Round Tables at LifeChurch.tv

In order to help serve churches, we will be hosting several round tables this year. Here is information on the first two.

ARC (Association of Related Churches) will be doing a one day Leadership Forum for all pastors and church leaders at LifeChurch.tv. Pastor Chris Hodges, Rick Bezet, Joe Champion, and I will be contributing.

This round table is for those who are interested in church planting and for pastors interested in developing their leadership skills. The forums will be a great time of learning, sharing ideas and growing relationships in a dynamic setting. There will also be an opportunity for you to learn about the vision and mission of ARC and how you can join the team!

When: Monday, February 27, 10am to 2:30pm

Where: LifeChurch.tv/Edmond

Cost: The event is free.

Contact: Marc@weplantlife.com

Multi-Site Round Table

I will be hosting a small round table for senior pastors of churches with 2500 or more in attendance that are going multi-site or are already doing multi-site ministry.

When: Thursday, March 1, 2012, 8:30am to 4pm

Where: LifeChurch.tv /Edmond

Cost: The event is free. I’m asking that all churches make a generous donation towards church planting.  Every dollar given will be used to help start new churches. This event is limited to 22 pastors. Email lori.tapp@lifechurch.tv for more information or to reserve a spot.

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ACCEPTABLE PRIDE?

We know God opposes the proud. But some forms of social media seem to have redefined what pride is and what it’s not.

For example: Imagine if I stood before our church and told everyone, “Joe Smith said, ‘Craig you are the best preacher ever! Your sermons changed my life.’ And Jill Denny said, ‘I loved your book. Everyone should read it. You are the best author I’ve ever read!’ Not only that, but Mike Mitchell said, ‘Craig, Life Church is the best church in the world! No church is as good as Life Church.’”

Chances are good most people would look at me funny and think I’m a little full of myself for saying such things.

But if I simply retweeted those exact same statements, my retweets would seem totally acceptable to most. Honestly, I’m wondering if that is acceptable to God, or if it’s just pride in disguise.

I believe we need to walk a very careful line in ministry (I am certain I have crossed this line at times). Sure we want to celebrate what God is doing in our churches. Of course we want to get the word out about a new series or a book we’ve written. Unquestionably we want to share more reasons to give praise to our God.

But at the same time, we need to be careful that we’re not drawing attention to ourselves.

Your thoughts?

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The Imaginary Deadline

For years I struggled with managing my time effectively. One tool I learned that dramatically increased my effectiveness is the “imaginary deadline.”

If I’ve got a project without a deadline, it’s easy to procrastinate or work halfheartedly. When an assignment has a hard deadline, I start faster, work smarter and focus better.

• Instead of thinking, I need to have my sermon finished before I preach this weekend, I have a Wednesday-at-noon deadline. It’s not anyone else’s deadline. It’s mine.
• Rather than saying this video needs to be finished by next week, I complete all videos by Wednesday at 2 pm. Again, this is my deadline.
• Instead of deciding to read my Bible plan some time during the day, I have mine read before I leave my house.

These are all imaginary deadlines. But when I treat them as real, my productivity and efficiency increase.

I’d love to hear from you if you do something similar.

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39 Speakers on One Weekend

Last weekend LifeChurch.tv gave 39 different staff members the opportunity to preach. We called it our first “Developmental Weekend.”

In case this idea might be helpful to other churches, I’ll share what we did.

· I prepared an outline for everyone to use. The outline gave the staff members a consistent message but plenty of room to personalize the texts and application.

· I prerecorded an explanation to get our church behind the concept and motivate them to support our rookies.

· I also prerecorded a 7-minute introduction to the message and a 7-minute ending plus ministry and prayer time.

· Our Pastors selected people to preach one or more services at our 14 different campuses. We selected Missions Pastors, LifeGroup Pastors, Youth Pastors, Host Team Coordinators and more. Each speaker had about 15 minutes to speak.

Here are several of the noticeable benefits:

· 39 people got to preach.

· The Pastors spent time preparing and developing their team members.

· The church embraced the idea of developing the next generation of leaders.

· These staff members got exposure to large groups of people, increasing their pastoral influence.

· Everyone on our staff understands that your position doesn’t determine your influence. You could be called on to do more at any time.

I’m very proud of our team!

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Twitter Book Recommendations

Yesterday I asked my Twitter friends to recommend leadership and spiritual books. Thank you for your awesome suggestions. If you’d like to add your favorites, please comment!

Click here for recommendations from my Facebook friends.

Sun Stand Still by @stevenfurtick (Love this one)

When Helping Hurts by Corbett

Lone Survivor by Luttrell - leadership

When Life Isn’t Working by Merritt - spiritual growth

The Good & Beautiful God

Tribal Leadership

The Radical Disciple

Weird by Craig Groeschel (Already read that one!)

Radical Together by David Platt

A Christian Manifesto by Francis Schaeffer

Sabbath by Dan Allender

Prayer Saturated Kids by Cheryl Sacks and Arlyn Lawrence

Think Orange by Reggie Joiner

Off-Road Disciplines by Earl Creps

Failure of Nerve by Friedman

Spiritual Leadership by Oswald Sanders

Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome by Kent & Barbara Hughes

Leading Change by Kotter

Winning by Welch

Missional Renaissance by McNeal

The Power of Team Leadership by Barna

How the Mighty Fall by Collins

The Spiritual Leader by Chambers

Lead Vertically by Craig Johnson

Jesus’ Plan for a New World by Richard Rohr

More Than Conquerors by Simon Guillebald

VENEER by Timothy D. Willard and R. Jason Locy

Spiritual Leadership by Oswald Sanders

The Man God Uses by Henry Blakeby

On Being a Servant of God by Wiersbe

Imaginary Jesus by Matt Mikalatos

Leadership Gold by John C Maxwell

Christian Atheist by Craig Groeschel

The Called to Lead by John MacArthur

26 Leadership Lessons from the Life of the Apostle Paul by John MacArthur

Men’s Health-The Basics by @DruglessDoctor

Renovation Of the Heart & The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard

Humilitas by @johnpauldickson

Happy reading!

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When A Small Staff is Better

Most church leaders believe that if they had more staff members, they could get more done. While that’s occasionally true, it’s often not.

I’ve found that a smaller staff is often better than a larger one.

Based on my experience, when LifeChurch (or a specific campus or team) is slightly overstaffed, forward progress generally slows. When we are slightly understaffed, we usually take more ground.

Here are my theories on why smaller is often better when it comes to staff:

• When you have more staff members, the roles are often clearly defined and can lead to “That’s-not-my-job” mindsets. Smaller staff teams are forced to work together and innovate creating unity and a spirit of collaboration.
• Bigger staffs take more time and energy to manage. Smaller staffs move quickly.
• When more money goes to pay staff, less money goes to expand the ministry.
• When more people are paid, it’s easier to stop building volunteer leaders, which eventually weakens the foundation of the church.
• A larger team might unconsciously not work as hard as they would otherwise.

Obviously there are exceptions and being grossly understaffed for a long period of time is not healthy.

Still, given the choice between slightly more than we need and slightly less than we (think) we need, I’m choosing the leaner staff every time.

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One Prayer Update

Over the past three years, over 2,000 churches participated in a unifying movement called One Prayer.

What started as a little idea, God turned into a movement. By His grace, God used those churches to help plant over 2700 churches in China, Cambodia, India and Sudan. According to estimates, over 43,000 people have been baptized through these church plants. May God get all the glory!

It is humbling to play such a small role in something with such big results.

After a lot of prayer, our team has decided not to do a One Prayer series in 2011. We’ll be prayerful about future opportunities for Kingdom initiatives.

Keeping with the spirit of One Prayer, we encourage you to look for opportunities to work with other churches. I know God is honored when you reach out to other church leaders and partner to serve your communities together.

I’m hoping our churches can be an answer to Jesus’ prayer for unity in John 17. May God continue to raise leaders to unite his church and impact the world.

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Online All Staff Meeting

We had our first online “All Staff Meeting” this week. Several people were asking how we did it, so I thought I’d share a few thoughts.

HOW? We used our church online platform at www.churchonline.org.

WHY? Since our staff is spread out, bringing them together is costly, time consuming, and challenging. We hoped an online event would provide us with the opportunity to communicate, inspire and motivate.

In addition to simply receiving information, the staff had the additional benefit of talking to each other through the online chat.

SURPRISES: None of us had any idea how much fun we’d have. I was laughing out loud much of the time at the hilarious chatting. The staff was buzzing with excitement the day after the meeting.

When we asked people to get serious, they did quickly. The corporate worship was powerful and the prayer time was deeply moving.

We will continue to meet together in person and do an online event once or twice a year when it makes sense. Here is a short clip from the meeting.

If any staff members would like to add some thoughts about your experience, please do.

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