience. Since then I have been hired to assist in running conferences and provide coaching to churches who struggle in this area. I believe I can help your church excel in this area as well. Hosting Exceptional Services Coaching will require a 6 month minimum commitment. After an initial evaluation, I will give some instructions and assign tasks to strengthen this area in your church. Each month we will meet and evaluate your progress and troubleshoot barriers you face together.

Leadership Coaching

Leadership Coaching is designed specifically for the primary pastor/director of the organization, or for key leaders within the organization. The focus of leadership coaching will be on strengthening the overall leadership orientation of the individual. After an initial evaluation & questionnaire, we will choose 2 or 3 specific leadership characteristics or skills that need to be developed and focus on them for the duration of the coaching experience. The duration and frequency of coaching sessions will be unique to each individual.

Productivity Coaching

I’ve received a lot of requests, of late, to provide coaching in the area of time-management and productivity. This is certainly an area of strength for me and I know I can help just about any person become more efficient and productive in their work. If you or someone on your team struggles to get things done, has difficulties with priorities and tasks or simply is overwhelmed a lot with the workload, I recommend you consider letting me help. After an initial evaluation, I will give some basic instruction and assign tasks to strengthen time and project management systems. The duration and frequency of coaching sessions will be unique to each individual.

Website Coaching

I believe it’s super important that churches who want to reach the younger generations host a welcoming, good looking website. For most young to middle aged adults, the website represents the first visit to and their first impression of the church . Unfortunately, for many churches, their website is either non-existent or very inadequate for attracting the community. I would be very happy to provide feedback and input regarding what to do with your website. Whether it needs a face-lift, an overhaul or a funeral, I believe I can guide your team towards a final product that you will be proud to send both your church attendees and the community to. Note: I am not offering to create or design your website, though I could potentially do that. I will most likely give your team access to the resources or people they need to get your website up and running effectively. After an initial evaluation, I will give my overall evaluation of your website and recommendations on improving it. The duration and frequency of coaching sessions will likely be limited to two or three sessions, unless you would like more ongoing feedback and accountability along the way.

Pulpit Feedback

Communication & presentation are very important to me. I am continually reading and studying about how I might improve in those areas. I should be. There isn’t a week that goes by that I am not speaking to individuals and groups of people. One of the most effective ways I have grown in this area is through honest feedback from other leaders I trust. Unfortunately, many pastors don’t have access to people who know what and how to evaluate a Sunday morning sermon. I believe I can help. Pulpit Feedback will begin with an initial evaluation, followed by the delivery of either video or audio of a Sunday message of your choice (video is preferred). I will then listen/watch your presentation and provide a written critical evaluation of the content and delivery of the message. Subsequent coaching or feedback will be available afterwards as needed.

If you have a team that you meet with to talk strategy as a church, I challenge you to show this video to them and ask those questions. Let me know how it goes!

Looking to

You might also want to check out my cliff notes from last year’s ‘Preach Better Sermons’ online conference right here!

STEVEN FURTICK

• Plan your sermon series about 4 months out.

• Build a team around you who will brief you on each series you do. Let them ask tough questions! And allow them to meet on their own to brainstorm ideas on how to integrate popular culture, what scriptures are being used, memorable illustrations, etc.

• Remember – “The game is won or lost in transition” (Urban Meyer). Don’t focus so much on the message that you ignore other important elements in the service.

• Develop a routine before each service that helps you focus your mind and center your heart on God.

• Don’t worry about how people will react to your message or what they will Tweet about it – focus on the fact that God has anointed you to speak His Word.

LOUIE GIGLIO – 6 Rules of Preaching

1. Have something to say – be honest about what God is putting on your heart
2. Above all things – be faithful to the text
3. Lead people to Jesus
4. Don’t be boring!
5. Prepare
6. Be led by the Holy Spirit

• Find and refine ‘you’ – your own voice and style. Don’t waste your God-given talent trying to be a Steven Furtick or Andy Stanley.

• Remember the menu is just a suggestion – be flexible and let the Holy Spirit lead you.

• Stay humble – don’t fall into the trap of using your messages to trumpet yourself.

DONALD MILLER

• Don’t rely solely on inspiration – build on a foundation of discipline in sermon preparation.

• If you want people to receive what God gave you, walk them through the same process God took you through.

• Remember that Paul said not to use impressive words – doing this can be manipulative.

DAVE RAMSEY

• Don’t forget about humor – if people don’t laugh every 7 minutes, you’ve lost them.

• Public speakers say that for every hour presenting you should prepare for three. The preparation should take even longer for preaching.

• Keep culture in mind. If their attention spans have dropped, make your messages and series more focused and shorter.

MARK BATTERSON

• Write out your sermons as you would a manuscript. Many of his sermons become book chapters. *Key – have your manuscript done in time to pray over it.* 

• Remember to use metaphors. They are important and biblical metaphors are the most powerful.

• Keep your dependence on God in perspective (example – fast on the day you are supposed to preach).

• Great Preacher vs. Great Prayer – you can’t be a great preacher unless you are first a great prayer.

JOHN ACUFF

• The best speeches and sermons are when you and the audience go where you are leading them together.

• Don’t over-practice – it will come off sounding more rehearsed and less genuine.

• A well used prop can be both simple and powerful.

• Remember – the greatest way to ruin a sermon is to be the star of your own success story – people want you to be real.

CRAWFORD LORITTS

• Your preaching flows out of your relationship with God.

• Remember, in the Bible God is far more concerned about leadership development that He is about leadership technique.

PETE WILSON

• Draw from other pastor’s series and books that impact you.

• Don’t let the success or failure of your sermons attach themselves to your identity.

NANCY DUARTE

• Keep it relevant – take a walk in the audience’s shoes and spend time in their minds.

• You rarely see a film win any awards without it first having had great editing. It is the same for preaching.

• You only have one hour with your people – make the most of it.

ANDY STANLEY

• The key to keeping an audience’s attention is your approach – approach is what makes content interesting.

• Let new people know you are happy they are there – don’t call them visitors.

• Preach with new Christians or unbelievers in mind – acknowledge the odd things in scripture. Then give the unbelievers permission to not believe or obey what they heard. Even Jesus’ disciples didn’t believe until after the resurrection.

• Stay plugged into a community of unbelievers.

• Bring energy to your text – not just to your stories.

ED STETZER

• Maximize your studying by minimizing your searching.

• The Bible is always relevant – people just don’t always realize it. Our job is to show them how it applies to them personally.

• Keep in mind that pastors are prone to exaggeration because they are prone to motivation.

MARK DRISCOLL

• Remember that our mission is to make more people God’s people and that it is God’s truth coming out of your mouth.

• Give yourself some grace to discover who you are – who has God wired you to be?

Chris Zeigler Assistant Director BASIC College Ministries   serving the church // to reach the colleges // to change the world facebook // twitter // leaders blog // about me

Should you be overwhelmed?

Boss. “Here’s something else I’d like you to do.”

Me. “I’m overwhelmed with the work I already have.”

Boss. “What work do you already have?”

Me. {Insert measly & inadequate attempt at describing my workload here.}

Boss. “I think you need to work on your time management skills. Here’s something else I’d like you to do.”

Me. “OK” {Walk away overwhelmed.}

The problem is, neither he nor I really knew if I had too much on my plate or not. We didn’t know what my capacity was and we didn’t have a clear understanding of what I was doing. I see this happen a lot. People are overwhelmed with work and since they don’t know if the problem is them (time management skills) or the job (they have too much work), they assume it’s the former and try to get by. This doesn’t have to be.

A couple years ago I found myself in this predicament and developed a one page summary of all my responsibilities. It has been, without doubt, one of the most meaningful and effective documents I’ve ever made. It is NOT a Job Description and it is NOT a Task List. It is a Responsibility Summary. I love it, my boss loves it, and everyone I know who has successfully made one loves it.

BENEFITS
First, let me outline some of the benefits of this one page document, once it’s been developed.

• It brings clarity to you.
  The primary benefit is simply the fact that you have clarity about what you do (or should be doing). You’ll never have to wonder what you have on your plate that your forgetting. The Responsibility Summary is a big picture snapshot of everything you’re working on.

• It brings clarity to your boss.
  If it’s clear to you, then it should also be clear for your employer. When I first showed this document to my boss they loved it. It allowed us to have a very clear conversation about my job and the projects I was working on. What I really liked was that I didn’t have to convince my boss that I had a lot on my plate, it was right there in front of him. And when he told me to add something to my plate, it was real easy to ask, ‘What needs to change in my responsibilities so I can do that for you?’
  

• It clarifies priorities.
  It’s a lot easier to see what’s important and what’s not important when looking at a Responsibility Summary. At one point I saw something that was on my “Future Projects” list and something else on my “Current Projects” list that needed to be switched. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was working on the wrong thing.
  

• It reveals dead weight.
  Similar to the priorities benefit, the Responsibility Summary shows you what you shouldn’t be doing. Recently I was working with an Executive Pastor at a local church and when we finished his Responsibility Summary we saw that he spent a lot of time fixing computers. This wasn’t a good use of his time. So we built a strategic plan to train and delegate that to someone else.

• It highlights problems.
  With the same pastor mentioned above, we also noticed that there were a lot of important projects in the “Future Projects” listing and almost no projects in the “Current Projects” listing. The reason was easy to see, he had so many “Ongoing Responsibilities” that he had no time to work on projects. This needed to change and we used the Responsibility Summary to develop a plan to change that.

• It confirms suspicions.
  Most of the time, a wise person will be able to look at a Responsibility Summary and be able to determine if that individual simply needs to strengthen his time management skills or if he does, in fact, just have too much on his plate. There’s little room to wonder anymore.

• and more…
  The more I help people develop their Responsibility Summary, the more I’m finding it useful in different ways. For me, it’s a ‘must do’ for any organization or person.

HOW TO BUILD IT
The structure of a Responsibility Summary is simple. The hard part is sitting down and figuring out what needs to go into each section. For most of us, that can be stressful and overwhelming all by itself. I’m going to outline what to do here, but I will also provide a download link to a simplified version for you to use. Don’t download and build it until you’ve read the ‘rules’ below!

• Determine Your Job
  Someone once asked me if he could make a Responsibliity Summary that showed his whole life. I don’t suggest this. Make one summary for your work. If you want, you can make another one for your ‘other job’, your ‘personal life’, your ‘church leadership’ or whatever else you want. Just don’t try to combine them into one sheet.

• Determine Your Columns
  You probably don’t want to list your responsibilities in one big list. In the end, it will still seem overwhelming and hard to read. Think of what you do and ask, “Are there 3 or 4 categories that I can use to separate my responsibilities?” As you work on this, you might change this around over time. IMPORTANT: If you find you have one column that’s really full and two others that are really empty, you probably need to re-think your categories. Here are a couple of examples to help get you started:
  
  • A pastor might use: Executive / Ministry Oversight / Active Ministry
  • A secretary might use: Event Planning / Follow-Up / Office Management
  • A facility staffer might use: Winter / Spring / Summer / Fall OR Grounds / Facility / Staff
  • An associate might use: Youth Dept / Care Dept / Active Ministry

• List Ongoing Responsibilities
  The first row in each column should list your Ongoing Responsibilities. This should include ANYTHING you do on a regular basis that takes an hour or more of your time. It could be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual responsibilities. Remember, in general these should not be tasks. They are responsibilities. You might also consider putting a note under or beside them clarifying the frequency and the amount of time you spend on them. Do not include vague things like ‘email’ or ‘phone calls’. Those are not responsibilities – they are tasks that help you complete responsibilities. Here are a couple of examples:
  • Lead Staff Meetings (W/3)  - the ‘W’ means weekly & the ’3′ means 3 hours
  • Create/Propose Budget (A/15)
  • Counseling (W/5)
  • HVAC Maintenance (Q/5)
  • Ongoing Website Maintenance (M/4)
  • Easter Service Planning (A/12)

• List Current Projects
  The second row in each column should list projects you’re working on right now. A Current Project is NOT an Ongoing Responsibility. It has a definite end in mind and it’s not something you will probably do again – at least within the year. You may not know when the project will get done, but you do know that it will or should eventually be completed at some point. Also, Current Responsibilities MUST be projects you are ACTUALLY working on. Just because it’s on your list of things you SHOULD be working on, doesn’t mean you are working on it. If it’s not in your schedule to work on it in the next few days/weeks, it probably shouldn’t be listed as a Current Project, but as a Future Project. Honesty is important here. You don’t want to lie to yourself by making it look like you’re doing something that you actually aren’t. Another important thing to remember here is that eventually a Current Project may turn into an Ongoing Responsibility. For example, ‘create a blog’ might one day turn into ‘post to the blog’, Here are some examples of what a Current Project might be:
  • Interview/Hire Secretary
  • Research how to do a Capital Campaign
  • Propose new system to track attendance
  • Upgrade all computers to Windows 7
  • Create a blog for Youth Dept

• List Future Projects
  You don’t want to forget this last row. These are the projects that you either SHOULD be working on, but aren’t, or that you eventually want to work on. Over time, you may see that a particular Future Project just never seems to make it to the ‘Current Project’ category. This begs the question, ‘Is it really that important?’ and if so, should someone else be doing it or should something change so that I can do it. Here are a few more examples, although they can/will potentially look just like those in the Current Projects list, depending on if they’re getting worked on:
  • Develop online store
  • Write new Welcome class content
  • Create policies for advertising events
  • Research new database options

FINAL THOUGHTS
Here are a few final thoughts about this that you might want to keep in mind.

• It’s not easy.
  I’ve already said this, but it’s worth pointing out. Building your first Responsibility Summary might be difficult and painful, especially for certain personalities. In the end, it’s worth it, if it’s done right and used regularly. Hang in there and don’t give up until it’s complete.
  

• It may take several drafts.
  Like any new venture, it may take several drafts before it turns into something useful. You’re building something from scratch and it’s OK if you don’t get it right the first time, or even the second time. Keep at it, try new ways of organizing columns and you’ll eventually end up with something you like.

• Update it monthly or quarterly.
  This is a working document, but it’s not meant to replace your task list. Update it monthly or quarterly, but don’t wait any longer than that. If you have a quarterly review with an employer, then get into the habit of updating it before your meeting and bringing a copy in with you. If not, then put in your task list to update it regularly throughout the year.

• Look at it.
  The goal isn’t to make a cool document that summarizes your job. The goal is to use the information on that document to help you be more productive and effective in what you do. Analyze your Responsibility Summary every once in a while and ask questions like, “Should I be doing that?”, “How can I move that to a Current Project?”, “Why do I spend so much time on something that’s not my main job?”, etc.

• Tell me how it goes.
  I’m not kidding. I need some stories of how the Responsibility Summary has helped people in my coaching. In fact, if you’re willing, send me a copy so I can use it in further teaching as I coach people in the area of productivity. Thanks!

DOWNLOAD THE TEMPLATE
Don’t just download this and start using it until you’ve read through this page. You won’t fully understand what to do. It’s too easy to put things in the wrong categories/columns otherwise. Note: This download is in Microsoft Word format. Enjoy!

Have you been wishing the Sunday morning service was more focused, relevant, interesting and better organized? Do you desire to use more current technology but don’t know where to start? Do you find yourself dreaming about doing cool things with graphics, videos and stage designs like other churches you’ve seen? Would you like to know that when people walk away from the service they are actually talking about what was spoken and how the Lord ministered to them personally?

I’m a pretty avid reader of people like Bill Hybels and Robert Morris. Those two leaders in particular, have made it very clear that the Sunday morning experience is THE most important event a church will ever host – and that it should be implemented with intense focus and purpose. I happen to agree with them 100%.

In his book ‘The Blessed Church‘, Robert Morris shared the three central goals for his vision for his church, early on. He said, “The following were the central goals of my vision: (1)We would deliver the most outstanding sermons you’ve ever heard. (2)We would provide the most extraordinarily skilled and Spirit-infused worship experience in which you’ve ever participated. (3)We would offer the best children’s ministry your kids have ever experienced.”

Unfortunately, there is often a big gap between what we hope our Sunday morning experience will be and what it ends up being. It can seem like a long, up-hill battle to move from ‘good’ to ‘great’ in this area. I’d like to help you fight that battle.

Three Month TeleCoaching

I’m pulling together a small cadre of church pastors and leaders to participate in a Three Month TeleCoaching opportunity that will focus solely on the area of hosting exceptional weekend services. Here are some details and how you can sign up.

FOCUS: Hosting Exceptional Sunday Services
In particular, I will discuss the 6 areas of preparation/implementation I believe every Sunday service should consider: worship, message, offering, announcements, creativity, technical support.

WHO: Pastors & Church Leaders
It’s important that whoever attends this coaching be someone in leadership and in a position to make a difference. If it’s not the Lead Pastor who attends, then it should be someone sanctioned and released by the Lead Pastor to learn and grow in this area.

WHEN/HOW: 1 Teleconference & 1 Telecoaching per month
Each month I will host a teleconference with all participants logging in to hear me share a presentation and participate in discussions together. I will also arrange to meet over the phone or Skype with each church for a personal coaching session each month. Teleconference sessions will last approximately 90 minutes and telecoaching sessions approximately 60 minutes.

START/END: The three months will span the months of June – August, 2013.

COST: The cost will be $150/month or $450 total.
Elim Fellowship Affiliated churches are eligible to receive a 50% discount.

SIGN-UP: Space is limited.
I am only able to accommodate a small number of leaders. So if you are interested in participating, please let me know by signing up below soon. I’ll get back to you within a couple of days.

photo credit: Sean Molin Photography via photopin cc

This article was originally posted on Transforming Leader the winter of 2010. Enjoy!

In a past post I attempted to convince you that you shouldn’t be strategizing, planning, and goal-setting alone. God never intended or planned for you to be the ‘Jack of all Trades’ pastor. Not convinced? Read 1 Corinthians 12 again – you probably preached on that passage or referred to it sometime this year. It applies to you too! I don’t know which part of the body you represent in your local church – but I do know that you need the other parts for the work of God to be a success through you.

One of my favorite people is my spiritual and ministry mentor, Pastor Mike Cavanaugh. He serves as President of Elim Bible Institute and Vice President of the ministerial association I serve with, Elim Fellowship. He has been a great example of someone who is not afraid to find his niche and then let others serve with and around him in theirs. I’ll never forget one instance many years ago when he was serving as the Lead Pastor of Elim Gospel Church.  He asked me to lead all of our church strategic meetings, with him sitting as one of the team members! He wasn’t afraid to relinquish control in order to see the church grow. He didn’t feel the need to do everything himself. He was open to allowing others to try, fail, and eventually grow to become all or more than he could become himself in various areas.

There are three kinds of leadership teams:

• Solo leaders drive a bus-load of zombies. Everyone just goes where they say and nobody thinks to get much involved.

• Good leaders drive a bus-load of athletes. They carry committed people who will go out of their way to serve, help, and grow under their leaders tutelage and coaching.

• Great leaders drive a bus-load of superhero’s. These leaders have the self confidence to allow other leaders to serve alongside them; they love to release the team around them to excel beyond them.

One Question Survey

Where do you stand when it comes to gathering, equipping, and releasing others to serve with you in the calling God has for the ministry you lead?

On a scale of 1 – 5…

1 = “I don’t have a team of people around me. I pretty much do everything myself. I either don’t trust others to get involved or I don’t believe there are others around me capable of doing what needs done in this church/ministry.”

2 = somewhere between 1 and 3.

3 = “I have a team of people around me. They are committed to the ministry and to me. They are expanding what I am capable of doing because my time, effort, energy, and ideas are amplified with their presence. However, none of them are offering something to the team that I couldn’t offer myself. Some have leadership gifts, but most don’t have much of an opportunity to be totally released in them.

4 = somewhere between 3 and 5.

5 = “I have a team of committed leaders surrounding me. They are my dream team. Many if not all of them provide leadership and strengths to this ministry that I could not provide myself if I were in their shoes. They have surpassed me in many areas or are well on their way to surpassing me.”

How would you like it if your first time guests actually made an appointment to attend your Sunday service? 

Great idea . . . and easy to do. The Church on the Move in Tulsa, Oklahoma, created a special page on their website entitled, “Plan Your Visit“. The page simply invited guests to complete a short form with a couple of questions like: name, email, service time & # of children. Their promise: “We will e-mail you everything you’ll need to make your first visit to Church on the Move a great one.”

I love this. 

I think you should give it a try. All you need is someone who knows how to make a web form, some time to determine how you will respond to guests when they submit their information, and a system in place to ensure it happens promptly – preferably within a couple of hours of when the form is submitted.

How will you build this idea into your Guest Friendly strategy this week?

I 

Well, a few weeks ago, my friend, Bob Kniley (another nut), told me he thought he had found a new online task management system (with a great price – FREE) and suggested I check it out. I fell in love with it within 10 minutes of reviewing it. I have now transferred all of my tasks to asana.

What makes it a very effective system is the fact that

• It’s very user friendly (easy to learn for the non-nuts).

• It allows for layered tasks (nut language for, ‘it lets you have a big category of tasks, with a ton of projects in that category, and a ton of tasks for each project, with as many steps as needed for each task’).

• It emails you your upcoming, due, or overdue tasks if you want it to.

• It lets you email tasks into your task list from your mail client without going to the site.

• It allows you to collaborate by assigning tasks to other people – and it’ll keep you informed of their progress if you want it to.

• Did I mention it’s free (note – it’s free if you have less than 30 people included in any given workspace).

Here’s the deal. It’s too hard for me to really explain in a post. There are a lot of great features and I would love to tell you about them. That’s why I’ve decided to offer a FREE webinar which I will use to explain the basic features and uses of Asana. This will be an instructive, but informal presentation. 

The webinar will take place on June 7th at 1:00pm EST. You’re welcome to join us and invite your friends/co-workers too!

In the meantime, why not sign-up and check out asana for yourself?  www.asana.com 

Signup to attend this webinar

5 Characteristics of a Strong Mind by Michael Hyatt
No matter the circumstances around us, we will need to rely upon the mental toughness we normally look for in our heroes, not in ourselves.We admire heroes like Robin Hood and James Bond because they embody the characteristics that we’ve valued throughout the ages. Heroes let us feel what it’s like to have the mental toughness to break out of our boring little existence and enter into a much bigger world—one that is full of possibility. Read More.

The Difference Between Floating and Falling by Scott McClellan

Reichelt was a tailor who lived in Paris in the early 20th century and was determined to design a wearable parachute. Pay careful attention to this excerpt: ”After conducting several failed experiments with dummies at low altitudes, Reichelt, who was convinced his design was perfect, decided to try the suit from a higher elevation and wear it himself.” Read More.

8 Key Leadership Qualities of Joseph by Brad Lomenick
Joseph is one of my favorite personalities in the Old Testament. The story of Joseph in Genesis is one worth reading again and again.  In regards to Joseph, here are some leadership qualities I admire in him: 1. Principled- he had character and integrity. He was honest. He was tempted at multiple times, and he resisted. Read More.

Who’s Your Second Brain by Daniel Harkavy
Hav­ing a gifted and vested part­ner to think things through with can be so ben­e­fi­cial for a leader. Hav­ing an out­side per­spec­tive from one who can coach and fur­ther develop you can be a real dif­fer­ence maker.  You might find this with a car­ing and vested board mem­ber. Or maybe a busi­ness part­ner if you have one. It could be a sea­soned men­tor in your firm or indus­try. Or it might be your Exec­u­tive Coach.
Read More.

Gather Stories as if Lives are in the Balance by Mark Howell
Yesterday we talked about the 7 numbers that matter most in small group ministry.  As important as quantitative measurement is, today we need to talk about gathering stories, the qualitative aspect of small group ministry.  Why?  Let’s just say that while your ministry intelligence depends on the numbers we gathered yesterday, lives actually hang in the balance and depend on the stories you gather.  Read More.

Placing Your Pitch by Steven Furtick
I was a horrible pitcher in my Little League days. I had a bad habit of trying to place my pitch. I tried so hard to place the ball precisely in the strike zone that I achieved the opposite result: I rarely ever threw a strike.  Read More.

Why Women Don’t Like Women’s Ministry by Bianca Juarez Olthoff
Have you ever stood knee-deep in a bad situation, yet believed good could prevail? Have you ever seen a company losing customers, yet saw the intrinsic value that the company possessed in the community? Have you ever seen an ugly duckling that you believed would morph into a swan?  I have.  Read More.

Andrew Manzano and Dave Bode are two of the most creative people I have ever met.

I recently found out they are hosting a fundraiser and are working on developing a video course to empower you, the local church leader, to effectively use video as a medium for spreading the good news of Christ in your community. I’m inviting you to check out their indiegogo page and take advantage of the discounted rates they are offering in order to support this great project!

There’s only a handful of days left to sign up, so I suggest you do so soon. Check out this promo video or just go there now to learn more.

Church Film School Website < Click here.

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