Church Growth

The-Rules

The second rule of turnaround leadership

What if turnaround leadership was a matter of following a few simple rules about how pastors behave, and that these behaviors are as important as – if not more so – than what pastors do? In our upcoming book Pastor Unique: Becoming a Turnaround Leader we reveal groundbreaking research demonstrating that turnaround pastors behave differently

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Guest assimilation: the turnaround pastor’s roadmap

Guest assimilation for churches is like helping people out for a stroll in a strange neighborhood. Imagine it is you walking through the neighborhood after sunset. On the homeward leg a young woman approaches and asks, “Can you tell me how to find East Wilshire Terrace? I’ve walked the neighborhood, but I can’t tell which streets go

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church-metrics

Church metrics – measure the things that count

Metrics can be tricky Elsewhere I’ve written about the trouble pastors of plateaued or declining churches can get into if they use the traditional metrics. In this post I want to emphasize the importance of those metrics when they’re used in the right church context. Picture this scene – one all to common in the life

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Turnaround, Salvation Army Bldg, Fort Collins

Avoiding Dry Rot in Ministry

When working as an engineer in Fort Collins, our firm was hired to do some renovation work on a historic downtown building. At the time, this red brick building housed the Salvation Army ministry (pictured above). The edifice consisted of a basement and three upper levels. The nearly 100-year-old structure possessed character and distinctive architectural

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Turnaround pastors love the challenge of change

Turnaround pastors are “different.” Sometimes it seems that rather than marching to everyone else’s drummer, they’re lurching frantically from one spinning plate to the next. But don’t be fooled. Their ability to shift attention and their appetite for novelty may seem undisciplined and unfocused. Their madness has a method! Spinning the Plates of Change This

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Hospitality at the 2nd friendliest church in town

After a recent move a friend (we’ll call her Sue) decided to find a church nearer her home. She began her search by checking out a nearby mega-church. Despite their claims, it was an unfriendly experience. Three episodes showed that “friendliness” was an aspirational rather than an actual value at this church. She received a “free” coffee coupon they

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