The David Crowder Band released a new single today. You can listen to it free below:
If you like what you hear, you can download from Amazon using my affiliate link.
By the way, what’s your favorite Crowder album? (I vote for Illuminate.)
The David Crowder Band released a new single today. You can listen to it free below:
If you like what you hear, you can download from Amazon using my affiliate link.
By the way, what’s your favorite Crowder album? (I vote for Illuminate.)
In case you missed it, the new and improved TonyMorganLive.com launched this weekend. You may be thinking, “Wow, that actually looks good.” Or, you may find yourself saying, “Wow, that site is really fast now.” If so, it’s because I paid professionals to both design and code the site.

You can thank Joshua Blankenship for his design acumen. (Joshua makes everything look prettier.) Nathan Rice was responsible for the coding. (He’s a WordPress aficionado.) And, though I’m actually paying them to say this, I think you should hire them to do spiffy up your site. (I say that because I’ve seen your site.)
So, what do you think? I say Joshua and Nathan hit a home run. Aren’t you jealous?
My good friend Lee McFarland leads one of my favorite churches in the country out in Phoenix. Radiant Church is not your normal church, and Lee is not your normal pastor. They embrace a bizarre mix of wanting to reach as many people for Jesus and willingness to try just about anything. With that, Radiant recently launched a Saturday night service incorporating hip hop elements.
Here are some highlights of what they’re doing:
It’s hard to say what’s really helping Radiant reach more people on Saturday nights. Is it because they’ve added hip hop elements? Or, is it simply because they’re doing something different? In my experience, different creates buzz. And, when there’s buzz, more people are talking about it and inviting their friends.
That makes me curious to know what you’ve recently done that’s different. What did you do, and what was the response?
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to sit around a table at Panera and talk about the future of spiritual formation in local churches. I heard the vision from Mark Bankord, the Directional Leader and co-founder of Heartland Community Church in Rockford, Illinois, and Eric Parks, the Chief Creative Officer of monvee.
Here are a few things that distinguished monvee from anything else I’ve seen to help people growth in their faith:
monvee is in beta right now. In fact, your church may be interested in participating. If so, church leaders can learn more about the beta phase and apply to join.
I’ll try to keep you posted as I learn more about this new tool to help churches help people grow spiritually.
I’ve had several more opportunities within the last couple weeks to connect with some great churches across the country. Here are the highlights:
I don’t exactly know what the future looks like, but I’m loving the chance I’ve had in recent weeks to connect with great leaders in vibrant churches across the country. It’s been a fun journey.
Couple quick notes for those of you who are trying to watch your checking account while you wait for that government stimulus package to kick in…
By the way, we booked our entire trip last night. The Morgan family is ready to cruise America in style…or whatever descriptive word you might use to describe driving over 3,000 miles in a minivan.
Hope to see you at one or both of these events.
I read Anne Jackson’s new book, Mad Church Disease, a few months ago. This quote from Wayne Cordeiro, the senior pastor of New Hope Christian Fellowship in Oahu, Hawaii keeps reverberating through my brain. In describing some practices he changed as a result of dealing with ministry burnout, he offered this:
“I’ve learned that God has made me to be a leader, not a ‘manager.’ I was pulled in to ‘managing’ for a few years as my main course. That diminished my leadership immune system, and I became susceptible to contagious maladies such as discouragement, exasperation, and being demotivated by others.”
There is a distinction between leading and managing. They are two entirely different roles. Both are valuable to an organization, but rarely is a person gifted to both lead and manage. They are typically wired up to do one or the other.
In their book First, Break All the Rules, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman defined both roles like this:
Managers – “Great managers look inward. They look inside the company, into each individual, into the differences in style, goals, needs, and motivation of each person. These differences are small, subtle, but great managers need to pay attention to them. These subtle differences guide them toward the right way to release each person’s unique talents into performance.”
Leaders – “Great leaders look outward. They look out at the competition, out at the future, out at alternative routes forward. They focus on broad patterns, finding connections, cracks, and then press home their advantage where the resistance is weakest. They must be visionaries, strategic thinkers, activators. When played well, this is, without doubt, a critical role. But it doesn’t have much to do with the challenge of turning one individual’s talents into performance.”
That’s how Buckingham and Coffman described the two roles in marketplace organizations, but the Bible also distinguishes these two rules. The spiritual gift of leadership found in Romans 12:8 is very different from the spiritual gift of management (or administration) found in I Corinthians 12:28. Few people have both of these gifts, but both are needed within a healthy church body.
The point here isn’t to value one of these gifts over the other. (That would be a fruitless exercise because both are needed for a church or any organization to function properly.) However, I think it’s essential to identify how we are gifted and to also consider those we are responsible for in our ministry roles. If we are trying to be a manager when we’re actually a leader, we will be unfulfilled and face ministry burnout like Wayne described. Likewise, if we’re forced into a leadership role when we’re actually a manager, we will face the same challenges.
So, here are some questions to consider, pray about and discuss with your team:
I consider this a big topic that churches, generally, have failed to address. I challenge you to prayerfully consider this in the coming days for yourselves and your teammates. The health of your ministry, both personal and corporate, is at stake. And, while you’re at it, invite your ministry team to press into this conversation as well. Take a staff meeting to discuss the differences and challenge your team to make sure they are in a position that best reflects the way God created them…whether they are leaders, managers or neither. God wants you serving where he designed you to be serving; to do otherwise is to disobey God.
Are you staring ministry burnout in the face? Is it because you’re not doing what God created you to do?
In case you missed them, here are the posts that generated the most traffic last month in order of popularity:
This top ten list is brought to you with the help of Google Analytics. It’s the easy, free way to track stats for your website.
Yesterday while I was at Christ Fellowship in Miami, I did a leadership talk for their staff team. At the end of my talk, we took some time for Q&A. One of the questions that was asked was about leadership growth. Having worked in churches of various sizes between 1,400 and over 10,000, they wanted to know how leaders change to grow with organizations. Here’s what I summarized with a little bit more detail. Some of this reflects my own experiences in the churches I’ve served. Some of it reflects the conversations with leaders in other churches.
Lead by example. This is the type of leadership that is required when a new ministry launches. During this season, the leader has to do most of the work themselves. That happens out of necessity because no one else is around. It also happens to establish a foundation for the future. “Leading by doing” gives the leader the opportunity to shape the mission, vision, values and strategy of the church. These folks may not necessarily be gifted as leaders but they are in a positional leadership role. They are the “leaders of tens.” Ministries with this style of leadership can grow to about 100 people.
Lead other people. During this season, the leader recruits other people to join the ministry team. Rather than doing all the work on their own, the leader begins to delegate tasks and responsibilities to other people. The leader still owns the responsibility for making things happen, they’re just including other people in the effort. These are the “leaders of fifties.” Ministries can grow to several hundred people with this style of leadership.
Lead other leaders. This is when a transition happens where leaders begin to empower other leaders. Instead of a hands-on role where they’re on top of all the tasks, they shift to a role where they’re really more concerned about leading, caring for and raising up other leaders. They don’t give up responsibility for the outcome, but they begin to release team building and decisions of execution to other people. These are the “leaders of hundreds.” Ministries can grow to several thousand people with this style of leadership.
Lead by vision. At some point, there are leaders who may continue to embrace functional leadership of specific areas of ministry, but their focus is really on the overall health of the church. Rather than a ministry-specific focus, they have a global perspective that encompasses every aspect of the organization. These folks are leading other leaders, but they also have influence that reaches beyond their direct reports. They are coming alongside the senior leader to champion the vision that God has given the church. These are the “leaders of thousands.” Ministries can grow to tens of thousands of people with this style of leadership.
First of all, do you agree with my summary of these different stages of leadership growth? What would you add or delete from my descriptions?
Secondly, where are you? Would would you need to do today to prepare for a step into a new leadership role tomorrow?
On my flight down to Miami, I wrapped up the book Church Unique by Will Mancini. Will is a new friend of mine. We share a similar passion to help churches embrace their unique potential.
Among other things the book outlines a process for helping churches identify their unique mission, values, strategy and measures that contribute to a unique vision. Here are some of Will’s thoughts that grabbed my attention:
Will is a former pastor and the founder of Auxano, a consulting group that works with churches and ministries.