I’ve never met a leader who dreamed of having a toxic culture. Leaders want to lead a healthy culture, and volunteers want to serve in one as well. Nothing will make a great volunteer or staff member run away faster than a toxic culture! I’ve had the privilege to work in some healthy cultures, and the nightmare…
I remember the day as clear as if it were yesterday. Sitting at the table in the office, with the letter that would change everything. It was my letter of resignation. I had written it about a month earlier and it was time to share it with my boss, the pastor. We had worked together…
Every ministry faces growth barriers. No church grows all the time without facing a plateau or season of struggles. The question isn’t if we will face growth barriers, it’s what will we do when they come? We will all face growth barriers, but we don’t have bow down to them! You can overcome them and…
Take heart, don’t lose heart. Have you ever found yourself discouraged in ministry? If you’ve been serving in ministry for more than eleven days, I’m going to guess that your answer is “yes”! I hit an all-time low several years ago. The church was growing, and we had just opened a new facility, but volunteers…
No one warned us that we’d get mad at our church. You would hope that church work would be different, right? But church people are still people, and when the stakes are high and emotions are higher, most of us do a lousy job at holding a constructive conversation. The authors of “Crucial Conversations” say…
Several years ago I made the shift. I had always kind of enjoyed experimenting in the yard with different plant combinations, colors, and layouts. I would be lured in by the big bloomers at the big box stores and I would often come home from a trip to get some nails with a plethora of…
Most leaders lead backwards. The problem is they don’t know it. Until they figure it out and do something about it though, they will never lead up to their full potential. Last October, I accepted a new job. It was at a bigger church than I had ever served at and came with more responsibility…
There I was, sitting across a desk from an eager youth pastor (I’ll call her Cindy). We had just spent a few days with her church and prepared a youth ministry assessment report. The presentation went over like gangbusters. People were excited because we put a plan together to help them put effective systems and…