March 19, 2020
Disappointment in ministry is inevitable but

5 Ways to Handle Disappointment in Ministry

If you are in leadership or ministry long enough, you will have seasons and moments of disappointment. It might be someone you are counseling that walks away and doesn’t want your help. It might be a leader who decides they aren’t on board anymore, and they leave. Some will create division or hurt in your life. Maybe someone is mean to your wife or kids. The list is endless. What do you do in those moments? For many, these moments are when someone leaves for a new job — explaining how God has called them to a church that will […]
March 12, 2020
Kevin Halloran shares the importance of vulnerability and transparency on a ministry team in order to grow in integrity.

Establishing Transparent Ministry Teams

This is the final part of the transcript of a conversation on Preventing Disqualifying Sins in Ministry between Kevin Halloran and John Eichholz. Reshared with kind permission from Leadership Resources Intl. Listen to the audio interview here: It’s important for us as individuals to think about, how we can we best prevent sin in our ministries, sin that could derail our ministry. How might we encourage a leadership team in a church or an organization to seek to protect one another? JH: I want to bring out our organization, Leadership Resources, as a good model. I find this mission organization a […]
October 17, 2019
system

Healthy Church Systems

Many leaders and couples get into church planting or leading in a church because we care about people and want to see their lives changed; marriages healed, past hurts redeemed, addictions broken. This is why we labor, pray, vision cast, have meetings, preach sermons and sacrifice like we do. But how does that happen? The work of the Holy Spirit is one, but the other part of that is through relationships and systems. God is a God of systems and relationships. We see in Genesis 1 both of these. God creates man and woman in His image, and we see […]
August 22, 2019
succession

The Emotions of Pastoral Succession

resharing with kind permission from Carey Niewholf Succession has emerged as one of the major issues facing the church in the next decade. Businesses are not that far behind in struggling with succession. Most senior pastors (especially founding pastors) hang on too long. The question is why. In a candid and disarmingly honest interview, Amplify Founding Pastor, Lee Kricher, and his successor, Jason Howard, talk about how they paved the way not just for the next generation of leader, but for the next generation of church, allowing the model to change while the leadership changed. In the midst of it, […]
June 4, 2019

How to Make Vision For Your Church Actually Stick

Reposting with kind permission from Breeze church.  A few weeks ago, I experienced a frustrating conversation. Someone on my staff was talking with a few of our volunteers and when I walked up to say hello to everyone, my staff member asked if we had a mission statement. I was like, “Wut?!? In front of our volunteers you don’t know our mission statement?” In my mind, everyone knows our mission statement because…well, everyone knows! We talk about it all the time, right? I guess not. My initial thought was, “You’re fired.” But then I remembered that when the team doesn’t […]
May 21, 2019
loneliness

The Weight & Joy of Being a Pastor: Loneliness

reshared with kind permission from Joshua Reich.   If you talk to any pastor or his wife and ask them about friends, more than likely you will get a sad, longing look. Many pastors and their wives are lonely. They have been betrayed, hurt, and left out. As I’ve been sharing the weights and joys (Preaching God’s word every week, You can’t change people, God’s call on your life, Seeing life change, People under you are counting on you, God using you, What God thinks of you and Communicating God’s word) of being a pastor, the loneliness a pastor and his wife experience can be unique to this […]
July 13, 2018

GProCommission Leadership Revolution Interview (Free Resources)

Bruce Witt is a pastoral trainer whose emphasis is on Christ-centered leadership: establishing Christ as leader in every follower. Watch and learn how Leadership Revolution is challenging and inspiring leaders all over the globe. Leadership Revolution is generously sharing their many incredible resources with all the pastoral trainers and leaders of the GProCommission, free of charge and available to you on the GProLearning site. We encourage you to watch the short video interview, download the materials and then pass this on!   WATCH the GProCommunity short video interview below with Bruce Witt, the President and Founder of the Leadership Revolution. […]
March 6, 2018
decisions

3 Ways Church Leaders Can Make Better Decisions

Article on making decisions from guest blogger Aaron Buer at Breeze Church.  I’m currently obsessed with the stories of the Old Testament Kings of Israel. Their stories are fascinating. There’s also a lot to learn from these guys – the good and the bad. Speaking of good and bad, King Solomon was a jumbled up mix of good and bad. On the one hand, he is described as the wisest man in history. On the other, he basically enslaved his people and apparently married every woman he met. 700?!? Come on bro. Let’s focus on his strengths. He was next-level […]
March 1, 2018
ministry team

3 Lessons I’ve Learned in Leading a Ministry Team

Guest Post from Aaron Buer. Reposted with kind permission from Breeze. Three big transitions have brought about the greatest growth in my life. The first was my wedding day. I’m coming up on my 15th anniversary this fall and I can’t imagine who I would be without my wife and how our relationship has shaped me. The second was the birth of my first child. Wow, was I not ready for the level of selflessness required for parenthood. The lesson was a tough one for me so we went ahead and added four more kids to make sure I really caught […]
February 15, 2018

Letter to a Leader Wanting to Level Up

Dear Growing Leader, I have been thinking about our conversation regarding your desire to take your church to the next level and the matter of developing a leadership culture in your church. You are right in connecting these two issues, a fact that is usually overlooked, but is now more and more proving to be a matter of vital concern. I happen to agree with John Maxwell who said “that it all rises and falls on leadership.” Some years ago Rick Warren studied a large number of successful churches from a variety of denominations and found one consistent characteristic that […]