Today’s blog post is by Tony Morgan. Tony is the founder and lead strategist of The Unstuck Group, a company that helps leaders grow healthy churches by guiding them through experiences that focus vision, strategy and action.

By Tony Morgan

If you’re familiar with any of my work, you probably can guess I really like numbers.

While numbers aren’t everything, without a baseline perspective, it’s hard to make decisions about ministry strategy. If you’re trying to discern whether or not a church is healthy, the numbers give you something consistent to review—an indication if all of the activity is producing the right results.

Many churches try to make changes and have no way to measure if those hard-fought changes are really having an impact—in a positive or a negative way, which is why I think it’s so important to be looking at what the numbers are telling us.  

Exactly two years ago, my team released the very first version of The Unstuck Church Report. It was designed to give church leaders an objective view of church health by highlighting the trends we’re seeing in 5 key areas of ministry across a wide variety and number of churches (Ministry Reach, Staffing and Leadership, Connection, Finances and Ministry Health).

What indicators can we look at to see if a church is healthy?

It’s easy in ministry for there to be a lot of anecdotal stories that illustrate how people feel about church or a specific ministry, but what about data to show where the Church is headed?

A few quarters ago, I even dissected the difference in growing and declining churches in each of the key areas. It was fascinating.

Each quarter, I like to share the data that stands out to me.

This quarter, there were three areas in particular that I want to dig into. These are the trends that jumped out at me.

While numbers aren’t everything, without a baseline perspective, it’s hard to make decisions about ministry strategy.Click To Tweet

1. The Front-Door Challenge

I wasn’t surprised to see this show up. When my team and I work with churches, this is something that we see often, and this is also a theme we’ve seen consistently in our quarterly reports.

For churches to maintain health and growth over time, the number of first-time guests over a 12-month period needs to be equal to or greater than their average weekly attendance. But, on average, we’re seeing churches of 1,000, as an example, average 490 first-time guests in one year.

If you dig into the report, you’ll see that ministry connection numbers are getting stronger, but also that churches are seeing fewer first-time guests. These numbers combined suggest churches really are dealing with more of a “front-door” than a “back-door” challenge.

I suggest reading what I wrote on Carey’s site last month. With an outside perspective, Connexus embraced this “front-door” challenge by pursuing an inviting culture and went all-in on becoming a church that’s passionate about seeing their friends, neighbors, and colleagues experience Jesus.

(A few years later, they’ve seen their number of new guests sky-rocket.)

The number of first-time guests over a 12-month period needs to be equal to or greater than their average weekly attendance. -@tonymorganliveClick To Tweet

2. An Increase in Group Engagement Isn’t Necessarily a Win

This quarter, we saw churches report that 64% of adults and students are in small groups, but only 44% of adults and students are engaged in volunteering.

On the surface, this may look like a win. Yes, it’s encouraging that so many people are connecting into small groups for community and Bible study. And that is a great way to connect with people and build relationships. My wife Emily and I have been involved in, or led, many small groups over the years.

However, our experience at The Unstuck Group has shown that people who volunteer are actually far more “engaged” in the mission of the church. Having people involved at that volunteer level impacts many aspects of church health, including frequency of worship attendance, invitations to new guests and giving, as examples.

If you’re trying to find ways to engage people and keep them engaged, it’s critical to build up the volunteer teams and leaders of those teams.

Serving together creates a deep, rich community environment worth pursuing. It gives people the option to “own” part of the mission of the church and put their gifts and talents to use. This is how God designed the Body of Christ to engage the mission…together.

If you’re trying to find ways to engage people and keep them engaged, it’s critical to build up the volunteer teams and leaders of those teams. -@tonymorganliveClick To Tweet

3. Governance Complexity and Declining Churches

Back when I wrote the article series on the differences in growing and declining churches, the same data stuck out to me.

Declining churches have twice as many committees.

Declining churches have twice as many committees. -@tonymorganliveClick To Tweet

Churches that have large decision-making boards and multiple additional committees generally struggle, but it should be no surprise.

The more people you have making decisions about what can or can’t happen in ministry, the fewer people you have actually doing ministry.

Growing churches have streamlined their governance structure to eliminate unnecessary committees and the meetings that go with them.

This allows these churches to be more nimble when it comes to decision-making. Tough decisions that impact the overall health of the church don’t get bogged down in various layers of bureaucracy.

It’s counterintuitive, but it can often be smaller churches that struggle with having more committees and boards than larger churches. If you lead at a small church, it might be time to reevaluate how your church governance is structured to make sure it is efficient and actually serving the church’s broader vision and mission.

The more people you have making decisions about what can or can’t happen in ministry, the fewer people you have actually doing ministry. -@tonymorganliveClick To Tweet

This data is just the beginning.

The Q4 2019 report holds some really compelling data on 15+ other metrics.

I really believe this tool can help you take some valuable steps towards health in your ministry. It’s invaluable to have data and benchmarks to measure your church’s health and see where other churches are today.

If you’re interested in reading the other metrics and learning about the trends we’re seeing, you can download the report here.

It’s invaluable to have data and benchmarks to measure your church’s health and see where other churches are today. -@tonymorganliveClick To Tweet

What Changes Do You Need To Make?

Getting a church growing or helping a church that’s reaching new people grow even further can seem daunting.

It doesn’t have to be.

Whether you’re a church that isn’t growing, has plateaued, or whether you wish your church was growing faster than it is, I’d love to help you breakthrough. That’s why I created the Church Growth Masterclass.

The Church Growth Masterclass is everything I wish I knew about church growth when I got into ministry more than 20 years ago.

The Masterclass includes a complete set of videos that you can play with your team, board or staff, PDF workbooks that will help you tackle the issues you’re facing, and bonus materials that will help you navigate the most pressing issues facing churches that want to reach their cities today.

You can learn more and gain instant access to the course today.

Which of these metrics could you be doing better on?

I’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment below:

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Source: The Church Health Trends You Need to Be Looking At

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by Cary Nieuwhof: When you think of large churches and mega-churches, what comes to mind?

If there’s one thing I learned from writing about the church, it’s that some people hate megachurches. With a passion.

I try not to engage the trolls and the haters in the comments on my blog (engaging them just gives them what they want). But I’ve also noticed that even among normally more balanced and nuanced church leaders, it’s easy to take swipes at megachurches.

Sometimes I wonder how much of that is born out of envy, a sense of inferiority or simple misunderstanding, but after years of hearing people complain about large churches and megachurches, it might be good to re-visit the subject more intentionally.

A while back, someone left this comment on about some large church pastors who burned out:

Wish these guys would get wise and start obeying Scripture and follow the New Testament model of interdependent churches under presbytery rule with representatives. Of course these preachers get burned out. They’ve made themselves the lynchpins of megachurches. They should get burned out. It’s a bad model of church government on many fronts, and it’s actually from the mercy of God that these men burn out. Churches are meant to be small, tightly knit communities, not splashy corporations. You build a monster, you get devoured. Or you become a monster. Burnout of megachurch pastors probably saves souls.

Burnout of megachurch pastors actually saves souls? I wish I was making this up. But I’m not. Somebody actually wrote this.

…

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Source: 5 Unfair Criticisms of Large Churches It’s Time To Drop

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 by Carey Nieuwhof: Wherever I talk to leaders, they tell me one of the their top challenges is finding enough people for their teams, particularly volunteers.

Then—usually within minutes—they tell me an even bigger challenge is to find the right people—people who can lead, inspire, mobilize and accomplish things, and that they don’t have nearly enough young leaders ready to move the mission forward and reach the next generation. (If it’s helpful to you, here are some keys to working with and leading Millennials.)

Regardless of age, though, this is a challenge in staffing that cuts across every demographic, and it’s an even bigger challenge for churches and organizations that use volunteers.

Churches will almost always have 50-100 times as many volunteers as you do staff. And, by definition, you can’t incentivize volunteers with attractive salaries and benefits.

For all those reasons and more, most churches struggle to get enough volunteers, and almost all churches struggle to find the right volunteers. And everyone leading teams struggles to get great people.

And here’s what’s at stake. Your church or organization will never grow unless you master the art of leadership development.

Why? Because your church will only grow as large as your team enables it. Perpetually small teams create perpetually small churches. But grow your team, and you open the path to growing your church.

The question is, how do you do that?

Despite all the talk over the last few years about developing a leadership pipeline, most leaders are struggling to figure out how to do it.

So today, let me show you a simple short cut I’ve found to stacking your pipeline with the best new volunteers and team members.

Here we go.

Perpetually small teams create perpetually small churches. But grow your team, and you open the path to growing your church.Click To Tweet

There Are Two Kinds of Team Members

So let’s start with a simple reality. There are essentially two kinds of people: leaders and doers.

Leaders gladly rise to a challenge and can take others with them.

Doers, on the other hand, prefer to do what you tell them and little more.

Effective organizations build teams of leaders, not just teams of doers.

Effective churches build teams of leaders, not just teams of doers.Click To Tweet

So many leaders told me they felt like they have a volunteer core of doers and hardly any leaders. Or at least if there are leaders present, they can’t seem to find them.

Why is it so important to make this shift from doers to leaders?

Because doing doesn’t scale. Leadership does.

If you really want to reach the full potential of your mission, developing a culture of leadership will take you there in a sustainable way.

You will always need doers, but you’ll also need a solid group of leaders in place to lead and manage the doers.

Which raises a big question: How can you tell if a potential team member is a leader or a doer?

Here are 5 ways to tell whether the volunteer you’re looking at is truly a leader, not just a doer.

Doing doesn’t scale. Leading does.Click To Tweet

1. Check To See If They Have Followers

Simply put, leaders have followers. Doers, not so much.

Look beyond your church or organization to see whether a new volunteer functions like a leader in the community or more like a doer.

Sure, they’re not leading at your church, but if they’re really a leader I promise you they’re leading somewhere. A leader might be running a shift at the local coffee shop and doing it well.

Or your new volunteer may be a mom who is pretty much running her neighborhood—the play groups, the book clubs. She’s a leader.

Maybe your new volunteer is a young adult running a small business or a music studio.

Or, let’s say they’re still in school, true leaders will already be volunteering as president of a club or leading trips or teams or doing something meaningful that they don’t have to do.

Bottom line: look for people who are already leading something somewhere. You can spot a leader because they’re already leading and they already have people following them.

If they’re leading well in their life and they believe in your mission, there’s a good chance that they are going to lead well on your team.

Leaders have followers. Doers don’t.Click To Tweet

2. Study Their Influence

The simplest definition of leadership I know is from John Maxwell: leadership is influence.

Influence doesn’t depend on position. You don’t have to be at the top of an org chart to have influence. In fact, if the only influence you have comes from your title, you’re not a leader.

If the only influence you have comes from your title, you’re not a leader.Click To Tweet

Conversely, there are interns who cultivate tremendous influence in organizations because they’re so great at what they do and have figured out how to lead others.

Watch for the influence people have both in your church (everyone listens when she talks) and in the community.

It’s a sign they may be a leader, not a doer.

Conversely, people who don’t naturally cultivate influence won’t necessarily gain any influence just because you put them in charge.

People who don’t naturally cultivate influence won’t gain any just because you put them in charge.Click To Tweet

3. See If They Make Things Happen

Doers respond to what’s happening. Leaders make things happen.

Doers can take direction and execute someone else’s vision, but they will require energy and follow-up that a leader doesn’t require.

A leader is a catalyst— creating change, momentum, and progress. You want to build your teams around people who make things happen.

Doers respond to what’s happening. Leaders make things happen.Click To Tweet

4. Watch How They Respond to Responsibility

Leaders love responsibility. Doers get overwhelmed by it.

Often church leaders are hesitant to give volunteers real responsibility and authority. We’re worried they’ll think it’s too much, because, after all, we tell ourselves, ‘they’re just a volunteer.’

But paradoxically, true leaders are energized by responsibility. They love a challenge.

You’ll find a leader constantly asking, “What else can I do?” Even better, a leader will proactively pursue more responsibility.

To be fair, jumping into responsibility and challenge can be a sign of dysfunctional behavior. Usually, it’s not. But occasionally, it is. Here are 6 signs that will tell you whether the eager volunteer you’re talking to is toxic.

Still, healthy leaders rise to the occasion. It’s the way God made them.

Leaders love responsibility. Doers get overwhelmed by it.Click To Tweet

5. Give Them a Challenge

Finally, leaders love a challenge. Doers don’t.

In the same way doers get overwhelmed by responsibility, they find a challenge to be too much.

When you have a big vision for something new and you cast that vision to a leader, true leaders will be energized and excited.

They’ll even add their own ideas and begin envisioning whom they’ll invite along with them.

Leaders with big gifting love big challenges. So give people a significant challenge and see who steps up (and who doesn’t). That will show you where the leaders are.

Leaders with big gifting love big challenges.Click To Tweet

By the way, even though this post is primarily about finding volunteers, these 5 criteria also work beautifully for staff hires.

More On Finding and Deploying the Best Leaders to Help Your Church Grow

What most leaders don’t realize is that the barrier to growth in churches isn’t always spiritual. I mean some times, for sure it is.

But I see so many leaders who love God, love people, are faithful, attract some new worshippers, but never seem to grow. What’s up with that?

Well, pop open the hood and you soon realize their problem isn’t spiritual, it’s structural.

The bottom line is you need to structure bigger to grow bigger.

I devote two sessions of my Breaking 200 Without Breaking You Course to the issue of identifying and developing volunteer leaders in your church, an essential step in moving past the 200 attendance barrier.

This course has now helped over 1000 churches tackle their growth barriers, helping them grow break the 100, 200, 300 and even in some cases, 500 or 1000 attendance barrier by helping them clear the structural barriers that stood in the way of their growth.

You can see a list of all the subjects I cover in the eight session course here. You can take the course personally as a senior leader, but each course comes with 12 licenses so you can actually go through it with your team and board, which is the best way to make progress.

My heart behind the course is to help every church work through the changes you need to make to experience sustained growth well beyond the 200 attendance mark.

So – whether your church has an attendance of 50, 150, 250 (or any size up to 1000), the principles will help you gain the insight you need to break the barrier more than 85% of churches can’t break.

Plus, there’s a 30 day money back guarantee. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain by tackling the barriers you’re facing.

Click here to get instant access.

What Helps You?

What helps you tell whether a volunteer is a leader or a doer?

Scroll down and leave a comment!

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Source: How To Stack Your Leadership Pipeline With The Best Volunteers and Team Members

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by Rich Birch: Have you ever considered why some churches grow while others decline?

What is it that seems to drive some churches to make a difference and reach more people while others struggle to keep the doors open?

This will be a year of incredible breakthroughs in some churches while others will find themselves at the beginning of eventual decline; even more churches across the country will close.

In the coming year, there will be leaders reading this post that will look back and remark at how amazing it was to have reached more people and to have seen them get plugged in, while others will look back and be shocked that their church is in a plateau or decline. My assumption is if you are reading this article that you’re a church leader who cares deeply for your church and you want to see it thrive!

…

Source: 7 Facts About Church Growth That Will Make You Think Twice

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by Carey Nieuwhof: So…what’s the difference between a growing church and a declining church?

Well there are many, but one of the biggest differences I see is the attitude of the leaders.

The leaders of growing churches almost always share a common attitude.

So do the leaders of declining churches.

And the attitude has a huge influence over the results each church sees.

Attitude may or may not be everything, but it’s close.

Here are 5 attitude differences I see again and again in growing churches and declining churches.

1. We Can v. We Can’t

Perhaps the biggest differences I see between growing churches and declining churches is the attitude around what’s possible.

Growing churches believe they can.

Declining churches believe they can’t.

They’re both right.

…

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Source: 5 Significant Attitude Differences Between Churches That Grow and Churches That Don’t

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by Carey Nieuwhof: 12 years ago, Levi Lusko left Southern California to plant a church in Montana. Today, Fresh Life Church has 12 locations, most of them in very small towns where few people would plant churches.

Levi talks about why and how they did it, how he handled the cultural gap, and about how he’s met some of the personal challenges he’s faced as a leader along the way.

Welcome to Episode 224 of the podcast. Listen and access the show notes below or search for the Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and listen for free.

Guest Links

Levi on Instagram | Twitter | I Declare War

CNLP 213: Levi and Jennie Lusko on Losing their Daughter, and How to Fight through Grief to Keep Living and Leading

Fresh Life Church Locations

Orange

Episode Links

Breaking 200 enrollment is open! Don’t miss out on the absolutely best pricing of the season and exclusive bonus material at breaking200course.com.

Find a healthcare solution that’s way more affordable for you as an employer and for your staff at RemodelHealth.com/Carey. Receive a free quote and buying guide just for checking them out.

Maximize giving at your church. Visit Pushpay.com and discover why churches see an increase in giving by using Pushpay’s digital mobile strategy.

Great stories keep rolling in from Didn’t See It Coming readers. You guys are amazing and I am thrilled to see how this book is resonating with you. Don’t have your copy yet? Grab one here.

…

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Source: CNLP 224: Levi Lusko on Planting Churches Where Nobody Plants Churches, Being Yourself in a Different Culture and Declaring War on the Issues that Plague You As a Leader

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by Carey Nieuwhof: Every week you host services at your church hoping to reach more people, which is admirable and appropriate.

The problem is that the culture is changing and never bothered to ask you permission.

In many ways, preachers are using a method that’s been around for centuries…if not millennia…which on the one hand is wonderful. The challenge is that culture is changing so rapidly, fewer and fewer people are hearing the message every year. At least that’s the case in many, if not most churches.

If you think that the cultural change is over, fasten your seat belts. It’s not showing any sign of decelerating any time soon.

Here are 7 things that are changing right now.

Wise leaders will see the change and respond. As we’ve said before, leaders who see the future can seize the future.

The problem for most preachers is that the culture is changing and never bothered to ask you…Click To Tweet

1. People Aren’t Automatically Coming to The Message Anymore

It’s almost singularly true that throughout human history to date, the only way to get the message was for people to assemble to hear it.

Just think about Jesus’ day: the crowds assembled to hear him. And in every century since then, that’s how it worked…

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Source: Declining Attendance and 7 Preaching Shifts That Are Happening Right Now

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by Carey Nieuwhof: It’s easy to believe that there will come a day when your church or organization will never struggle and you’ll never struggle as a leader.

As tempting as that is to believe, it’s just not true.

Every church struggles. And every leader struggles. And—yes—even growing churches struggle.

I outlined the struggles smaller churches experience in my post 5 Tensions Every Small To Mid-Sized Church Leader Feels. Having started ministry in very small churches, I can relate to each of those struggles personally.

But your struggles as a leader or as a church don’t go away when your church starts to grow. They simply change.

I’ve always said I’d rather have the challenges associated with growth than I would the challenges associated with decline (and that’s absolutely true), but it still means you have challenges.

As our church has grown from a handful of people to over 1,500 people who now attend and over 3000 people who call our church home, we’ve navigated all of these challenges. So has almost every church that’s grown. And I’ve felt the same challenges as this blog, my leadership podcast and other things I do have grown.

Here are 9 thing pretty much every leader struggles with as their church or organization starts to grow…

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Source: 9 Surprising Challenges You’ll Face When Your Church Grows

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by Tony Morgan: What is the first-time guest experience really like at your church?

When my team at The Unstuck Group helps a church assess ministry health, one key step we take is to attend and review the church’s weekend experience through the lens of an outsider.

That’s because once you see what an outsider sees, you can’t unsee it.

Serving in 100+ churches each year, we’ve started to notice some patterns.

What are the most common offenses? Here are the Top 10—the biggest issues with the weekend that we see the most often.

Keep in mind, these are only issues for churches that actually want to reach new people…

One last thing before I get to the list: Many of these issues show up in the “secret shopper” reports for large churches just as often as in small churches.

Once you see what an outsider sees, you can’t unsee it.Click To Tweet

1. The Guest Services area is staffed with people who don’t engage with newcomers.

The church feels like a private club. Guest service team members are more engaged with one another than with newcomers.

Guest services are the “first” in “first impressions.” If this team is off, my visit is off within minutes.

If the guest services team at your church is off, the guest’s visit is off within minutes.Click To Tweet

2. The church didn’t welcome me and help me know what to expect.

There’s a general lack of guiding visitors through the worship experience and explaining what to do in the different elements of the services, like singing, offering, etc.

Specifically welcoming new people is frequently missed. Someone yells “welcome” and then all of a sudden people start standing up, and then they sing. The only place I sing is in my car or in my shower. Guide me a little more. Invite me to sing, but give me permission to just take it in.

3. People on stage don’t reflect the church’s target “customer.”

The people on the platform should non-verbally communicate this is a safe place, a normal place, to the people you are trying to reach… just by being who they are.

Many times the platform presence doesn’t reflect that. A lot of churches miss the “75% rule”—having 75% of people on the platform in the same age range (or below) as the people you are trying to reach. (Credit to Lee Kricher in For a New Generation for defining it well).

Put 75% of people on the platform in the same age range as the people you’re trying to reach.Click To Tweet

4. The service order feels like an assembly of separate parts, rather than a cohesive experience.

Stop…start…stop…start… Nothing makes me check my watch more than a herky-jerky service. We sing two songs, there’s a video announcement, there are live announcements, we have a song for offering, message, another song, communion, closing announcement, benediction…

An unchurched person will be thinking, “Get me out. Land the plane.”

Nothing makes a guest check their watch more than a stop-start-stop-start service.Click To Tweet

5. The message is too long.

Especially if there were already a lot of other service elements (see the last point), I’m not gassed up for a 45-50 minute message. Tighten it up, add a story, make it applicable, and send me on my way.

6. Lack of application or next steps in the message.

I’ve given you an hour—give me something specific to take away that applies to my real life today.

7. Lack of security in the children’s area.

If I can walk off the street into your kid’s area, that’s a problem.

My team often finds unlocked, dark, rooms in the same hallway as kids programming, along with unattended external exits.

This is an issue we see far, far too often.

If someone can walk off the street into your kid’s ministry area, that’s a problem.Click To Tweet

8. The bulletins/programs are too crowded.

It looks like the Cheesecake Factory menu. What on earth am I supposed to choose to pay attention to?

This is a key first impression piece for a new person. It should welcome them, tell them what to expect and provide key info on kids ministry.

Unfortunately, many churches view it as the way to keep all the insiders informed.

9. Too many specific, insider-focused announcements instead of a few church-wide announcements.

I would add that many churches waste announcement time telling me about all the logistics of what their people could be doing instead of leveraging that time to communicate the “why” behind the activity.

They use the time to say, “Small groups will start next week, at 7 pm, in room 202, which is up the steps and down the hall.”

What would be more meaningful? Share a personal story about your small group and then challenge people who aren’t connected to get in one.

And really, just stop announcing so many things all together. Point people to your website.

Stop announcing so many things at your church. Point people to your website.Click To Tweet

10. The feel of the church—the interior design—feels like nothing else I experience outside the church.

It’s brown. There are bulletin boards, plastic flowers in the restrooms, churchy banners that mean nothing to an outsider, and sometimes worn out carpet, furniture, and funky smells.

The church members and staff have been nose-blind to it all for years, but a new person who steps through your front door will instantly notice all of it.

Your first thought reading that list might be that having an outsider attend your service and point all of these things out would be discouraging.

Oddly enough, the opposite tends to be true. This experience is one of our clients’ favorite phases of the whole planning process.

Why? Because as I said at the beginning, once you SEE what an outsider SEES, you can’t UNSEE it.

If you want to reach new people, start trying to see yourself the way they see you.

And, start looking at them the way Jesus looks at them: with a willingness to leave the 99 for the one.

If you’d like some more insight on this topic, I dug a little deeper in a recent episode of The Unstuck Church Podcast (5 Ways to Impress Your Church’s First Time Guests | Episode 45).

In that episode, I give some suggestions for how to prioritize tackling these issues, where to start, and why.

You can listen (and subscribe) here: The Unstuck Church Podcast

Final thought: This matters. Let’s not make it difficult for those who are taking a step towards God. Let’s do everything we can to meet them where they are.

Let’s not make it difficult for those who are taking a step towards God. @tonymorganliveClick To Tweet

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Source: Want to Reach New People? These 10 Habits Set Your Church Back

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by Carey Nieuwhof: If you preach with any regularity, you know the pressure that comes with staring at a blank screen with a deadline approaching.

And if you communicate regularly within the context of the local church, like I do, you quickly discover that Sundays come around whether you’re ready or not.

I get asked regularly what I do to prepare for my messages, and there are a few things I practice and that I’ve seen other leaders do that I think can gain any communicator an edge.

They’re not talked about that often, but they work for me and for other communicators I admire. But even more than that, it took me years to get there.

Here’s to shortcuts. Five of them actually—for every communicator and preacher.

1. Focus initially on the quality of your thinking instead of the quality of your writing

So how do you get to a killer message, article or post? You think your way there before you write your way there.

Look, I admire great writers and communicators. They can make anything sound interesting, fun or even meaningful.

But I appreciate great thinking even more.

So will your audience.

A great idea adequately expressed is worth more than a bad idea eloquently expressed.

If you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig.

A great idea adequately expressed is worth more than a bad idea eloquently expressed.Click To Tweet

If you’re trying to develop fresh angles, perspectives and insights, time is your best friend. I often start thinking through a sermon series or book a year or two in advance. I’ll keep notes in Evernote and just let the ideas simmer, refining them or adding to them regularly.

If time is your best friend, change of venue is your next best friend. I personally find that ideas get better not when I’m sitting at a computer keyboard, but when I’m doing something else: cycling, cutting the grass, washing the car, listening to a podcast or music or even cooking. Something in the back of my brain will connect dots I didn’t think connected.

When that happens, all you need is a place to record the idea. Again, Evernote is so handy. I have recorded dozens of voice files in Evernote during bike rides. It’s a convenient way to save key ideas I don’t want to lose without stopping.

This approach may not get you to next Sunday or your Wednesday deadline, but don’t get discouraged.

Instead, this week, why not start keeping notes on future series, articles and posts? Use whatever system you want, but just write your ideas down and let them gestate.

If you keep notes like this and refine your thinking over weeks and months, you’ll develop a catalogue of great ideas that can be put into use at any point in the future.

A good idea gets better over time. A bad idea gets worse over time. So give yourself time.

When you jot down your ideas and revisit them as time passes, you’ll have a much clearer sense of which is which, and the pressure to get to Sunday disappears. Plus you can keep refining them and making them better.

A good idea gets better over time. A bad idea gets worse over time. So give yourself time.Click To Tweet

2. Spend a lot of time on a few key words or thoughts

When you’re keeping your journal of ideas and concepts for the future, keep them simple.

My notes look like a series of key phrases and ideas that I keep refining until they resonate.

If your thinking is strong (see #1 above), then the next most important thing is to phrase your thinking so it’s both memorable and impactful.

Many communicators I know and respect summarize their thinking in a bottom line: a short, memorable statement that outlines the main point of the message you’re delivering.

Here are some examples of bottom lines I’ve written:

Changing your mind can change your life. 

Moral compromise compromises you. 

God doesn’t runaway from runaways.

You can make excuses or you can make progress but you can’t make both. 

God is bigger than your circumstances, and he’s better than your than your circumstances.

The best sex life is a surrendered sex life.  

It can take me weeks or months of letting an idea simmer to reduce to a simple statement like the statements above, but it’s so worth it.

I find that once I have a key idea stated as simply as that, the message becomes relatively easy to write, because the statement has so much pre-loaded into it.

Why is this so important? It’s simple. If you’re not clear on what your message is about, no one else will be either.

If you can’t state the main point of your message in a simple phrase, then you don’t understand it well enough to deliver it.

If you’re not clear on what your message is about, no one else will be either.Click To Tweet

3. Test your key ideas on a team

I personally do a lot of my writing alone, but I employ a team at key stages.

Some of my favourite writing moments happen when I walk a rough draft of the bottom lines and a short summary of the talk or series I’m working on into a meeting and bounce them off my team.

Three things happens when I present my outline to a team:

1. I learn which ideas resonate and which don’t. Better to find this out now than when giving the talk.

2. The team will frequently offer better ways to phrase key ideas than I’ve developed on my own. This makes the message or talk far better.

3. Verbally processing my ideas in front of a team often helps me discover better ways to say things than I would have discovered on my own.

I like to walk ideas into a meeting like this a month or two before I need to finish the message.

Then I go back and finish up the talk on my own, sometimes checking back in, but sometimes not if the talk or piece is now resonating well.

4. Think more about God and your audience than you think about yourself

When it comes to delivering the message, most of us naturally over-focus on ourselves. Here’s why you’ll think about if you don’t stop yourself.

Will:

Deliver this well?

People laugh at my jokes?

I knock it out of the park?

I have those thoughts too. But when I focus on them, I tend to do less well than when I focus on two other elements: God and my audience.

A sermon is not really about how you ‘did’ as a communicator; it’s about God’s interaction with his people.

A message isn’t about how you ‘did’ as a speaker; it’s about whether you helped your audience meet Christ. So don’t focus on how well you did as a preacher, focus on how well you brought Jesus.

Put a filter on your thoughts about you.

For sure, you need some personal elements in your talk…some stories, and maybe even some humour. But even while those elements are about you, they’re not. They’re about God using you and about your audience.

When you take the focus off of yourself, your insecurities lessen their grip. You begin to serve God and serve your audience through your communication, and you find you actually help people far more.

Don’t focus on how well you did as a preacher, focus on how well you brought people to Jesus.Click To Tweet

5. Focus on understanding your message, not memorizing it

This one’s for speakers.

How do you memorize a 45 minute talk?

I have no idea. But I regularly give 45 minute talks without using notes.

The best piece of advice I’ve ever received on how to ‘learn’ a talk is this: don’t memorize your talk, understand it.

Think about the next conversation you have today at work or with your family. You don’t memorize what you’re going to say before you say it. Instead, you understand what you’re trying to accomplish (I need to talk about the third quarter results, or what we’re doing for dinner.)

A talk is obviously more complex, but not much more.

If you do this, all you have to remember is the big idea of what fits in each part of the talk. Sometimes it’s as simple as thinking “How do I get to the main point again? Right, the story about last summer’s vacation!”

Personally, I will write out some stories and key phrasing in detail, but I don’t write a full manuscript any more.

I just write enough so I understand what I’m going to say.

That takes the pressure off of you as a communicator, because if you forget something the only person who knows is you. And the talk is shorter, so everyone wins.

Don’t memorize your talk. Understand it.Click To Tweet

Tomorrow’s a BIG day for Preachers

Tomorrow, Mark Clark (Lead Pastor of Village Church, a rapidly growing megachurch in Vancouver) and I open up our brand new course, The Art of Better Preaching.

You can still get a free Preaching Cheat Sheet  if you visit the website today.

The full course opens for registrations tomorrow, Tuesday, June 19 2018.

In the Art of Better Preaching, Mark and I share everything we’ve learned about communicating in a way that will help your church grow without compromising biblical integrity. We cover detailed training on everything from interacting with the biblical text, to delivering a talk without using notes, to writing killer bottom lines that people will remember for years.

Don’t miss out!

Any Tips?

What tips have you discovered for better preaching and communicating?

Scroll down and leave a comment!

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