Tag: leadership

Successful Succession

Bill Hybels on Succession The person who helped him think through the tough questions around this asked – Do you ever see yourself dying? The death rate is 100% Do you see yourself being Senior Pastor till your last day? Or when you’re walking slow and drooling?  PLANNING PHASE Every important matter to do with this needs to be asked. Who decides? How long will they have approximately What role will the pastor have afterwards How will their contribution be honoured? PHASE 2 Is there an internal successor? Give this a time frame. If not.. PHASE 3 External successor PHASE 4 18 months transition to new person.   This is a GOOD process! It gives security to the church.  But it’s tough on the pastor and needs to be handled with great sensitivity. Don’t assign a person with low Emotional Intelligence to handle it!   Some senior pastors hang on too long. Leave a great legacy! Trust God to guide you on the journey. Set the church up to be stronger as you go.  

SOW MORE SEED – BILL HYBELS

From DVD of Willow Creek GLS last year – watched with staff team today. Parable of talents. – Luke 8 Despite how bountifully the seed is sown (the good news of God’s love). Some people reject it- but don’t get discouraged. Some of it will land on good soil, too. The maths of this is amazing for the seed rejection ratio – he says there’s a 75% rejection rate. But then look at the maths of the tree that represents someone who says yes and has their life changed.  How much is produced by a transformed life. We want to see more trees! So – what must I do? PLANT MORE SEED! To overcome the rejection maths. Don’t just complain about the rejection rate! Plant different kinds of seed. We have to sow a lot more seed in our communities. Alpha Course Just Walk Across The Room Experiment!! You will see more trees. Leader – this depends on you. The church takes its cues from you. One of the fundamental requirements of a leader is to learn, experiment and stay […]

Why the Great Commission has stopped me ‘Evangelising’ and ‘Discipling’ people.

I’m disturbed that the church has made DISCIPLING a new kind of industry in the last 5 years or so. Everyone’s doing conferences or writing books with plans and formulas to ‘disciple’ people. As if it’s a verb – not a noun.

CROSSED OUT – Carpenter worth less than the wood and nails?

The cross, crossed people out. They didn’t matter anymore. It was a death that deliberately stripped all dignity. You were belittled. That means you were being, littled. Jesus’ cross was inconsequential. The sign above his head ‘King of the Jews’ – a bitter irony. He was nothing. Crossed out.

‘COULD YOU NOT WATCH ONE HOUR?!’ – (My struggles with learning to pray. part 2)

Occasionally I’d have a bit of an energy burst and do some journalling (ever done that?). Some of the conferences I went to had experts saying if you didn’t journal every day you had to doubt your salvation. I got a journal. The ‘MAN’ type, leather, with a cross on the front, not the girls one with flowers. Some time later I got another one because I’d hardly written in the first one. It had ‘MY PRAYER JOURNAL’ written on the front. But there’s still not much written in it. Actually though, Jesus didn’t journal. It really wasn’t me. I love writing, I hate journaling. I’m not even sure journalling is a word. How many ls should it have if it is? Spellchecker doesn’t like either. I read somewhere that CS Lewis STOPPED journaling when he became a Christian, because he’d done it for years before, and found it made him too self centred. I was doing really badly from the outset at how I thought you were supposed to be growing spiritually. It never got better. It’s not like […]

Make This Sunday’s Message RESONATE!

I’ve been a Nancy Duarte fan for years, highly recomending her books as a great investment to anyone who communicates (that’s you) and especially preachers. How fantastic to discover that one of the world’s leading authorities on getting your message across in a way people will hear it is also a Christian and passionate about THE Message that changes lives forever and the world for good. Invest 20 minutes on this video, and take notes! (I have the structure line on my office wall now together with some other prompts to help as I pull messages together).

REST – Part 2 of my talk last Sunday at Ivy Kingsway

Hebrews 4, the writer says this about God: “…his work has been finished since the creation of the world.” The rest came out of the finished work. Then it says to us, ‘while the promise of entering his rest is still open, let us take care that none of you should fail… to reach it…’ It goes on to tell of a whole generation of people who SAID they were God’s people, but NEVER entered into His rest.Why? Because they didn’t have FAITH. They didn’t really believe HE could do it. That means it takes FAITH to enter into the REST that God has for us. You have to TRUST God, to REST in God. You have to trust God, if you’ve ever going to rest your soul.

James White – The Christian Mind (iDisciple conference WCAUK)

There are few Christian warriors of the mind these days. Most retreat into personal piety or good works. We follow someone who died at 33. Don’t live a life that doesn’t offend people, if we don’t live as if we don’t care if we die, we will be impotent.