By unSeminary.com: Welcome to this week’s episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Renaut van der Riet from Mosaic Church in the Orlando, Florida area. Passionate about making the gospel beautiful however they can, Mosaic is continually pursuing how they can serve each other and how they can serve their community. This heart has led to tremendous growth in seasons, which also has exposed areas where the church needs to work on its health.

As church leaders, we run into trouble when we become obsessed with measuring the health of our churches by the size of our churches, as our culture pressures us to do. But fruitfulness is the biblical measurement for what indicates health. Listen in as Renaut shares how to stay healthy as a leader and a church while you are growing.

Stop growth for the sake of health. // Stopping growth momentum or slowing it down for a season can be a huge fear for churches. We may feel that we have to keep it going no matter what, even if it’s negatively affecting the broader health of the church and staff. Ultimately, growth without health will not be sustainable. Many large churches will grow and grow and grow only to then crash and burn, or have a major staff turnover. During one of Mosaic’s growth spurts where they doubled in size in a season, they found their DNA became diluted and they needed to pull back to work on their health and culture.Regular commitment to exposure. // When the pace of growth is going fast, things can look great in public so we assume that it is also going well behind the scenes. The reality is, when things are growing fast some things will fall through the cracks or not get the attention they need. That eventually erodes health without our even noticing it. Combat this drift by having regular evaluations of both your leadership and infrastructure so you can bring issues into the light and address them before they get out of control.Show your truth. // Secrets and shadows should be our greatest fear as ministry leaders. Just as we need to bring issues in our ministry into the light, we need to be honest about the state of our souls. As Renaut notes, the sooner we share our deficits, the sooner we’re free because then there’s nothing for people to find out! Whether you’re on stage in front of your church, or working with your staff, be honest about your shortcomings. Pastors’ lives are as messy and imperfect as anyone else’s. Let in the light on your life to protect yourself from making really big mistakes down the road.More fruitful, more health. // The bible doesn’t say: the bigger the church, the healthier the church. Rather fruitfulness is an indicator of health. We have created this belief that if you pastor a big church, you are a better leader. But that’s simply not true. Leading a church is a bit like gardening where each of us are given a plant to care for, and each individual plant is very different from other kinds. Each plant has unique challenges in its care and also gifts to offer. Be thankful that each different church can learn from each other and has something different to contribute to God’s mission.  Cultivate healthy intimacy. // As church leaders, if we become obsessed with our positions, then church becomes an idol. As a result we won’t want our souls to be exposed to the light and an obsession with growth will override our church’s health, eventually causing things to fall flat. When church leaders fail, we see that intimacy with God, their spouse and biblical community has been eroded over time. It’s important to learn how to continually cultivate these areas of intimacy to stay in the light. Find What is Missing. // To help with these challenges, Jimmy Dodd of PastorServe and Renaut authored a book, “What Great Ministry Leaders Get Right: Six Core Competencies You Need to Succeed in Your Calling“. The book teaches church leaders how to care for their own souls well, how to care for their families well, how to not make the church an idol in their life, and how to cultivate good friendships, encouraging healthy relational intimacy. For years this material has been taught at Mosaic Church to their interns, volunteers, staff, and ministry leaders in order to cultivate health in the church as it grows.

You can learn more about Mosaic Church at thisismosaic.org.

Thank You for Tuning In!

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live!

Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Carey Nieuwhof

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Source: Working at Health while Facilitating for Growth with Renaut van der Riet

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by unSeminary: Welcome back to this week’s unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to have Shawn Lovejoy with us, the founder and CEO of Courage to Lead.

Shawn has been a pastor, a church planter, an entrepreneur, and a leadership coach. He started coaching pastors in 2001. Courage to Lead is there to help not only church leaders but also all kinds of other businesses lead themselves to the next level while staying healthy.

Shawn is with us today to share his own story of learning to lead his church and himself to a healthy place that honored God’s definition of success.

Grow beyond anxiety. // Anxiety is a common thread among pastors because it’s easy to become caught up with the world’s definition of success. We can become focused on growing the church faster than Jesus wants it to grow. Ask those closest to you what they think about how you and the church are doing, and use their insight to create a healthy rhythm for your church and life. It’s a spiritual fight to win that way in our ministries.14-point covenant. // Shawn found himself walking down an unhealthy path as he struggled with workaholism. After a series of honest conversations with his wife, he made changes to get himself and his church to a healthy place. Part of that included creating a 14-point covenant with his wife which he signed and honored. It included things such as committing to be home by 5pm most days of the week and never walking into the house still on his cell phone. Examine how you can partner with your spouse or family at home as they support your work in ministry.Shift the focus off of yourself. // As a pastor, the more you build the church around yourself, the less stable it is beyond you. Pastors can stay too long at a church and slowly the church’s focus moves to them rather than staying on the Lord and what is good for the church’s future health. The key questions to ask oneself are: Am I overexposed? Can I build a teaching team around me? Does everything go to hell in a handbasket when I’m absent? What decisions do I not need to be making? You don’t need to attend a meeting if you’re not the one making decisions in it.  Courage to Lead. // Shawn is the founder & CEO of Courage to Lead, which is focused on leadership growth and helps pastors lead themselves to the next level by God’s power. There are three gears of growth: culture, teams, and systems. The organization consists of a network of coaches which works with pastors across the country, helping them lead themselves and their teams well while creating a healthy organization that’s scaleable.Measuring Success. // Shawn wrote the book Measuring Success: Your Path To Significance, Satisfaction, & Leading Yourself To The Next Level focused on leadership growth and how to become the leader God wants you to be. Based on Shawn’s own experience coaching and leading as a pastor, the book also walks the reader through creating a leadership development culture in your church, staff, and family. Defining success. // If you don’t define success for yourself, the world will do it for you. One chapter of the book talks about how the most neglected metric in the church is love. Most of our attention, energy, and stress is focused around programs, productions, processes, events, and problems. But do the people on your leadership team feel like their lives are better or more stressful serving in the church?

You can get in touch with Shawn and learn more about the book and Courage to Lead at www.couragetolead.com.

Thank You for Tuning In!

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live!

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Source: Significance, Satisfaction, & Leading Yourself to the Next Level with Shawn Lovejoy

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by unSeminary: Welcome to back to the unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to have Chris Wignall joining us today. He is the Executive Director of the Catalyst Foundation.

The job of the Catalyst Foundation is to come alongside leaders of charities and churches to help them understand, assess and improve the culture in their organizations in super practical ways. Chris has been working with Catalyst Foundation for 11 and a half years now.

Today Chris is with us to talk about a resource that will help you assess the health of your church’s culture.

Murky organizational culture. // Most mid-size and larger organizations tend to have a solid strategy and execution with their systems and policies, but something still may not be right. The team from Catalyst Foundation comes in to help organizations find a way to become really practical about what to do today, tomorrow, and on a regular basis to make culture tangible.REACTIONS. // If culture isn’t working, we tend not to notice right away. To help solve the culture problems in a church, someone from the team at Catalyst Foundation will sit with leadership and talk about what’s happening at a church. A starting point to see how the culture at your church is would be to write the word R-E-A-C-T down the left side of a paper. Across the top, write I-O-N-S. This framework is the REACTIONS dashboard. The 5 words down the side are the reasons for a healthy culture: Reason, Energy, Alignment, Clarity, and Trust. Reason: do we all know and care about the reason for the organization? Energy: what’s the energy level? Do people have something to give and are they choosing to give it where we are? Alignment: are we all pulling together in the same direction? Clarity: do I know how information, resource and responsibility flows to me and from me? Trust: do we trust people in the organization – both their character and their competence? Score your church in each of these five areas under: I—Individual, O—Organization, N—Network (ex. Congregation, Denomination, etc.), S—Special/Specific.Celebrate what’s working. // After learning what is and what is not working at your church and determining where growth is needed, the team at the Catalyst Foundation encourages the church to celebrate what parts are working for them. More often than not, we as leaders tend to focus on the problems and figuring out how to solve them, but it’s also important to celebrate the good work in the church and what is working well.Work together. // As a leader you do your assessment on the REACTION dashboard, but it’s also helpful if the board or staff team does it together. Then you can talk about what concerns everyone or what is working. Some of us are aware of areas where we need help, but there may also be areas which are blind spots where we need someone else to provide input and wisdom.REACTION Dashboard. //Chris wrote a book, The REACTION Dashboard: The simple tool leaders use to understand, assess, and improve organizational culture. The first half of the book is fictionalized stories of a group of leaders who come together and share their challenges with the organizational culture. They build the REACTION dashboard together and gain insights from each other. The second half is a workbook style with ideas to help you in your own culture assessment.

You can find out more about Chris’s book at www.reactiondashboard.com and www.catalystfoundation.ca. Connect with Chris on Twitter @ChrisWignall and Instagram @ChrisWignall.

Lightning Round

Something You Wish They Taught // Facilitation – meetings are a really big part of what we do, but too many leaders don’t know how to lead a conversation where you’re not dominating it yourself.

Influential Book // Slow Kingdom Coming: Practices for Doing Justice, Loving Mercy and Walking Humbly in the World by Kent Annan

Downloadable Resource // REACTION Worksheet

Contact // website catalystfoundation.ca or on Twitter and Instagram

Thank You for Tuning In!

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live!

Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Pro Media Fire

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Source: Understand, Assess, and Improve the Culture in Your Church with Chris Wignall

The post Understand, Assess, and Improve the Culture in Your Church with Chris Wignall appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Beth Ehlert: The book of Acts captures the captivating story of the birth and growth of the First Century Church. There are a few times in this amazing story where Luke clearly describes the ethos of the community that was forming.

A wonderful example of this is found in Acts 2:42-47:

“42They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

These few passages give us tremendous insight into the culture that had developed in the early church. During a time filled with cruelty, uncertainty, and isolation, those who were embracing Christ were finding a shared life of community. Those who turned to Christ found the hope of their salvation and a new way of living that could not be ignored by those on the outside looking in. Others wanted what these Christians had! 

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The post Captivating Culture appeared first on Healthy Growing Churches.

Source: Captivating Culture

The post Captivating Culture appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Rich Birch: Are you an executive pastor wondering where you should focus your time and energy?

Are you wondering exactly how things are really going at your church?

Are you a bit mystified about how to evaluate what’s really happening under the hood of your church?

Executive pastors are an incredible gift to growing churches. The best executive pastors sit at the intersection of vision and reality. That is to say, they spend their time balancing the bright future of the church on one hand and the facts of where the church is today on the other. In order to move a church from where you are to where you believe God is leading you as a community, you need a series of robust systems. Systems are simply repeatable processes that “Save You Stress, Time, Energy, and Money”.

Executive pastors need to think about how these systems are performing across all areas of the church. In a very real way, the executive pastor is like a farmer cultivating a garden of systems by balancing each of the varying needs and requirements of the church against each other. An executive pastor should spend a considerable amount of time evaluating how well each of these systems performs and adjusting them accordingly when they don’t function the way they should.

This is a perfect time of year, the season of change, to build a plan for evaluation and adjust the systems required to help your church move forward. Here are six systems you should consider when leading as an executive pastor:

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Source: 6 Systems Every Executive Pastor Needs to Evaluate This Year – unSeminary

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by Rich Birch: Too often, church leaders only pay attention to weekend attendance and revenue patterns at their churches. Sometimes these numbers are referred to as “nickels and noses” or maybe the slightly more vulgar “butts and bucks.” However, there are many other factors to consider if we’re trying to understand what’s really happening inside our churches.

Attendance and revenue numbers are limited indicators; they are simply the result of other things taking place. To have a true understanding of how our churches are growing, we need to dive into leading indicators.

Leading indicators are numbers that demonstrate what’s happening under the hood of your church and reveal the direction it’s heading.

We measure and study those numbers because we believe that if we focus on measuring, we will see a greater difference in the lives of the people in our church and in the community that we serve. It’s been said that what we measure is what really matters to us. If we consistently only report on attendance and revenue numbers, then we send a subtle message to our leadership team that at the end of the day the only thing we care about are bigger numbers and more money.

We also need to move beyond how we feel about what’s happening at our church and look at the truth of the situation. Part of being a leader is defining reality, and numbers have a way of both doing that and sobering leaders in the process. Too many times I’ve heard church leaders talk about how they feel about what’s happening in their churches, but those feelings aren’t connected to reality in any way. Instead, we should be looking at numbers that reflect the truth about what’s actually happening at church.

An executive pastor or key team member should undertake the important practice of examining these numbers on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. Keeping these metrics in front of your people can help the church develop strategies and approaches that drive your church to be more effective. Prevailing churches often have dashboards that they generate internally and distribute (via email or through other reporting mechanisms) that present these numbers graphically in order to keep people who aren’t interested in spreadsheets keyed in on what’s happening at the church.

The question for us is what numbers should we be looking at outside of attendance and revenue? Here are seven other areas that you can regularly study to help you understand what’s taking place in your ministry.

New-here Guests

When a church leader talks to me about growth, I frequently find myself asking them about their new guest numbers. Understanding the ratio of new-here guests to your total average attendance can provide a clearer picture of what’s happening from an evangelistic perspective. This important indicator demonstrates whether or not the church is drawing in new people on a regular basis.

A good rule of thumb to follow is this: The yearly average number of new-here guests should be equal to the average number of regular attendees on a single Sunday at your church.

Example 1: If your church averages 200 people on a Sunday, then every weekend you should be averaging about four guests per weekend.

Example 2: If your church has 500 people in attendance on a regular basis, then every weekend it would be reasonable for you to see 10 new guests.

If your church typically averages less than that ratio, it could be that your new-here process isn’t robust enough or you’re not effectively gathering information from your new-here guests to get them connected. Likewise, it could be that your front door simply isn’t wide enough and that you need to spend more time reaching out to your community.

Year-to-year Growth

I’m constantly surprised that many church leadership teams fail to reflect on what their regular attendance was a year ago in comparison to today. This is a relatively simple way to see what’s happening in the life of your church. By comparing numbers from year to year, you can quickly get a sense of the momentum that has been gained or lost in your church over the last year.

I suspect many churches don’t report their year-to-year attendance numbers because they’re concerned that it will show that their church has flatlined or is in decline. However, keeping that number in front of leaders will force people to ask, what are we doing to reach more people this year than we did last year? If, in a worst case scenario, your church is in decline, ask yourself, “why aren’t we growing, and why aren’t we impacting more people than we did at this point last year?”

Percentage of Volunteers

This is an important health metric for the church. In fact, I see this number as a core reflection of growth and potential for the future of a church. Oftentimes, churches that have plateaued or are in decline see somewhere around 20% of their people serving on a regular basis. You’ve heard the old adage that 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Well, that’s not a good percentage ratio for your church.

Engagement is critically important to a growing church and ensuring that your community has a high percentage of people serving regularly is an important factor that ensures engagement is possible. Tony Morgan states that 45% of your adults need to be serving in one way or another. This percentage is relatively consistent with numbers I’ve seen in growing churches; on any given weekend, 30% of the adults are volunteering in one way or another.

Let’s do the math: if your church had 300 people in attendance last weekend, it would be reasonable and appropriate to see 100 people serving next weekend.

What that number of volunteers does is provide a high level of service for your guests by aiding and driving growth. Volunteer percentage is a critically important piece of the puzzle that is necessary for us to understand what’s happening in the lives of our churches.

First-time Volunteers

An even more granular number to look at is the inflow of volunteers that serve on a regular basis. If you are not seeing a consistent increase in the number of people volunteering, it is clear something is happening to stunt engagement and the future health of your church.

If your volunteer influx reaches zero, you have a pipeline problem that you will not necessarily feel the pain of today but certainly will in six months to a year. In fact, by the time you feel that zero new volunteers are serving, it’s too late, and you’ve already entered into a volunteer engagement crisis that is difficult to recover from.

Ask yourself this question: how many first-time volunteers have we had in the past, how many do we have today, and is that number growing? If you’re averaging one new first-time volunteer every weekend, the question becomes how can you increase that percentage in the coming year? The trajectory of this number is more important than the absolute number.

Next-steps Indicators

Are people responding to what’s happening in the life of your church? Is there tangible evidence that the ministry is making a difference in people’s lives? Are people taking steps closer to Jesus? Where in the life of your church can you see new spiritual development? Are people signing up for your new believers’ class? What are the baptism numbers this year?

Finding a way to track next-steps indicators is an important way to examine the softer side of our ministry. Again, if these numbers atrophy, it’s an indicator that we need to change and adjust what we’re doing. We won’t feel the pain right away, but a year or two down the road our ministry will stall and begin to recede.

Gallons of Coffee Drank

This one’s a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but I do think there’s something important about trying to quantify and track community that’s taking place at your church. I know for us, offering coffee after our services provides a quantifiable number that shows how many people slowed down to talk to each other on a Sunday morning. If people aren’t taking the time to interact with one another, it indicates that we have a larger community problem.

While I understand that gathering in small groups develops a greater sense of community than a Sunday morning gathering, we don’t want our Sunday mornings to feel like a show. We don’t want people to arrive and feel so rushed to leave that they can’t slow down, grab a coffee, and talk with members of their church family. So, while gallons of coffee drank may seem like a funny metric to keep an eye on, the question I would have for you is what are some other ways that you could quantify community happening within your church on a Sunday morning?

Kids to Adults Ratio

Looking at the broader impact of your church, we need to consider how we’re reaching the next generation. Churches that are impacting their community are obsessed with reaching the next generation. They spend a lot of time, effort, and energy on reaching young people and getting them connected to the church. They spend resources to ensure these ministries are led and funded well and that should translate into regular interactions with the kids.

I’ve spoken with a number of church leaders whose churches are in the final gasps of death, and one commonality between all those conversations is an expressed sadness over the fact that there are no kids left in the church, that the Sunday school or kids’ ministry is sitting empty. Keeping a close eye on this ratio over time will give you a sense of the long-term trajectory of your church.

Tony Morgan states that 20% of your community needs to be reflected in your kids’ ministry. I’ve seen these numbers grow as high as 30%, or even close to 40% in some churches, which (to me) represents a healthy future. It says that this church is attracting young families and people who are in some of the most important decision-making times of their lives. In fact, 50% of all people who make decisions for Christ do so before the age of 13; as such, our churches need to think clearly about how we’re reaching and affecting the next generation.

What are some other numbers you’re tracking?

Looking just at “nickels and noses” gives you a flat indication of what’s happening in the life of your church. Taking a step back and looking at these other indicators gives you a fuller picture of what’s happening in the life of your church. It’s the difference between a black and white picture and a 3-D image.

What other metrics are you tracking in your church? How are you getting these metrics in front of people? What ways should you be presenting these numbers so that they tell the story about what God is doing in the life of your church? Every number has a name, every name has a story, and every story matters to God. Tracking numbers is ultimately about getting a clear picture of what God is doing in the life of people in our community.

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Source: 7 Other Weekend Metrics Church Leaders Should Study Regularly – unSeminary

The post 7 Other Weekend Metrics Church Leaders Should Study Regularly appeared first on Passion for Planting.

Source: 8 Ways to Stop Biggering and Start Bettering the Church

The post 8 Ways to Stop Biggering and Start Bettering the Church appeared first on Passion for Planting.