Having a simple strategy promotes and protects the big picture of disciple-making. It also enables the church to live in a “less is more” reality. Simplifying around discipleship requires ruthlessly consistent communication.

The single greatest tool for ruthless consistency is what we call the Missional Map. The Missional Map is a picture that shows how the church will accomplish its mission at the broadest level.

The strategy icons below are a sample from hundreds of Missional Maps developed through Auxano:

Just imagine everything a regular attender experienced at your church was saturated with a picture that points to discipleship. What if this picture trumped everything else in your church communications? The benefits would be huge.

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I’m at the Exponential Conference this week teaching a series of workshop sessions. For those of you who are attending, I’ve done all the hard work for you. Here are all my session notes for you to download.

• Finding Your Focus — “The Giant Inflatable Blue Monkey“
• Leading Your Team — “Killing Cockroaches“
• Systems Turn Visions into Reality — “Mind the Gap“

I know. It would probably make more sense to label my notes to match my talks, but this approach will keep you on your toes.

For all my friends at Oak Leaf Church, I just wanted to let you know that Emily and I are flying to Orlando today. (Don’t worry. Our kids and our home are in good hands.) I’m speaking at a conference for church planters. Emily is getting a couple of well-deserved days off. We’ll be back for the services on Sunday though. Really looking forward to the launch of this new series.

In case you’re interested…

• We had a great crowd at Oak Leaf this past weekend. Honestly, I was surprised at how many people showed up. It was a record weekend for all three West Ridge campuses. It’s fun to see the momentum taking place in all three locations.
• We had a very high percentage of first-time guests on Saturday and Sunday. You all are doing an incredible job of inviting guests. I have to assume the Egg Drop last week also prompted a number of folks to check out one of our Easter services.
• As I was chatting with people outside after the services, you would be amazed at how many people have started attending Oak Leaf in the last several months. I really appreciate the investment our volunteer teams make to welcome people who are new to our church.
• We launch a brand new series on Sunday. We’ll be back to our “normal” service schedule at 10:00 and 11:30 am on Sunday morning. Don’t be surprised, though, if we need to call an audible sometime in the coming weeks to add a third service.
• The new series, “Make War”, is going to be intense. It’s a great opportunity to continue inviting friends. You can check out the video trailer for the series below. Because of the heaviness of this teaching, though, it will be appropriate for you to encourage families with kids to take advantage of the Oak Leaf Kids ministries during the services.

Thanks for continuing to pray for us and the other leaders. We’re praying for you. See you on Sunday!

As a gift to my readers and the participants of this week’s Exponential Conference, today is the official launch of my new eBook, The New Traditional Church. This eBook includes a compilation of articles that generated a lot of interest on my website. Ben Stroup has, once again, helped me refresh the content and add some new features to encourage conversations and action steps with your ministry teams.

I’m partnering with some great organizations to make each of these eBooks available. This resource developed through my relationship with Exponential. I love what Todd and my friends at Exponential are doing to equip and inspire leaders to encourage reproducing faith communities. I’ll be at the conference this week to teach a few breakout sessions. Hope to see you there!

And, since church planters are cheap (you know you are), you can download the eBook for free. With that in mind, I hope you’ll share this link with your ministry teammates and friends. I’ve intentionally offered these resources for free so that you can use them to start conversations. Seriously, this topic in particular should be processed with friends.

I hope you are challenged by this eBook. After you’ve read it, come back here to share your questions, your learnings and your push back. Are you part of the new traditional church?

Join the conversation by adding your comment.

Tim shared a great post last week about “The New Normal Project” at Granger Community Church. It was a post written about what used to be known as stewardship campaigns. You should check out the full article.

This is the quote that grabbed my attention:

“We had very few extra events (i.e. banquets, home meetings) and focused everything we could around the weekend services. People are very busy with very good things–and most of them can only give us one shot a week. That doesn’t mean they are unspiritual or don’t love Jesus or the church. It just means they are living their lives, investing in their families, and contributing to society.”

Tim was writing about their specific project, but I think we as church leaders need to be challenged by Granger’s learning. Generally, churches are very event-driven. We are a one-trick pony. If we want people to take a next step, we try to gather them at a specific time at a specific location and we teach them. Then, when people don’t show up to our events, we assume they are either unspiritual or uncommitted.

Do you know why we do events? Let me give you a few reasons…

• We do events because churches have always done events. It doesn’t matter if the event actually helps people or not, we do the event because we’re supposed to do the event.
• We do events because they’re easy to measure. If more people show up, we assume the event was successful and helpful.
• We do events because we’re lazy. It’s a lot easier to just throw events on the calendar than it is to think about how we might effectively help people take their next steps…especially if that involves engaging people in relationships.
• We do events because they justify staff positions. Staff members feel obligated to do events to prove the need for their positions.
• We do events because we have egos. It feels good to get up in front of a group of people and teach them. We feel fulfilled.
• We do events because we’re afraid to say no. Many times we don’t know when to say no because we haven’t established a clear vision and strategy.

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This is a guest post from Michael Robison, Lead Pastor of Grace Church in Kingsport, Tennessee.

Patience is not a virtue we teach, admire or even desire much these days. We live in a world of instant gratification; a “just add water” generation. This is especially true in the realm of church leadership.

These days there is a trend in the church that once a decision has been made, we must act immediately. Somehow we seem to often miss the crucial step of prayer. (See Philippians 4:6.) Or, how about the process of carefully choosing leaders, appointing them and training them? We must take lots of care and caution in that area according to 1 Timothy 5:22. Often times we miss both of these crucial steps and end up creating HUGE messes. All of this comes out of a desire to have instant gratification. But, when we seek instant gratification and success, we will grow weary and wear out quickly. This is the root cause of why many leaders and pastors burnout and leave the ministry!

I can think of one particular leader in scripture who had to exercise patience in order for God to work. It was Joshua at the battle against Jericho. Read Joshua 6. God asked him to march six days around the city walls in preparation for God’s victory. God asked him to appoint certain tasks to leaders during those six days. No doubt, those six days probably seemed pointless and even a waste of time. But, that time was in God’s plan! On the seventh day, by doing exactly as God had instructed, He caused the walls to crumble and the city to be over taken by Israel. During those days of waiting Joshua and the people had to seek after God, praise him and wait to see his glory revealed.

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This is a sponsored post from Tim Peters, a Lead Navigator for Auxano. He navigates church leaders through growth challenges with vision clarity. In addition, Tim is the Director of Development with Auxano Design where he helps churches communicate vision visually. Connect with Tim at www.timpeters.org and on Twitter @timrpeters.

Singularity is the Power of Clarity: Take a 3-Minute Test

The power of singularity is narrowing the essence to one thing.

In organizational terms we refer to this one thing as mission. Yet most leaders never capture and lead from a defining, thoroughgoing sense of one thing. The big question is why? The answer is that they substitute strategy for mission.

Your one thing is your mission; your strategy is how you accomplish the mission. Mission is what we do, strategy is how we do it.

Most of the time I see a statement of mission, or talk to a leader about their sense of mission, they are speaking strategy, not mission. What about you?

Take a 3-Minute Test

Look at or write down your mission as a ministry.

• Count the number of “and” words in it.
• Count the number of commas.
• Count the number of words.

If you have any “and” statements, any commas or more than 15 words, most likely you are articulating strategy not mission.

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Scott Williams

My friend, Scott Williams, just released his first book, Church Diversity: Sunday the Most Segregated Day of the Week. I caught up with Scott earlier this week to ask him about the book and its challenging contents. Here’s the interview:

TONY: What’s the motivation for you writing this book?

SCOTT: As far back as I can remember I have always been intrigued and interested in issues of race an ethnicity.  This is mostly due to my unique life experience, specifically as a minority interacting within the majority culture.  Over the years that intrigue turned into a passion and calling.  As a pastor, I truly believe if we want to have an opportunity to reach “everyone” or “all nations” for Jesus, diversity has to matter.  Culture, corporate America, sports and almost every entity is beginning to figure this out — every entity except for the local church. Unfortunately, the local church is lagging behind.  I want to be a part of elevating the conversation and share practical steps towards positive change.

TONY: This may be a surprise to you, but I’m very white. What are some first steps a guy like me can take to encourage diversity in my church?

SCOTT: Tony, I didn’t know that you were white.  Just kidding!  After confronting the elephant in the pew and acknowledging that lack of diversity is a problem, I think one of the first steps is to do what I refer to in the book as, “Check your heart.”  Begin to ask basic “heart” questions about where you stand, where your ministry stands and where your leadership team stands as it relates to diversity.  After you ask those questions you must be prayerful and intentional about making diversity a reality. Intentionality can come in the form of staff, media, print, teaching etc.

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I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for reading and sharing Developing a Theology of Leadership, my newly released eBook. According to the Issuu stats, over 12,000 of you have read the eBook in the last few weeks. I hope it’s generating lots of healthy conversation. Thanks, again, to the Catalyst team for partnering with me on this project.

By the way, I’ll be releasing the second eBook next week in conjunction with the Exponential Conference in Orlando. I’ll be there on Wednesday and Thursday teaching three different sessions. Hope to see you at one of them.

In an earlier post in this series, I shared how churches will fall into the trap of trying to use their same systems while hoping and praying for different results. Then I shared the importance of minding the gap — making sure the systems and strategies support the vision you’re trying to accomplish.

Of course, as soon as I start to talk about systems and strategies, the questions start to surface. Doesn’t God build the church? Where is the Holy Spirit involved? What about prayer? Aren’t you embracing a business approach rather than a biblical model?

As I read through the Bible, I’m amazed at how God used systems to accomplish his purposes. Where God provides a vision, he also seems to provide a system or strategy to accomplish that vision. Let’s look at some examples.

When God decided he needed to eliminate the wickedness that was pervasive in men’s hearts across the earth, he sent a flood. But, before doing that, he gave Noah a system for building the ark so that he could redeem his people. See Genesis 6.

When Moses was chosen to lead God’s people out of Egypt, he fell into the trap of attempting to do it all on his own. His father-in-law, Jethro, gave Moses a system for leadership structure to accomplish God’s purposes. See Exodus 18.

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