I believe and practice the concept of team leadership. I want people in our organization that will assume ownership of an individual task and follow through with the responsibility of seeing projects completed well. We have a shared leadership philosophy at Grace Community Church and I have posted about the need for a leader to “give their vision away†to people he or she trust to make it better.
We are seeing good news about the economy this week. Here is a recap of some I found today:
At the same time, our church has continued to grow and the needs for our ministries are greater than ever. This season has forced us to find ways to do more with less. We need to continue to train our people, learn new ways of doing things and keep up with current trends, but we can no longer afford to attend all the conferences we once could.
Happy Memorial Day! Today we remember the lives of those who sacrificed for freedom. I am honored to live in a military town. All my life I have known soldiers. Some of my best friends and family have been military-related.
The best life, community and spiritual growth happens at Grace Community Church within the context of our small group ministry. We have some amazing leaders of our small groups. I’m always encouraged by their willingness to sacrifice part of them to invest in other people. I know each of them would say, however, that they receive far more in return than they give up. Serving others is like that.
Today I want to put a contextual spin on the issue for the area of spiritual growth. I know lots of believers, especially early in their Christian walk, who think they should instantly have spiritual maturity shortly after being saved. Spiritual growth is a process that takes years of discipleship.
Pastors, I’m curious about your preparation methods to speak on Sunday.
Will you help me with this quick survey?
If you are like me you want to see consistent improvement in your organization. Sometimes I can be overly critical because I have such high hopes and expectations for us as a church. At times I can become a bit overwhelmed with all the things I think need to be tweaked, completely overhauled or killed altogether.
Recently I delivered a message to our church about the type of work ethic Christians should have. You can watch that message HERE or listen to it HERE. There were thoughts in preparing to speak that I could not fit into my time allotted for the message, but I felt were important enough to share. This is one of those thoughts.
Shai Agassi is a 40 year old wildly successful founder of Better Place, a company deep into the green energy production boom. He left a very lucrative career with software giant SAP just before they were to name him CEO to take a giant leap towards his dream. Harvard Business Review recently interviewed him. Here is an excerpt from that interview.
Yesterday we were blessed at Grace Community Church with a production crew filming for a new reality television show featuring families who raise special needs children. The Garcia family have hearts bigger than most of us can imagine. They have one child with downs syndrome, but their desire is to adopt another one. They already have the child placed on their heart and are just waiting until God provides the resources. You can read more about the Garcia’s HERE.
I was talking with a friend recently who said one of his biggest turnoffs to Christianity, before he became a believer, was a Christian who freely talked about his faith, but had the worst work ethic in the company where both of them worked.
This is a re-post from November, but it is back by request. Several people have asked me lately how I accomplish as much as I do. Here’s my plan:
If you aren’t doing so already, I want to encourage you to plan your week for efficiency. Every Monday (or Sunday night if you prefer), as the first thing you do, consider the week ahead. Follow this formula:
This morning something I already knew was reinforced. We have some of the most awesome volunteers in the world at Grace Community Church. It takes 150 or more volunteers each week to make a Sunday work. All our volunteers give selflessly to the vision of Grace from the parking lot, to working with children, to greeting and the stage crew. Their dedication each week amazes me.
Recently some friends of ours 12-year-old pug was lost in their neighborhood. The dog has numerous health problems, so they naturally assumed the worst. They were obviously upset about it and asked us to pray. Thankfully a few days later they found their pug. I wanted to share the story of how their 3-year-old son reacted to the dog’s disappearance.
