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True Empowerment

Empowerment is a key component of leadership.  Great leaders do not just lead followers, they lead leaders.  In order to do that they have to empower their leaders to ge the job done.  It has been said that you should not delegate tasks, but rather, delegate responsibility.  Craig Groeschel takes that one step further and says we should delegate authority.  Maybe he learned that from God.  In the book of Numbers in the Bible we read about God telling Moses how to empower Joshua:

Give him some of your authority so the whole Israelite community will obey him.  Numbers 27:20

Being asked to lead people towards a certain effort but not actually being empowered to do so is frustrating.  If you continue to ask your leaders to do certain jobs and don't empower them, they will eventually leave.  Some ways we can empower leaders are:

• Give them the power to make decisions without your input
• In the beginning, empower them in front of the team you lead by publicly acknowledging that they have the authority and responsibility to lead their team.  This is key in the transition from you to another leader.    
• When people circumvent the leader and come to you, make them go to the leader even though it would be easier to lead in their place.    
• Use the vision to guide your leaders rather than your decisions (I need to work on this)
• Provide your leaders with the right information early and often.  Another way to frustrate your leaders is to empower them without the right information.  Because, then they don't look empowered to their team.    
• Listen to them and allow them to have a strong voice in the direction of your team and organization.   

  Stop frustrating your leaders and start empowering them.  (yeah, that's directed to you Nick)  

Friday Five

Here are my five favorite blog posts from the week:

Tally Wilgis - Be More for B'More - Tally & Captivate Church have ways that you and your church can get involved to help them help Baltimore

Perry Noble & Tony Morgan - They announced a big decision here and here - Love the way they're handling it

Ed Stetzer - Church Planting Bibliography - Amazing list of books about church planting

Casey Ross - Speaking the Truth In Love - Good thoughts on a tough leadership task

Brad Lomenick - New Digital Magazine from Catalyst and Leadership Journal - Brad announces Catalyst's new digital magazine....check it out

Exponential Conference - Day 2 #exponential09

Our staff team is here in Orlando, FL for the Exponential Conference.  It's a conference (also called National New Church Conference) that is geared towards church planters, church planting churches and networks.  Here are some highlights from my experience on day 2:

• The True North band has lead worship for the conference and has done a great job.  


• Craig Groeschel did a great job in the opening session of day 2.  He talked about necessities for a movement.  Marc Choi from Onnuri Church in Korea (small church of over 40,000), started off the session telling the story of Onnuri Church, his involvement, and his story about planting a church here in the U.S.


• I attended a breakout on the internet, websites, and the church.  It was awful.  


• The day ended with a Tok Box interview (pre-recorded) of Ajai Lall and Derek Duncan, pastor of East 91st Street Christian Church.  Derek was transparent and authentic and his message was simple and powerful.  


• I attended a breakout session with Efrem Smith that was pretty helpful.  It was about serving to build community.    


• Hearing from church leaders in other countries was awesome because the church is exploding in other countries around the world.    

Here are my favorite quotes:

• "A movement will never be about your ministry, it will be about His kingdom."  - Craig Groeschel


• "Don't blame yourself for the declines (in church attendance) or you'll take credit for the increases" - Craig Groeschel  


• "We need to courageously surrender" - Ajai Lall via Derek Duncan  


• "You're never ready to plant a church" - Derek Duncan  

Exponential Conference - Day 1

Our staff team is here in Orlando, FL for the Exponential Conference.  It's a conference (also called National New Church Conference) that is geared towards church planters, church planting churches and networks.  Here are some highlights from my experience today:

• Erwin McManus was the speaker for the opening session.  Erwin always blows my mind with the way he teaches.  His teachings always challenge me to dream bigger and live more like Jesus.  He really is an artist in many ways, chief among them being his use of words and his great storytelling to communicate his message.  He taught from Acts 17 and brought fresh insight.  I could have listened to him for the rest of the day and would have been thrilled.  


• Tim Keller made an appearance via video and had some good insights.  He said that church planters should make a deal with their family to overwork for a specified time during the early stages but cut back to a healthy schedule after the specified time period, no matter what. 


• I went to a breakout session lead by Gary Lamb.  I follow Gary's blog and twitter but had never met him or heard him speak.  Well, there were no surprises.  He was passionate, funny, loud, and little crazy which made for a great breakout session.  He talked about how to do church in a portable setting with excellence, but without spending a lot of money.  Tons of great practical advice.


• The other breakout session I attended was lead by Brad Leeper and was all about how to foster extravagant generosity.  It was interesting to find out that he helped plant a church in Baltimore, MD that most "church people" in Baltimore know of.  Small world.


• We had dinner with Stadia (a church planting organization CCC works with) and all of the church plants that Stadia helped start.  It was cool to see all the new couples who will be planting churches in the upcoming year.     

Some of my favorite quotes from the day:

• "Love covers a multitude of irrelevance" - Erwin McManus


• "Answering the question - what do you do? - by saying you're a pastor is like saying 'I'm a cannibal, want to have lunch'?" - Erwin McManus


• "The popular phrase 'money follows vision' is a lie." - Gary Lamb (He says that is true after you have launched a church but not so much before.  Before it's about relationship and vision.


• "Church planters are the biggest excuse makers" - Gary Lamb  

Friday Five

Here are my five favorite blog posts from the week:

John Maxwell - Crises call for critical choices - I like this quote "Leaders are not MADE in a crisis.  Leaders are REVEALED in a crisis."

Perry Noble - Running Uphill - Part Four of Five - Great post about pushing through fear.  I've always loved Erwin McManus' take on fear - he said "courage isn't the absence of fear, it's the absence of self"

Kem Meyer - 15 essential checks before launching your site - Great list to follow

Brad Lomenick - Taking Risks - Brad answers the questions - “why do you step out and risk when you have a comfortable niche you are running in? Why change if things are going great for you?” 

Mark Batterson - I Am Barrabas - So am I.  So are you.

Easter Service Vidoes

I follow a lot of church leaders through their blogs and on twitter.  So, this week I saw a lot of videos from Easter services and Good Friday services.  Here are some of the ones I saw:

(I provided links insteading of embedding so they aren't all trying to load at once)

Buckhead Church Good Friday Closer

NewSpring Church Band Covering "Highway to Hell"

Granger Community Church "Bittersweet Symphony"

Northlands: A Church Distributed "True Love"

Imago Dei Community Good Friday Video

Elevation Church Easter Opener

Revolution Church "Rebel" Series Intro

Prioritize.....sometimes on faith

If you're like me you have WAY too many things to do and WAY too little time to do them.  All of us prioritize somehow, usually based on what absolutely needs to be done the soonest.  After that, we usually prioritize based on what we like to do first or can accomplish the fastest, depending on how we're wired.  

The tough thing about prioritizing is when we convince ourselves that we won't accomplish our daily activities if we add something else in.  That's okay if we're leaving out certain things (like when I can't play video games) but it's no okay when we bump out time with God, time with family, exercise, etc.  

At CCC a while back we did a series called Big Rocks.  The idea was that if you got the big rocks in place, everything else that needs to fit in will as well.  About 5 weeks ago I started exercising Mon-Fri (of course I miss about once a week).  I've made it a priority and haven't really noticed that I've lost any time even though I'm giving about an hour to that each day.

I've also found this to be true in terms of my time in prayer in Bible study.  When I make that a priority I feel like it's a great start to my day and I don't lose any productivity (as best as I can tell).  That's where the faith comes in, actually believing that putting God first will allow us to get done what we need to get done.  It's funny how that has always been true yet I still mess it up.

Success

What is success for a church or ministry?  That's a tough question to answer.  I'm all for measuring everything we do in order to gauge its health.  But, we can easily lose focus from the really important things and only judge success based on other areas (numbers, popularity, $).

Yesterday I listened to episode 64 of the Catlayst Podcast with Pete Scazzero.  Pete talked about 2 questions he uses to measure success:

Who has God called me to be?

What has God called us to do?

Friday Five

Here are my five favorite blog posts from the week:

John Maxwell - File Under F for Filing - This is priceless information from John Maxwell.  The discipline necessary to have a system like this is probably the discipline necessary to be a leader like him.  

Vince Antonucci - Who Are The Right People - I think most church planters would agree with Vince's take on this, but few have the guts to act on this thinking like I've heard Vince does.  I think it is very wise, and it seems Seth Godin does as well.....

Seth Godin - First, ten - Seth talks about the importance of having ten real fans as opposed to having more people who are less committed.  Tons of church leaders were talking on Twitter about how this post relates to the church world, especially church planting. 

Kevin Stone - Leadership Fundamental - Developing Infrastructure Is Critical - Kevin talks about an aspect of great leadership that is often overlooked.   A lot of pastors say the importance of a great #2 person on the staff team is crucial and I think part of that is because a lot of #2's are gifted in this area.

Steven Furtick - That Can't Happen - Great thoughts about how to respond when things go wrong.

"Satan's" Thoughts on the Economy & Money

The team at LifeChurch.tv put together this clip showing "Satan's" thoughts on the economy and money.  Funny, sad and true all at the same time: