Only Wonder Understands

Imagine entering a restaurant where you walk in and no one speaks initially, they toss you a menu, and take forever to go speak with you. Then, when you finally order the food it takes long to get there and the food isn’t very good, lukewarm, and you find a hair in the food.

Are you ever going back to the restaurant?

There is nothing that you do that will effect more people in your congregation than worship. If you don’t have excellent worship, then your congregation will never grow and move forward.

For most of us it is easy to do mediocre worship.

If a restaurant is average, then it will not survive. The same for the church.

(more…)

• The challenges ahead of us are huge, and we have to be able to lead in new ways, not worrying about things like apportionments.
• We are in part in a leadership crisis. Seminaries don’t do a very good job in training folks to offer leadership in a church in crisis.
• Telling the story of his calling to start The Church of the Resurrection.
• God is able to do more than we can ask or even believe. God is able to do great things in your local church as well.
• Every year COR becomes a different church. COR pays 20% of the conference apportionments and pay at the beginning of the year. 22,000 people on Christmas Eve.
• Leaders are constantly looking for new ideas and applying them to your setting.
• There is hope for small churches. Large church pastors are recognizing that the next generation of young folks are looking for more intimacy.
• “The church needs someone to believe in them…”
• Leadership is essential to what God can do for a congregation. Seminaries teach management, not leadership.
• Qualities of a Leader
• Integrity, authenticity, and humility
• We aim for these things
• Are you willing to do anything yourself?
• Modeling servant leadership
• Take the parking space farthest from the door.
• When you join COR, you give up close parking spaces.
• People are drawn to leaders who lead with integrity, authenticity, and humility.
• “The people who know him the best respect him or her the most.”
• Paul’s directive to imitate me.
• Care about People (genuinely)
• You have to love people to be a great leader.
• Offer encouragement. Bless others. Be a blessing.
• Challenges: Many pastors are introverts drawn to the spiritual life. Introverts have to find energy to initiate conversations.
• Sacrificial love will lead folks to follow.
• Passionate and Positive Leadership
• JW: I light myself on fire and people come to watch me burn.
• It’s easy to fall into negativity. Rather we need to find the good in what and who we are. Self fulfilling prophecy.
• Need to offer hope for the future. Keep saying it until it happens.
• Seeing possibilities instead of seeing failures.
• Confident, focused, knowledgeable, and willing to lead
• Do you know where you are going?
• Leaders know where they want to go and if they don’t they stop for directions.
• Many of us don’t like to lead . . . we tire of making decisions. Someone has to know where we are going.
• Constantly learning.
• Courageous and willing to take risks
• If you are unwilling to take risks, nothing is going to happen.
• Abe and Sarah as an example. Moving to a land we haven’t been before.
• We are instruments that make mistakes . . . we are along for the ride. If we have gifts, they come from God.
• What do leaders do?
• Set the tone and the spirit of the organization.
• Model by example
• The tone is hard to quantify.
• Unhappy leaders lead to unhappy congregations
• We represent the congregation in the community.
• We hold the organization accountable to accomplish the mission.
• The leader owns ultimate responsibility for the organization’s effectiveness.
• If the church isn’t effective, it ultimately falls on the pastor
• We are responsible for holding folks accountable
• Avoiding conflict is a recipe for disaster in local churches.
• The leaders are responsible for preparing the organization for the future.
• When it comes to set goals and objectives, setting long term plans is somewhat useless. Rather, paint a picture of where you think the church should or will be.
• What is happening 12 years from now.
• What leader do — Part 2
• Clarify and champion the mission
• They discern and cast the vision
• They ensure plans are developed to accomplish the vision
• They motivate and inspire folks to pursue the vision
• They evaluate, celebrate, and _____
• They don’t give up
• There will be times when you want to give up as a leader.
• Part of being a leader is to be criticized.
• The leaders who have an impact press through. They continue on. Unless God calls me somewhere else, this is where I need to be.
• John Wesley’s example of harassment.
• The dark night of the soul is part of leadership.
• Difference between leadership and management.
• What do managers do versus what leaders do.
• Managers plan and budget. Leaders discern and caste the vision.
• Managers develop processes and policies. Leaders enable persons for service and ministry.
• Managers control and problem solve. Leaders are not interested in control — wanting to share leader, motivate and inspiring others.
• Managers create predictability and order. Leaders lead to change and chaos.
• You need both managers and leaders.
• Five Important Leadership Principles
• It’s all about people.
• Healthy organizations have a clear MVP.
• Mission, and Vision, and a Plan
• Mission — one sentence statement that is consistent with the UMC’s mission and known by all. We do have a denominational statement. This is why we are here and all is measured against that.
• Provides meaning for the participants.
• Can folks in your church tell you what their mission is?
• Vision — a preferred picture of the future. Where we are heading.
• Good vision excites. Lame vision doesn’t
• You have to know where we are going.
• Do you have a vision of where you are going to be in the future, even if you may never fully get there.
• COR
• Change Lives. Transform the Community. Revitalize the Mainline Church.
• Formula for having a vision:
• Begins with prayer. What does God want to do with his church.
• Mission — why?
• Assessment of available resources
• What are the needs in our community or opportunities for improvement in our congregation?
• All of these things lead us to short-term visions / goals and objectives
• Plan — a failure to plan is a plan to fail
• How are we going to get there.
• Measurable
• Timetable
• Responsibility
• Who will check on accountability.
• Specific and time sensitive
• Change, innovate, improve or die
• Particularly true now, since our kids are growing up in a different world.
• Is your church more like a vinyl album or like an IPod?
• You are either constantly improving and innovating or you are dying.
• Discipleship Pyramid –
• 10% of congregation close to sanctification
• 20% involved and leaders (including the above 10%)
• 30% attenders who have somewhat of a faith connection
• 40% good methodists who are nominal in their faith.
• Preachers and leaders tend to hang out with the first 30%
• Jesus spent most of his time with the 40% or even outside the folks outside the discipleship pyramid.
• We have to be outside the walls of our church.
• Part of our task is to take people on the journey toward sanctification.
• The leader helps folks to go somewhere. Do you have a plan for going on to perfection.
• Discernment by Nausea
• Whenever there are two pathways, whichever path makes you sick to your stomach is probably the right path.
• Every church has to make thousands of decisions about the future, and most of the people before us took the easier route. You have to be willing to take the harder route.
• Almost everything that we do seems harder than it actually is.