Four Realities that Hold Leaders Back from Moving Forward
What needs to change in your church or organization right now?
I suspect you could list several things. Some of the issues you are facing don’t have clear solutions. Many do, though.
What’s keeping you from implementing these solutions? What’s keeping you from fixing the problems?
If we sat down together, you’d offer plenty of reasons the solution cannot be quickly executed. After all, if it were an easy fix, it would still be a problem! But you feel somewhat held back, don’t you? You know how to fix the problem — or you at least know how you’d like to begin fixing the problem. But it feels impossible to move forward. Why is that? What’s holding you back?
It’s rare to see only one element holding leaders back from making progress. It’s most often a combination of issues. Let’s look at four:
“Relevance” Isn’t A Dirty Church Word
THIS IS AN IMPORTANT POST FOR CHURCH LEADERS OF ANY KIND – Senior Pastors, XPs, Students and Children, etc.
If you are in church leadership, I suspect you want next year to be your best year. I’d love to help you turn that hope into reality. After all, hope isn’t a strategy!
POST DETAILS:
Too many churches have misused and abused the term “relevant.” One thing is for sure: We don’t want to be irrelevant!
This NEW POST addresses this question: How relevant is YOUR church?
We talk about measuring relevance, and I offer you 5 practical steps you can take to move your church to better engage with your entire community.
If you find this helpful, please pass this along to any and every other church leader you know.
Merry Christmas! Here’s to making things better!!
Why Are Christians Always So Angry?
Today, I’m writing about angry Christians for two reasons:
1. I’m a recovering angry Christian. And
2. I tend to still get angry at angry Christians.
Give this a read, and I’d love to know your thoughts.
If you’re a pastor, I suspect we could do some really great preaching on this topic!
Do Your Sermons Impress Your Seminary but Confuse Your Church?
Preaching and speaking are emotionally taxing experiences.
There are few places in our life where we are expected to stand in front of a large group of people and be interesting, insightful, helpful, and accurate.
Can you imagine a political speech that maintained these requirements?
Did I mention these speeches happen every seven days?
Luckily our preaching goal isn’t to impress but to help people digest. The digestion of truth allows for application that leads to transformation.
In this post, I focus on making messages more simple. Not simplistic, but simple.
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One more thing: I’d love to work with you, your team, or your campus pastors on communication and preaching. I offer a six-session mastermind course on this topic online or in person – https://gavinadams.com/speaking/
Additionally, I’m happy to preach for you one Sunday and spend time that afternoon and the following day working together. If that’s of interest, let’s chat soon. My 2023 calendar is filling up. I’d love to save you a weekend. Just reply to the email and we’ll go from there.
Talk soon.
Why You Should Ask For Help
How often do you ask for help?
I know you offer help. As a leader, helping and serving are part of the job.
But I find most leaders aren’t as open to receiving help.
Why is that?
In this post, we’ll discuss how receiving help helps you and your helper.
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QUICK QUESTION: Where do you need help? Every leader is capable of some things, but not everything. If strategy, change, or systems is a gap in your natural leadership, perhaps we should talk. For most clients, I serve as their organizational strategic advisor.
Reply to this email if you’d like to connect.
You Don’t Have To Know What’s Next To Let Go of What Is
Are you a “what’s next” oriented person?
I definitely am. It’s hard to be content with what is when you’re constantly focused on what’s next. Or what could be next.
In this post, I give you two strategies to leverage when you find yourself focusing on what may be next.
Reactivating the “Quiet Quitters” in Your Church
“Quiet quitters” aren’t just quitting at work. They’re also quitting at CHURCH.
They may show up occasionally, but they aren’t engaged. They have no plan to engage. And good luck changing their mind.
It seems our best option is to reengage by making engagement easier. People today need more incremental opportunities to take easy steps.
BTW: This is how discipleship works. Discipleship is a journey of incremental progress that requires incremental steps. In the past, these steps could be longer, but today, people need more help.
In this NEW POST, I give you some ideas, including how you can regrow your VOLUNTEER TEAMS.
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FYI: I recently shared a FREE VIDEO RESOURCE with all my current followers specifically addressing the volunteer movement in today’s church environment. You can access it in the “FREE RESOURCES” section here: https://gavinadams.com/church-discipleship-model/
10 Rules to Keep Creative Meetings Creative
There’s nothing worse than a creative meeting that destroys creativity.
I’ve seen this happen. I’ve caused it to happen.
Whether you’re a business leader hoping to improve a product design or a pastor designing a church service experience, opening the creative funnel is required to leverage a team’s creativity. Unfortunately, it’s too easy to limit creativity than create space for it.
How can you ensure creativity remains present in your creative meetings?
Try establishing creative team meeting rules. These rules aren’t suggestions but guardrails to ensure you or another team member don’t eliminate creativity.
10 Creative Meeting Rules
1. Don’t kill a bad idea too soon.
Bad ideas often birth spectacular breakthroughs. There are no bad ideas at the beginning of the process. Yes, there are bad ideas for sure. Any bad idea that makes it to implementation is a mistake. This is a “creative meeting,” not an “execution planning session,” therefore, bad ideas are allowed.
Rules 2 – 10 are available in the post.
How Being Less Responsible Can Grow Responsibility in Others
Could being overly responsible increase your team’s irresponsibility?
Because leaders are typically very responsible, they tend to act responsibly. When a problem needs to be solved, a decision needs to be made, or a system needs to be implemented, the responsible leader jumps right in. It’s just natural.
But consider this: If you always step in to take care of problems, your team will let you.
In this NEW POST, I give you 4 strategies to give away responsibility to reduce your team’s irresponsibility.
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QUICK NOTE: I have some FREE LEADERSHIP RESOURCES available here: https://gavinadams.com/leadership-coaching/
Are you leading or managing? I work with plenty of leaders as a coach and consultant. One thing I know for sure: Your organization can’t thrive tomorrow if you aren’t leading well today.
Check out the above page to see if working together may help you lead better than ever.
We MUST Stop Creating Selfish Christianity!
I’ve always loved this quote.
“You win them to what you win them with.”
— Aiden Wilson Tozer
It’s been repeated with slight deviations over and over again.
I believe this quote sums up much of our current Christianity problems.
In this NEW POST, we’ll evaluate the attractional church and what we are seeing today in its place. Both are doing the same things: Creating Christianity in the image of culture.
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Also, I’m working with churches and church leaders in 6 specific areas of ministry leadership. Two are:
1. Remodeling the Church Model: https://gavinadams.com/church-discipleship-model/
2. Fully Funding the Church: https://gavinadams.com/growing-generosity/
Check out the FREE RESORUCES on these pages and let me know if working together would help you.
