Several years ago at a previous church, a friend of ours was trying to make a volunteer connection. She’s very gifted. She’s artistic–creativity just oozes out of her. She’s very compassionate–she’s routinely looking for ways to encourage people who need help finding new direction in their lives. She’s very people-oriented–she’ll complete the tasks as long as she has the opportunity to do it with a team.

More important, she loves Jesus and wants to serve others through the ministry of her church. And that’s what precipitated a rather funny (yet sad) story. She wanted to serve. She had time to volunteer. She could have stepped in to help in a number of different areas. But, rather than taking advantage of her creativity, compassion or relational skills, the church asked her to cut out cardboard cacti. That’s right. She wasn’t given the task of cutting out just one cactus for the upcoming vacation Bible school. She was given the responsibility of cutting out multiple cacti. I don’t even know that they let her draw the cacti–they just wanted her for her cutting abilities.

It would be different if her primary serving role took advantage of her gifts and passions. In every role we have inside and outside of the church, there are tasks we complete that we don’t necessarily enjoy but they’re part of our responsibility. That wasn’t the case here. They had a task that needed to be completed, and they found the first available person to complete the task. It wasn’t a part of a bigger role. The church didn’t care how our friend was gifted. They didn’t consider her personality or passions. They just needed a cacti cutter.

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“It’s part common sense, part human nature to press on towards a break through. If we are not producing at work, we just work harder, longer hours. If our organization is not growing, we work the same plan harder. It seldom seems to occur to us that ‘more’ or ‘harder’ might not be the answer. Sometimes the only thing that works is ‘different.’” –Maurilio Amorim, CEO of the A Group

Check out the rest of Maurilio’s article. The problem, of course, is “different” is uncomfortable. We may prefer our current plan. We know it. We like it. We may not personally like the different plan, even if it could potentially have a bigger impact.

This is why many churches are stuck. “More” and “harder” are easy. “Different” requires real leadership.

“As the large Baby Boomer generation moves into their older years, they will resist any suggestion that they are senior adults, no matter how senior they may be. Unfortunately, many churches are slow to adapt to new realities. If they do senior adult ministry the way they’ve always done it, it will be headed for failure.” –Thom Rainer, President and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources

In the past, senior adult ministry has been focused on events and trips for seniors to stay busy with their peers. What would happen in the future if Baby Boomers changed that dynamic and focused less on themselves and more on mentoring the younger generations?

Rainer identified four other trends in American churches. You can check them out in the full article.

I recently connected with Dave Ferguson, Lead Pastor and Spiritual Entrepreneur with Community Christian Church and the NewThing Network, to talk with him about his new book. Dave co-authored On the Verge with Alan Hirsch. Here’s my interview with Dave:

TONY: What prompted you to write On the Verge?

DAVE: On The Verge was written in response to an urgency that both Alan and I felt that the church in North America is at a tipping point of moving in one of two very different directions: either towards extinction in this generation or a missional movement. While these are two distinctly different directions there are indicators of both possibilities. The shrinking percentage (18%) of the population that regularly attends church that would lead us to think that the North American church will go the way of Australia (10%) and Europe (2%-5%).

On the other hand there are also signs of movement. We are now starting more new churches than we are closing in United States. In addition, Alan and I were working with a dozen mega multi-site churches who are among the most influential and “successful” churches in the U.S (in the book we refer to them as Future Travelers) that were all making shifts from being primarily attractional to also being missional and sending churches. These indicators gave us great hope that that North American church is on the verge of an apostolic movement.

TONY: Though I highly respect both you and Alan, I wouldn’t expect the two of you to write a book together. How did that partnership come together?

DAVE: I read Alan’s Forgotten Ways when it first came out and thought it was one of the best books on the church that I had read in several years. So, when we invited him to speak at the Exponential Conference I took advantage of it and met him for breakfast. Despite the fact that Alan was a huge advocate of the missional-incarnational approach to church and a critic of the attractional mega church, I think he could see that what we were doing through Community and NewThing was not building a kingdom of our own, but catalyzing a movement. We hit it off immediately. Who I represent (mega, multi-site, church planting) and whom Alan’s represents (missional-incarnational) create the “both/and” thinking that we advocate in the On The Verge. We believe the best church of the future will be extraordinarily attractive because it is sent into the world to serve the world and love the world back to God. It really is our love for the church and the mission of Jesus that has brought us together.

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To wrap up this mini-series on series planning, I went back in to the archives and dug up this list. It contains some simple strategies to help you improve how you plan for teaching series. Here are…

10 Ways to Improve Series Planning

1. Leverage the seasons when folks are most likely to attend church. I like to launch new series that have a more outreach focus when people are more likely to attend services and invite their friends. Those seasons are cyclical. They depend on where you are located. Obviously, Christmas and Easter are two common times when people are likely to attend church.
2. Find the right balance between “reach people” series and “grow people” series. There will always be tension here, but the objective is to try to balance out using services to attract a crowd and help people take their next steps in their spiritual journey. At West Ridge, we’ve actually color-coded our teaching calendar to make sure we maintain a healthy balance.
3. Use a variety of approaches to begin your series development. Teach on a topic one series. Teach through a book of the Bible in another series. Teach a series of messages on a specific biblical character. Use a series to teach through a specific doctrine. Mix up your approach.
4. Address questions that people are asking. Our tendency is to only deliver the information we want people to hear. People will not engage our teaching unless we are addressing the issues they are facing in their daily life. A friend of mine routinely reviews the headlines of women’s magazines to get a sense of the topics that people are discussing in today’s culture.
5. Deliver biblical truth and life application. Your teaching will not produce life change unless you also provide life application. Without application people may experience conviction or inspiration, but they won’t know what to do with that. Make it a goal in every message to clearly identify one next step for people to take to apply what they’ve learned.
6. Shoot for 8 to 10 series throughout the year. Your average series should be 4 to 6 weeks. If you’re teaching through a book and it needs to go longer than that, try to break it up into multiple series. Every time you start a series, it creates an opportunity for people to invite their friends. You want more opportunities for people to invite their friends.
7. Plan ahead. You can wait until Saturday to finish your message, but try to at least outline your topics a couple of months in advance. When you do that, you free up creative people to plan series packaging, service elements and creative communications to enhance your teaching. You also provide time for appropriate promotions to occur.
8. Plan with a team. One team may drive the topics that are addressed throughout the year. Another team may drive the series packaging including identifying titles and visual images. Another team may develop the services elements and execution. Whatever the case, the end result will always be better when you have the right people engaged in a team approach.
9. Remember the people who already attend your church are your best promotions vehicle. You can spend a lot of money on advertising or direct mail, but the number one way new people will attend your services is through an invitation from someone who already attends your church. Want more people to show up? Make it easier for people to invite their friends.
10. Pastors should teach, and artists should be creative. The series I’ve experienced with the biggest impact both numerically and in life change have occurred when artists let the pastor drive the teaching and pastors let the artists drive the creative elements. The pastors control this. If they’re willing to empower artists, God can use this creativity to prepare people’s hearts for the message.

By the way, this is one of the key areas of ministry where I provide consulting for churches. I can facilitate your planning for your annual teaching calendar, help you create systems for series and service planning and walk you through a process to improve your series promotions. That may be something you’d like to consider as you gear up for the new ministry year. If so, here’s a contact form to start the conversation.

Yesterday, we talked about planning ahead to improve the impact of your teaching series and services. I promised I should share the framework for building your own planning process. The basis for this process goes all the way back to my days at Granger Community Church. I still think Granger is one of the most creative ministries around, and one of the reasons that’s the case is because they have a system that leverages the gifts of many staff and volunteers. Here are the critical steps to include in your process.

STEP 1: Teaching Calendar (1 year in advance) — Include your teaching pastors and strategic leaders in the conversation. The outcome of this process should be a planning document that identifies when series will start and stop and the general topics of those series. You can also use this plan to determine who is going to teach each Sunday throughout the year. Of course, one of the keys to building a solid teaching calendar is to shape the series around holidays and school calendars to leverage periods of momentum for the church.

STEP 2: Series Planning (3 months before series starts) — This meeting will likely include your teachers and your creative team leaders. This is where you’ll begin to develop a series planning document. That summary should eventually include the series title and theme, key Bible passages, message titles and topics and the one next step you want people to take out of every service. It’ll help your creative teams if you also draft a paragraph or two to provide an overview of the entire series including the primary objective. Once this process is completed, your communications team can begin working on graphics and promotional strategies for the series.

STEP 3: Service Planning (6 to 8 weeks before series starts) — This gathering is for your creatives. The teachers don’t need to be there. In fact, sometimes they’ll just get in the way. This is when you’ll brainstorm ideas to creatively communicate the key themes of the series. That may include music, video, images, set design and other elements. Out of this meeting you ultimately need to develop service orders for each Sunday with worship and creative elements that support the message topics.

STEP 4: Message Preparation (varies depending on the teacher) — With a planning process like this in place, the teacher has flexibility to work on message preparation at their pace. If you’re the kind who works a few weeks ahead, this process works. If you’re the kind who is still tweaking your message on Saturday evening, this process works. As you can see, the primary shift is that the message topics are decided in advance so that the creative teams can plan services that support the teaching. This process also provides enough space for you to invite input from other people in your message preparation.

STEP 5: Evaluation (every week after the services) — Because the message and creative processes have been separated using this system, there will be occasions when the worship and creative elements don’t make a good connection with the teaching. That’s why evaluation is so important. It keeps the communications open between the teachers and the creative arts leaders. Over time, my experience is the disconnects between arts elements and the message will become rare.

By using a system like this, you gain many advantages:

1. People on your team can help you creatively communicate Biblical truth.
2. You can leverage volunteers who typically need more time because of their work schedules to complete service planning tasks.
3. You’ll save money. Better planning always leads to better stewardship of resources.
4. You can better promote your upcoming series. There will be time to create themes and promotional strategies to engage your audience.
5. It makes it easier for people to invite their friends. When you are able to generate buzz because of good planning, invitations get a lot easier.
6. You can prayerfully make sure you’re covering the topics people need to hear–both the people in your church and the people you’re trying to reach.

Maybe most important, a process like this will reduce the stress levels of everyone involved. Over the long run, that will create a healthier environment that will produce healthier people.

What’s your experience? Can you offer some advice from your experience to help leaders plan more effectively? Join the conversation by sharing your comment.

I’ve been encouraging and challenging churches for many years to revisit their system for planning teaching series and services. Many churches I work with are still working week-to-week when it comes to service planning. In many respects, it’s kind of like living paycheck-to-paycheck. You end up reacting to the urgent. You can’t plan for the future. It creates unnecessary stress for you and the people around you.

Here’s the story of Grace Family Church. Greg, their director of communications, shares how changing their systems has improved their services:

Back in February, we went through a major shift in the way we do our creative planning. Previously, we were operating 2-3 weeks out for our weekend services and things were always frantic. It felt like we had to constantly operate in scramble mode. And, our creativity was starting to suffer since we didn’t have that much time to think ahead.

That’s when we implemented an entire new creative process and we now have 9 months of creative planning for weekend services on our calendar. The keys to making this happen was a willingness for people to let go of what was always done in the past. Our senior pastor recognized the need for change and he sought out new ideas and showed a willingness to try something different. Additionally, our leadership team was willing to let the creative team run with these new ideas and it’s been like a windsail opening up to many new possibilities. Our church is really thriving and people are more open to change because they see good things happening.

This has also led to more innovations and changes including a brand new video newsletter, an entire new website structure that cut out 60% of the current pages without losing a thing, a new small group plan for the fall, innovations in our IT department, re-branding in many of our ministries, etc. Once people catch a hold of all the new possibilities, they want to be a part of something fun and successful. God is contuining to lead us into new areas and we will continue to look to Him for our direction and maintain an eagerness for change.

In tomorrow’s post, I’ll share some simple steps to help you implement a new system for planning series and services. It’ll help you leverage more people in the creative process including the opportunity to engage volunteers more effectively. I’ve watched churches make this shift, and, as Greg highlights from his experience, it helps them have a bigger impact with their teaching and their ministry connections.

What about your experience? Has your teaching and creative teams made this shift? If so, how has it impacted your ministry? Join the conversation by sharing your comment.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve shared a series of articles to help churches that are stuck. In case you missed them, here are the links to each of the articles:

• Unstuck: How do we get different results?
• Unstuck: Mind the Gap
• Unstuck: God uses systems to accomplish his purposes.
• Unstuck: Building a Healthy Foundation
• Unstuck: When Teaching Creates Barriers to Change
• Unstuck: 8 Characteristics of Healthy Systems

Consider these articles the sequel to my latest eBook, The Leisure Suit Trap: 8 Reasons Your Church is Stuck. If I were you, I read the eBook then go through each of the articles.

By the way, I’m not finished with this topic. Later this fall, I’ll pick up the conversation by sharing the keys to leading and communicating through change.

Consider the last major change you experienced. Was it handled well? If so, what were some of the key leadership steps that helped you move from here to there? Join the conversation by sharing your comment.

A couple of weeks ago, I released my newest eBook, The Leisure Suit Trap: 8 Reasons Your Church is Stuck. As I’ve had the opportunity to interact and work with churches over the last several years, there are some common themes. These are the challenges that churches typically face when ministry starts to plateau or decline. Here are…

8 Reasons Your Church is Stuck

1. You lack a leadership empowerment plan. We have failed as leaders in the church if we do not embrace the unique gift-mix that God designed. And we won’t fully know the power and impact of the local church until people are empowered to be the people God wired them up to be.
2. You are unclear about your vision and mission. There are lots of churches with vision statements, but I don’t think there are very many churches that really have a vision statement that clarifies who they are as an organization. A clear vision that is properly communicated will both rally and repel people.
3. You blame outsiders and external factors. Victim-thinking will only lead to bitterness and competition. Leaders who blame outsiders and external factors actually are confessing their own failure to think creatively and inspire their team.
4. Your structure inhibits growth. One of the attributes of a church in decline is a complex structure. The natural tendency of organizations is to add complexity to their structure and systems. The longer an organization exists, the more complex it typically gets. (more…)

In previous articles in this series on helping churches get unstuck, I’ve shared the importance of establishing healthy systems. Many churches have a gap between the vision and execution. Without healthy systems, they won’t be able to accomplish God’s vision for their ministry.

I explained in the last article that within the context of a church, a healthy system is a simple, replicable process to help people move from where they are to where God wants them to be.

Because your organization is unique, there’s no way I can tell you specifically what systems you need to accomplish the vision God has for your church. I can, however, share some common characteristics of healthy systems that may point you in the right direction. With that in mind, here are:

8 Characteristics of Healthy Systems for Churches

1. They empower leaders to accomplish ministry without always having to get permission. Without systems, every decision must go back to the senior pastor, the senior management team, the committee, etc. In his book Making Ideas Happen, Scott Belsky said it this way, “The more people who lie awake in bed thinking about your idea, the better. But people only obsess about ideas when they feel a sense of ownership.” Good systems will give leaders the freedom to make decisions within established boundaries.
2. They are embraced and championed by the top leadership. It does absolutely no good for systems to be established that top leadership doesn’t support and encourage everyone to use. If the top leaders can’t endorse the system, you’re not ready to implement the system.
3. They mobilize many people rather than leaning on a select handful of talented individuals. If your system is “contact Joe for more information”, you don’t have a system. If your system is “go hear Joe teach on the topic”, you don’t have a system. You have a gifted individual. Good systems point people to next steps (processes, tools, resources, etc.) rather than specific people.
4. They simplify the path. The objective is to create just enough of a framework to make it easier for people. Good systems are intuitive. Typically the fewer the steps, the better the systems. If you want to improve a system, challenge your team to figure out how to reduce the steps required. And, whatever you do, make sure your “customer” doesn’t have to guess where to go next. (more…)