With Skillful Hands

The Benefit of Teamwork

April 14, 2015 By Mike Leave a Comment

The purpose of teamwork is synergy. Synergy is the state in which the output is greater than the sum of the inputs. One plus one equals three, four, even five! Let me explain... In the 1885 world series of mule team competition, held in Chicago, the winning team pulled 9,000 pounds, the second place team a little less. Someone suggested that they see what the two teams could do together. The result was 30,000 pounds, much more than the sum of their separate loads. Or take geese for … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Staff

How to Stay Fresh in Ministry

April 9, 2015 By Mike Leave a Comment

I received church planting and senior pastor coaching from Kerrick Thomas and Nelson Searcy of The Journey Church for five years. Here's one of the best things I learned from them. Nelson used to say that the way to stay fresh in ministry is to: Divert daily, withdraw weekly and abandon annually. If you're going to stay fresh you have to take breaks, you have to rest, you have to do something other than work. And you have to do this daily, weekly and annually. Here's how this fleshes out in my … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Leadership

Quarterly Reporting to Your Board of Directors

April 7, 2015 By Mike Leave a Comment

At New Day, each board of director is a pastor that does not attend New Day. Since they serve from a distance I work hard to keep them informed of what's happening at our church. If they don't have the right information, they can't properly help us succeed in our mission. One of the ways I keep them informed is by sending them a report at the end of each quarter that summarizes some of our key metrics. Here's the last one I sent for January through March of 2015. Sean, Bill & Daniel, The … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Leadership

Dealing With Underperformance

April 2, 2015 By Mike Leave a Comment

If you have a low performing staff member (or volunteer) on your team, you basically have three options: 1. Train them. You may have failed to properly equip them to do their job well and if that's the case you need to take a time out and spend some time training them properly and thoroughly. 2. Transfer them. Jim Collins in his book Good to Great points out the importance of both having the right people on the bus (a metaphor for your team) and having each person in the right seat on the bus. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Staff

Tip for the Salvation Invitation

March 31, 2015 By Mike Leave a Comment

In this post I want to share a tip that will help you create a more powerful salvation invitation. Not too long ago I learned the concept of the preacher as witness. Here's the basic idea: A preacher is like a witness in a courtroom. And the audience is like the jury in that they will be weighing Christ’s paradigm for living vs culture’s paradigm for living. And at the end of the sermon they will make a decision for or against Christ's way. That being the case - during our weekly sermon run … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Preaching

Twenty Mile March

March 26, 2015 By Mike 4 Comments

I read in Jim Collin's book Great by Choice of two explorers in a race to reach the South Pole in the early 1900s. Team A would take advantage of good weather and travel 40 miles in a single day. But then they would take a couple days off to recover. If bad weather came, they would take those days off too. Then when good weather came again, they would go extreme and travel another 40 miles or so. Team B had an entirely different approach. They would travel 20 miles a day, no matter what the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Leadership

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