Ron Edmondson

As part of the current series addressing shifts leaders should consider making this year, I connected with Ron Edmondson.  Ron is the pastor of Grace Community Church.  He is passionate about planting churches and helping established churches thrive.  Here’s our interview:

TONY:  What’s one thing that leaders and/or organizations (businesses, churches, non-profits, etc.) should consider stopping in 2012?

RON:  Stop trying to compare yourself with everyone else.  Learn from others, be inspired by others and be challenged as you watch others but never try to be like others.  Be uniquely who God wired you to be.  Too many churches and church leaders are disappointed in their results because they set their expectations based on what others are achieving.

TONY:  What’s one thing that leaders and/or organizations (businesses, churches, non-profits, etc.) should consider starting in 2012?

RON:  Start being more intentional.  Nothing really happens without intentionality.  This is true in our work, home and personal lives.  I get frustrated when I see people with huge potential floundering due to inactivity.  I recently tweeted, “If you keep looking for excuses you will keep finding them.”  I’ve learned that if you don’t set goals, make a plan and discipline yourself then you will likely be disappointed with the end results.

You can follow more of Ron’s thoughts and updates from his ministry on Twitter.

David Foster

As part of my series on things leaders should stop and start doing, I connected with David Foster.  David is an author, speaker, entrepreneur and church planter.  Here are David’s thoughts on shifts leaders should consider making in the new year.

Stop trying to force results.

It is easy to see other people’s success and wonder why we aren’t experiencing the same results.  This causes us to try to “make” something happen.  Sometimes this is caused by pride; other times it is due to a desire to do great things for God.  Too much of the time it is simply because we want to be known and celebrated like the other Christian celebrities we envy.

The truth is, your church, your life, your organization and even your family is only going to grow but so fast.  Stop trying to force the results others are achieving.  This makes you feel angry, weird and frustrated.  Trying too hard hurts the people on your team and leads you into all kinds of self-destructive behavior.

Start trusting your mission.

If your mission is worthy, focus on advancing it during the new year.  Be aware that the mission of the gospel, your family and your organization will only be advanced so far and so fast.  God teaches us that there are seasons of growth.  Scriptures give us analogies like “sowing, reaping and planting.”  Stop trying to force the fruit and start advancing the mission.

Ministry is messy.  It doesn’t matter if it is conducted in a church or a high-rise office building, your focus should be on your mission and long-term health.  Don’t “use” people to achieve your agenda.  Rushing ahead while trying to be an overnight success only leads to pain, sorrow and disappointment.  Advance the mission slowly while making forward progress.  You will be surprised at how far you can grow and go in 2012.

UPDATE: Mack Harris, Emily’s dad, passed away this morning. Here’s the post from earlier today.

My father-in-law was diagnosed with leukemia in November 2010. After a couple of rounds of chemotherapy, he enjoyed about nine months of remission. Unfortunately, that ended last fall. Now he’s living his final days here on Earth.

Mack Harris on the right. Emily Morgan second from the left.

Emily, my wife, has been back to Ohio every month for the last several months. She was there again last week. She has spent some cherished time with her dad and mom. Last night, she wrote this on Facebook:

With four kids in three different schools, a teenage driver, and a husband who travels, I typically have my cell phone pretty close by. These days, however, with the news of my dad’s death potentially days away, it’s never more than an arm’s length away. I keep the volume on at night and my heart drops each time it rings. I dread the call. I don’t want it to come. But it’s coming.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about bad news. Nobody ever signs up for bad news or puts the welcome mat out for it, yet we all get it. It’s a part of life. The potential for illness, death, unemployment, or financial hardship is there. But how do we prepare for it?

To say that we’re ready for any hardship would be pompous and assuming. But to be prepared is quite different. To know that hard times are part of our human existence and to take steps, in advance, to lessen the pain is the only way to be prepared for the news. The death of a beloved father is less difficult, for example, when there is open love and communication, with nothing left unsaid. The news of unemployment is less difficult when there’s money in the bank. And, when the economy tanks, it’s less difficult to believe you’re going to make it when you’ve learned to work hard and live well within your means. It takes little steps, really, to be prepared. Those little steps, over time, get you to a place where you can grieve without guilt, search for a new job without panic, and live your life without regret.

So, what are you doing to prepare? Do you need to ask for forgiveness? Do you need to say “I love you”? Should you cut up the credit card, sell the car, or cancel the membership? Little steps, over time, produce results that will help you live a life that is not without hardships, but that is more likely to help you through them.

We are going to miss Mack. He’s been an incredible husband, father and grandfather. Now, though, we’re praying for the opportunity in front of him. He’s professed faith in Jesus Christ. Though he’s never been paid in ministry, he’s been in full-time ministry. His path is clear. Heaven awaits.

Please continue to pray for Mack and Priscilla Harris and their family.

Ben Stroup

As part of the current series addressing the shifts leaders should consider making in the new year, I connected with Ben Stroup. Ben is a writer, blogger and consultant and he helped me produce the eBooks that I’ve released in the last twelve months. Here’s our interview:

TONY: What’s one thing that leaders and/or organizations (businesses, churches, non-profits, etc.) should consider stopping in 2012?

BEN: Stop being efficient. The larger the organization or church, the more likely they are to move toward efficiencies. Manufacturing is built around the goal of creating consistencies that can be scaled based on needs or demand. The goal is to adjust the quantity rather than the substance of each unit. The more units, the more profitable the product line becomes because you can spread the cost over more units.

This is fine when you are working with widgets, but people are not widgets. People are emotional, inconsistent, and unique. Organizations and churches should be engaging with people (inherently inefficient) rather than simple reproducing previously agreed upon standards. One path feeds the organizational process while the other path becomes a catalyst for change and impact.

We still have to focus on growth. If an organization or church is not multiplying, it is not fully alive and growing. There is always an element of efficiency that is part of growth, but it shouldn’t limit our strategy and tactics as it relates to connecting to and engaging with our core audience. Organizations and churches that will thrive in 2012 will exchange efficiency for effectiveness and reintroduce a level of humanity in the midst of their process development planning.

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Jeff Henderson

As part of my series on things leaders should stop and start doing, I connected with Jeff Henderson,  the Lead Pastor of Gwinnett Church which is a campus of North Point Ministries. What are some of the shifts leaders need to make going forward? Here are Jeff’s thoughts:

Stop comparing.

There’s far too much time and energy wasted on studying the competition. We will never find our true potential by comparing ourselves to others. Only by comparing ourselves and our organizations to our own potential will we find unchartered territories and possibilities.

The people and organizations you respect the most do just that. You can too. Stop comparing yourself to others. Start comparing yourself to your own God-given potential. This is where true uniqueness and creativity is found.

Start thinking more.

Leaders do. That’s what we do. But the pace of doing can prevent the necessity of thinking. This year, carve out more “think time” in advance. Examples: 10 minutes a day. One hour a week. One day per quarter.

If you commit to this, you’ll discover a powerful principle: Great thinking leads to better doing.

You can follow more of Jeff’s thoughts on the Gwinnett Church blog.

Eric Geiger

As part of the series on leadership to start this year, I connected with Eric Geiger, Vice President of the Church Resource Division at LifeWay Christian Resources. We talked about the shifts leaders need to make going forward. Here’s our brief interview:

TONY: One thing leaders should consider stopping?

ERIC: Something good that is stealing energy and resources from the best…

For church leaders, this may be a program that yields little fruit or a meeting that is always on the calendar but never results in any life-giving ministry decisions. A lot of leaders stress better time management to their teams, but if teams are devoting energy to ineffective ministries or programs, then time management only makes the waste more efficient. And who wants more efficient waste? More efficient waste never changed the world.

For this reason, a “stop doing” list is actually more important than a “start” list because only when you stop doing something will you have liberated energy and resources for what matters more. As Von Goethe said, “Things that matter the most must never be at the mercy of things that matter the least.”

Some may argue that all the waste has already been eliminated, that everyone is operating at full capacity on what matters most. But such an argument is actually a confession that additional capacity has not been developed. The person has just admitted he or she has stopped growing as a leader or stopped growing the people he or she serves. The truth is that when we grow our teams and ourselves, there is new margin because organizational capacity has been raised. In the same way, business process consultants articulate that whenever a process is improved, new waste is created through greater productivity. The art of leadership is focusing the newly created energy on what produces the most value, which leads to Tony’s second question:

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I wrote an article on the “Culture of Honor” back in March of last year. At that time, there was a lot of conversation happening around the article through Twitter, comments and email.

What has surprised me, though, is the traction that the article has maintained through the last several months. It became one of the top ten posts from all of 2011. A number of other people have referenced the article including this post from Geoff Surratt from his series on “Five Scary Trends” in the Church. And, I still continue to get email messages from people who have been impacted by the churches who have a one-way view of honor. Here’s an excerpt from a recent message:

“I greatly appreciate your blog post on ‘The Culture of Honor.’ I was on staff at a church that embraces this one-way philosophy and I can tell you it has damaged me spiritually and emotionally. Thankfully, only by God’s grace, I am trusting to be healed from this spiritually abusive situation. It seems there is a wave of churches embracing this culture, and I’m concerned about how it’s hurting people. To give you an example of the severity, my coworker not only left the job and the church, she has not returned to any church in two years.  I don’t think injuring people in an effort to win souls was God’s plan.”

As I mentioned in the original article, I believe honor is a good thing. It’s biblical. But it’s supposed to go both directions. It begins with pastors who embrace humility and aspire to be servant leaders — every leader in the church should be a servant leader.

We need to continue to have people in our lives that have the freedom to encourage and challenge us in this area. Look at your leadership. What type of culture are you creating?

Jenni Catron

As part of the current series addressing the shifts leaders should consider making in the new year, I connected with Jenni Catron, the Executive Director of Cross Point Church in Nashville. Here’s what Jenni had to share:

Stop making excuses.

Giving in to excuses – oftentimes really fair and somewhat believable excuses can easily derail great leaders and great organizations. We can’t grow because we don’t have space. We can’t make that change because we would lose people or customers. But when we give into excuses (and the fears that go with them) we stop growing, we quit accomplishing the vision, we stagnate and eventually start to decline. We don’t realize this with the first couple of excuses that trip us up but eventually “we can’t” becomes normal vocabulary. Don’t let excuses hold you back this year.

Start asking “how?”

If you are going to stop making excuses, then you have to start asking “how?” The perspective shift for you and your organization goes from “can we?” to “how do we?” If you are wired to be a leader, you naturally long to be a part of something that is healthy and growing. The tension of growing things is that… well, they’re growing, and growing things are always outgrowing whatever is confining them… money, buildings, staff, etc. When the challenges come that feel insurmountable with your current resources, that’s probably a good thing. You have a choice to either give in to the excuses or to start asking, “how can we do this?  Is there a way? What could we tweak, change, adjust to do this?” Asking “how?” moves the seemingly impossible to possible.

You can follow more of Jenni’s thoughts and writing at JenniCatron.tv.

Jon Acuff

I recently connected with Jon Acuff, a speaker and author who is connected with the Dave Ramsey team. We talked about the shifts leaders need to make going forward. Here’s our brief interview:

TONY: What’s one thing that leaders and/or organizations (businesses, churches, non-profits, etc.) should consider stopping in 2012?

JON: Stop pretending you can use social media without a cost. Social media offers tremendous benefits but if we’re not careful in the ways we use it, the areas of our lives we use it in and how often we use it, there can be tremendous consequences as well.

TONY: What’s one thing that leaders and/or organizations should consider starting in 2012?

JON: Start being honest as a team about the fears you have about the work you’re doing in 2012. One of the things fear always tries to do is isolate you and put you on an island so that you think you’re the only one that feels a certain way. This can kill collaboration and culture within a team. Start voicing those fears out loud so that together you can see them for what they really are and kill them as a team.

You can read more from Jon on his blog Stuff Christians Like. Or check out his most recent book, Quitter, using my Amazon link.

Perry Noble

What should leaders and/or organizations consider stop and start doing in 2012? Here are some thoughts from Perry Noble, Senior Pastor at NewSpring Church:

1. We should stop our self-identification through our “buzz words” (i.e. missional, attractional…) and start desiring to be identified by the work we are doing.
2. We should stop trying to figure out how to compete with each other and start trying to figure out how we, as the church, can actually complete one another.
3. We should stop trying to figure out how to drive people towards a goal and start learning how to actually lead them there.
4. We should stop trying to figure out why people aren’t coming to church and start just asking them…and then NOT getting angry and defensive when they respond honestly.
5. We should stop assuming that everyone in our church knows everything about our church and start stating the vision more often and more clearly.
6. We should stop our scientific approach to leading people and start approaching leadership as an art form, understanding what the Bible says about people being unique is true.
7. We should stop trying to compare ourselves to other churches/ministries and start actually doing what God has called us to do, knowing that He will hold us (as leaders) accountable to what He has called us to…not what He’s called everyone else to do.

You can follow more of Perry’s writing on his blog at PerryNoble.com.