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Last time we talked about how in leadership having a “check yourself” mentality is necessary. You can read that here. I want to spend some time talking about the specifics of effectiveness when dealing with church for the next several weeks. One thing I want to clarify is that effectiveness does not mean bigger numbers and more people. If you relegate to numbers as a metric of success then you’ll end up with a big group and not much life change in that group. In the end that becomes a big social club. I will also say that my observation has been that what is needed to attain growth is counter intuitive in that the best way to do that is to not concentrate as hard on numerical growth. Continue reading “Check Yourself – Part 2”

When we talk about mission, specifically related to church, there seems to always be this running tension between offering grace and seeing effectiveness. Usually people don’t want to have those harder conversations regarding someone’s effectiveness at what they’re doing. Whether that thing be leading a small group, leading worship, inviting others to follow Jesus, or even pastoring a church. Part of the reason for this lack is that as leader’s we don’t have the “Check Yourself” mentality for our own lives, much less for the lives of those we lead. The average median church size in the US is roughly 75 people. 90% of all church’s in the US run 400 or less. Now 400 is a good size, but when you take population growth into account, what this really means is that we aren’t keeping up. Continue reading “Check Yourself – Part 1”

I’ve been thinking through organizational health lately. Patrick Lencioni has a book out entitled The Advantage that speaks to this specific area. It seems that organizational health is big. The big idea is that you need a healthy culture before you can have a growing thriving organization. All the other things, knowing your burn rate, staying fiscally solvent, balancing budget, systems, structures, are important. They’re important, in that they’re permission to play, permission to get in the game. They won’t keep you there though. Continue reading “Organizational Health Is Big”