Tweet I left the church planting world to help revitalize and grow an established church. It’s proven to be challenging – maybe slightly more than I thought it would be….
Tweet I love working with younger leaders. It keeps me young and it helps to know I’m investing in something and someone who will likely last beyond my lifetime. I…
Tweet Bottom line: Every organization — whether a church, business or nonprofit– needs change in order to continue to grow and remain healthy. But here’s the thing about change. If…
I was recently asked for any suggestions I have for planting a church in a different community from where you currently live and know. There is a group of 25 plus people who are leaving the comforts of home in California traveling to the state of North Dakota to plant a church. I love that kind of faith.
If you don’t know, Grace Community Church is my hometown, so I am very familiar with our community, but I planted a church before this one in a city in which I didn’t know anyone well. Still, as I thought about these suggestions, I really believe they are shared for any church plant (perhaps even any church.)
Of course, these are given assuming you have a clear calling as to where you are to plant, but here are some of my suggestions for planting a church a another community. There are probably hundreds of others, but these were the first 7 that came to my mind:
Recently I posted 7 steps to achieve your dreams. I love helping people attain their God-given visions. It occurred to me that there may be a counter post needed here. This may seem like common sense, but I’m not sure it is sometimes. The fact remains that more people will look back on their life and wish they had done more with their life than they did. I heard someone once say something like, “If you’re not careful, your “hope to do’s” will become your “wish I had’s”. I have many of those areas in my life. I want the next phase of my life to be different.
Here are 7 reasons you may not be achieving your dreams:
I love and encourage dreaming, because I think it’s healthy emotionally and the process helps us accomplish great things personally and for God. We are told we serve a big, creative God, whose thoughts will always be bigger and better than ours, so dreaming should be natural to believers. Dreaming stretches the vision of churches and organizations, it fuels creativity, and many great opportunities develop first as a dream.
The reality is that more people have dreams than attain them. Perhaps you have dreams you have yet to accomplish. I certainly do. One reason dreams never come true is that we don’t have a system in place to work towards them. I love to be an encourager for people with great dreams, so with that in mind, here are some steps to help you move towards reaching your dreams:
If you were sitting in my office, however, I would attempt to draw this diagram on my dry erase board. I hope you can get past the crude drawing to get to the intended meaning, because it really is important to understand in shaping a marriage.
Tweet Every change costs someone something. One of those costs, which is often underestimated by those leading change, is the emotional response to change. All change has an emotional response….
Tweet Change invites conflict. You can’t escape that fact. But… Avoiding change stifles growth. Which eventually leads to conflict. (Ever been a part of a declining organization…or church?) And… Avoiding…
Tweet How controlling is the environment in which you lead? That’s a great question, isn’t it? I’ve previously written about controlling leadership. I tried to help you discern controlling leaders…