One of the hardest things for someone in ministry to do is to celebrate the victories of others. I know this from personal experience. I have the distinct ability to develop tunnel vision. By its basic definition, tunnel vision is the loss of peripheral vision while retaining central vision. The result is a limited view. … Continue reading Celebrating with Others
Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers. Reading is a drudgery for most people. We live in a visual culture where information is gained at the click of a button. With the advent of DVR’s, On Demand Cable and Web Streaming, there is no reason to have to wait through commercials to … Continue reading Leaders are Readers
Pastors can overestimate how much can be accomplished in one year and underestimate how much can be accomplished in a five years. Meaning, we try to do too much too quickly. Quality of activity is more important than quantity of activity. Pastors have a tendency to err on the side of feeling that activity justifies … Continue reading 100 Days
Reaction time is a measure of how quickly someone can respond to a certain stimulus. Athletes want quick reaction times to the snap of football, the speed of a pitch or the firing of the starter’s gun. Leaders are often gauged by their reaction time to the stimuli in their field of expertise. Pastors want … Continue reading 24 Hour Rule
Too often, the answer to any question at work is, “Let’s get together and meet.” Meetings have become the proverbial necessary evil in the workplace. By definition, a meeting is the act or process of coming together (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary). Meetings can be helpful and productive. Meetings can be distracting and unproductive. Either way, meetings are not going away (completely) anytime soon. So, … Continue reading Not Another Meeting
The best gift a leader can provide his or her team is … clarity. Team members inherently want to do a good job. They want their efforts and work to matter. They deserve direction in turbulent seasons. The deserve a metric to measure their efforts against. Clarity of mission and expectations provides the tracks for … Continue reading The Gift of Clarity
In elementary school we would receive a report card every six weeks. This report card would have our current grade in each subject as well as a summary of our behavior. Every one of my report cards would have “Talks too much” checked. I was a talker. I am a talker. It was not a … Continue reading Talks Too Much
In the Summer 2008 Olympics in Beijing, a significant event happened in track and field. It was the men’s 4×100 relay. This was one of the best relay teams the United States had ever sent to an Olympic games. Four men who had trained for the previous four years to prepare for this one race. … Continue reading Generation NEXT
As a self-admitted task oriented person, I know all too well how easy it is to check a task off the list and move on … without properly acknowledging the persons who made the work possible. This can be a culture cancer, even if it’s unintentional. Pastors (shepherd leaders) must keep an eye to the … Continue reading The Power of “Thank You”
Activity does not necessarily mean productivity. The local church must stubbornly refuse to get swept up in the mindset that being active and busy equals fulfilling vision and making disciples. Activity can be good, but it must not be allowed to be a substitute for the better work of making disciples. Activity can sometimes best … Continue reading Less Can Mean More
MichaelStovall 