Sunday was “National Student Pastor Preaching Day” and Why That’s Great
I was preaching the week after Christmas the first time I heard someone joke about the youth pastor preaching the week after Christmas. I was the student pastor. The person was joking that it was “national student pastor preaching Sunday” because many senior pastors take the week off and hand the responsibility to the student […]
4 Ways to Avoid Being a Distracted Leader
An effective leader is a focused leader. A distracted leader greatly limits his or her effectiveness. Instead of leveraging influence, intellect, and inspiration towards a great purpose, a distracted leader divides resources across a plethora of priorities. A distracted leader commonly diffuses attention and focus and chases too many goals. Distractions can come masked as […]
5 More Learnings From Serving the Church as I Go Back to the Church
As I have transitioned out of a role that served tens of thousands of churches a year and back to the local church, leaders have asked me what lessons I am taking with me. “What learnings from serving many churches are you taking with you as you go back to serving one church?” The first […]
3 Reasons Leaders Are Wise to Recognize Their Weaknesses
When a basketball player attempts to do too much on the court, the person is called a “ball hog” or chided for playing “hero ball.” Being a ball hog looks like not trusting your teammates, taking impossible shots instead of giving the ball to a teammate for a much easier one, and insisting that everything […]
A Story of Two Landscapers and One Reminder on Motivating Your Team
Two landscape architects woke up today and essentially performed the same job, executed the same tasks, and worked roughly the same hours. Let’s call these two landscape architects Joseph and Christopher. Joe works for a landscape company and spent his day at the homes of clients of the company, planting annuals and mulching beds in […]
3 Essentials in Christian Leadership Development
When I was a freshman in college, I served a local church as a youth pastor. I was growing in my faith and eager to pour into teenagers. The church was Southside Baptist Church and the pastor was Jerry Key. It was a small church with about 100 people and a handful of kids in […]
What You Can Look Forward to on the Other Side of Being Overwhelmed
The cliché: “Don’t bite off more than you can chew” is unhelpful because it is good for a leader’s development to occasionally do so. The same is true with lifting weights. If you want your muscles to grow, you must lift heavier weight, and put your muscles under stress and pressure. If you lift the […]
3 Items That Should Be on Your “Stop Doing” List
The second law of thermodynamics revolves around entropy, the principle that things move to disorder and chaos over time. Left alone, things do not become more orderly or more effective. Your once well-ordered garage digresses to clutter. No matter how much you attempt to wish it into existence, your garage will not get more clean […]
6 Ways the Team Reflects the Leader
One of the most challenging and convicting insights Brad Waggoner has shared with me is that “a leader can complain about the culture of the team for only a few years because after that, the culture reflects the leader.” In a church or an organization, there are multiple teams or groups. Obviously there should be […]
3 Bad Excuses for Avoiding Leadership Development
Great leaders intuitively know they are responsible for future leadership, and all leaders have heard these catch phrases: “There is no success without succession” and “Work yourself out of a job and you will always have a job.” Yet few leaders plan and prioritize developing others. There is always something else to do, always an […]