Lead Well

When talking about great churches, figuring out what drives them is very different from what drives a great business. Business’s have shareholders and trade on the stock exchange. Churches don’t examine profits and hand out bonuses to the people who helped make it happen. The same goes for us. You don’t have annual shareholder meeting with yourself to talk about what you did in the past year and what your plans are for the next. So what can we measure? Jesus said that man cannot serve both God and money . We will inevitably despise the one and love the other. If we are Christian, I would hope that we would choose to love God and despise money instead of the other way around. Thus, measuring how much money we made at the end of the year or even how much we saved, would be serving money instead of God, and ultimately, fruitless. Therefore, we must choose to serve God. To do so, we have two options. We can serve God by doing something we truly love or we can do something beca...

When we're kids we all think we are the best in the world at something.  What little boy doesn't dream of pitching in the bottom of the ninth in game seven of the world series?  Somewhere along the way, reality hits, and we realize that's probably not going to happen. But here's the good news.  We can be the best in the world, at something. First I need to define what I mean by “the world.” I don’t mean Earth. That’s far too large and hard to grasp. There will always someone who is better. However, I do mean your world. Your circle of influence. Your friends, family, and co-workers. You can be the best problem solver in your job. Sure, there are great problem solvers at the next place, but your circle doesn’t know them. They know you, and they come to you for answers. This is what it means to be the best in the world.* To really answer this question you have to understand 2 things. The thing that you are the best in the world and everything else that...

What makes an organization great? What separates two companies that sell the same product to the same people where one is incredibly successful and the other is a dismal failure? Several books, including Jim Collins classic, Good to Great , explores these questions and attempts to answer them. John Maxwell says that everything rises and falls on leadership. Show me a strong organization, ministry or business, I can show you a strong leader at the helm. Collins says a level 5 leader is what takes an organization from being just good to great.  While few of us will every reach level 5, we can all endeavor to be better leaders, and in turn, make the ministries and businesses we serve in better. So here are the 5 levels of leadership as outlined by Collins. Highly Capable Individual : This is the most basic level, where we start out and people start to give us more responsibility and tasks to complete. These people don’t really lead others, but they are beginning to lead them...