Feeling Overwhelmed in Ministry or Life? Try this.
Ministry burnout, overload, and destructive stress lead to an abysmal survival rate for pastors today. For 20 years a friend of mine followed 105 pastors and discovered that only half remained in ministry. Many other statistics bear witness to the high fallout rate for pastors. Burnout, moral collapse, and the weight of ministry has shattered
Your Brain’s Leadership X-factor
X-Factor: A variable in a situation that could have the most significant impact on the outcome. X-Factor: a tv show by Simon Cowell that didn’t do so well. The term X-factor usually carries a positive mystique, a quality not readily identified except by its impact. We’ll say… The singer has the X-factor that makes her
7 Keys to Help Church People Remember your Sermon Better
As a pastor I’ve been trained how to create a sermon so that it’s theologically sound (good hermeneutics) and applicable to the listener (good homiletics). However, seminary never taught me how I might help church people listen better and retain what they hear in a sermon. In the last few decades neuroscientists have learned much
A Simple Exercise that will Infuse Life into your Staff
Some time back our church staff held our annual in-house evaluation retreat when we reviewed the prior year’s goals and plans. God had given us a good year and we wanted not only to discuss how we could improve, but rejoice in His blessings. After we prayed, we did a simple exercise that infused life
Leaders and their Listening: at which of the 4 Levels do you listen?
One of the greatest skills a pastor or leader can develop is to learn to listen well. We pay others a high compliment when we listen. We affirm others’ God-given value when we listen. We develop our own heart when we listen. The father of the field of listening, Ralph Nichols, captures the essence of listening in these
Strategic Planning in a Nutshell
I’ve used this simple tool to capture the essence of strategic planning. Feel free to use it with your team. Related posts: How to Plan an Effective Solo Planning Retreat 5 Mistakes Pastors Make when Planning Staff Retreats
4 Traits of the World’s Second Greatest Leader
I believe Jesus was the world’s greatest leader. I would call the Apostle Paul the world’s second greatest leader because he wrote much of the New Testament and because he spread Christianity into the the west through his missionary journeys. The book of Acts details much of those early missionary journeys. Acts 16 describes four traits that Christian leaders
How do Discover your Leadership Vibe in 10 Minutes
I love to read. As a life-long learner I learn from others’ writings and I believe integrous writers should always give generous attribution to authors whose ideas they embrace or write about. That’s why I often reference my ideas as I do here. Some time back I read Do More Great Work by Michael Stanier. It’s a short but
9 Signals Your Hormones May be Hijacking your Leadership
God gave us a magnificent creation called the brain.Weighing less than three pounds, it wields incredible influence over how well leaders lead. Although we usually call the brain a computer, it’s more like a pharmacy that constantly dispenses drugs (hormones and neurotransmitters) into our bodies and brains which affect our emotions, our thinking, and our leadership. A
The Hidden Bias that Trips Up Leaders
Decision biases can negatively affect even the best church or business leader. Wikipedia lists almost 200 social, memory, or cognitive biases (I had to stop reading the list to keep from getting depressed). However, I’ve experienced one that I believe often trips leaders up. It’s called the confirmation bias. It’s a thinking bias that looks for information that supports our