Dec/094
Vision, Purpose and Strategy
Three words. You’ve heard them before. But do you really understand what they mean? Do you really understand how they work?
Purpose – why you’re here, your mission
Strategy – how you’re going to accomplish the mission
Vision – what it looks like where you’re going
At Oak Leaf Church,we have a mission statement that summarizes our purpose. We are here to lead people from where they are to where God wants them to be. That’s what we do…that’s why we’re here. It’s a rare weekend when our mission isn’t mentioned from the stage, either in a sermon or in an announcement or in a prayer.
A purpose statement, at it’s core, is just a new way to express the mission that God gave the church…go and make disciples. For a church, it’s the bottom line. We sometimes try and get cute with our words, but making disciples is what the church should be about. A purpose statement and a mission statement are really the same thing.
Does your church have a purpose statement or a mission statement? Leave a comment and share with the world.
Dec/090
Hope Series Resources
Updated the series stuff page with all the stuff from HOPE. This was a three week series focused on the future and mission of our church, but you could easily adapt it for a wide variety of topics. Included in the zip file are message notes, Keynote (the Mac equivalent of PowerPoint), and the graphics. Just click the “free series stuff” link on the top of the page to get the free download (no registration required).
Dec/095
Worship Service Pet Peeves
Here’s a few of my worship service pet peeves. These are not super-spiritual or theological, just a few things that irritate.
#1 – Too Many Announcements. I really don’t like announcements at all, but if you’ve got more than one of them in your service…I promise you that nobody is paying attention. If you must make an announcement, keep it to one thing that applies to everybody in the audience.
#2 – Taking the Offering. Don’t use the word “take.” You’re going to “receive” an offering or you can ask people to “bring” an offering, but you don’t have mafia guys who are going to go through the aisles and take it. At least I hope not.
#3 – Prayer as Transition. How can we get from this song to the message? Oh, I know. The worship leader can pray. Prayer is talking to God, not a move-the-acoustic-guitar-transition.
#4 – “You Guys Know the Story.” In your sermon you reference another Bible passage and you say “You guys know that story about Joseph and his brothers.” Well, there’s a good chance that someone there has never heard that story and has no idea what you’re talking about. So you just made him feel like church is for the insiders who possess secret knowledge.
#5 – Music Stands. If you’re in the band, then take some time to learn the music and the songs. If you don’t know the song, then you shouldn’t be on the stage.
Anything that you would add to this list? What are your worship service pet peeves?
Nov/090
Coaching Network, Round 2 and Maybe 3
I’ve really enjoyed coaching a group of 12 church planters and I’m looking forward to continuing doing networks like this in the future. Right now, we’re really looking at two different options.
1. We’ll keep doing “on-site” coaching. The next network will start in March. We had guys from Florida, Texas and Ohio come in for the last network, and there really was some great discussion. I learned a lot and I think the guys in the network learned a lot as well. I intentionally price it very low so it can be affordable for church planters.
2. I’m also considering some kind of online option. I still think that in person is more effective for this type of training, but the travel can get expensive. This would be 5 or 6 sessions…probably some kind of video chat, with maybe some ongoing discussion board type stuff. Are you interested in something like this?
If you’re interested in either option, email my assistant Tracy and she will get you more information and an application. For the network to work best, I cap it off around 12 people.
Nov/090
Storybook Sex Resources
Just added series resources for Storybook Sex, a five-week series on the Song of Solomon. The zip file contains messages, Keynote presentations, graphics and more. Visit the series page to download this and other series resources.
Nov/090
Creating Memorable Messages
At last months coaching network, we did a little project. I asked the guys to take 2 minutes and write down the key points or illustrations from any sermon they could ever remember. Then we wrote the points or stories up on the board.
The list was pretty evenly divided between memorable statements (a lot of them from Andy Stanley, who creates memorable message statements better than anyone else) and stories or illustrations. I think this is important, because some people connect better with information and other people connect better with stories or props.
I believe a good message needs to either have a memorable statement or a compelling story. Great messages have both. Work hard to make the main point memorable…agonize over your word choice and see if it passes the memory test. Search hard to develop a story, illustration or prop that will drive that point home. Make sure you at least have one of the two in every sermon.
Here’s a little chart of some messages we’ve heard or done.
Nov/090
Prioritize.
I like lists. I enjoy reading lists like the worst 100 moves of all time and the 100 fastest growing churches in the universe. I like sports polls, because they are kind of like lists. I like surfing through the iTunes top 100 list to see what stupid song with horrible lyrics has sung its way into the collective chorus of America.
I also like making lists. Well, except for grocery lists. When it comes to grocery shopping, which I actually enjoy, I prefer to work as more of roamer. My strategy for shopping involves getting a cart, wandering the aisles, and getting all the things that I would like to eat. This greatly offends my coupon cutting friends, who bring in filing cabinets and hand-made coupons, checking off purchases on their laptop computers as they shop with a vengeful purpose.
To-do lists are also great. There’s nothing like sitting down at the beginning of the week or the beginning of the day and write down all the tasks that are floating around inside your brain. Capturing them on paper, or in some kind of electronic format is somewhat therapeutic. From time to time, it’s a great idea to sit down and just write a mind dump of everything that’s on your mind.
The problem with lists is that they are not worth much unless they are prioritized. All the things on your list are not of equal importance. This isn’t so bad if it’s a grocery list, but it’s a little more important when it comes to leadership.
Since my leadership sphere is the local church, let’s use preaching as an example.If you’re a preacher, then probably one of the most important things you do every week is prepare a sermon for Sunday. And you’ve probably noticed that Sunday comes around with amazing regularity.
Yet how many of you go throughout the week doing all sorts of things, arriving at Thursday or Friday, or (gasp) Saturday with an undone message? The result is a Saturday night special, a whipped up sermon that isn’t well-organized, personalized or prayed through.
Instead, prioritize. If writing and preparing a sermon is the most important thing you do, force yourself to finish on Monday or Tuesday. Then see how much freedom you feel during the rest of the week to meet with people, develop your staff, read books and write. Prioritizing those lists is the way that you get the most important tasks, the things with the largest payoff, done first.
I’ve developed the habit of sending the final version of my sermon off to the people who need it by Monday at noon. That means that my most important task of the week is done early. It’s kind of like the first fruits of time management. Since the weekend message is probably the most important task of my week, why not prioritize it and get it done first?
Stephen Covey says it like this: “Anything less than a conscious commitment to the important is an unconscious commitment to the unimportant.”
Nov/090
Preservice Music
Here’s an iMix of some of the stuff that we’re playing preservice to create a vibe in the House of Rock before the service starts.
Oct/090
First things First
If you’re a preacher, then probably one of the most important things you do every week is prepare a sermon for Sunday. And you’ve probably noticed that Sunday comes around with amazing regularity.
Yet how many of you go throughout the week doing all sorts of things, arriving at Thursday or Friday, or (gasp) Saturday with an undone message?
Instead, prioritize. If writing and preparing a sermon is the most important thing you do, force yourself to finish on Monday or Tuesday. Then see how much freedom you feel during the rest of the week to meet with people, develop your staff, read books and write.
I’ve developed the habit of sending the final version of my sermon off to the people who need it by Monday at noon. That means that my most important task of the week is done early. It’s kind of like the first fruits of time management.
Oct/090
Teaching Priorities
About a year ago, I took about 10 people off to a cabin to finalize our teaching calendar for the upcoming year. Which is now the previous year. Before headed off, I had prayed and thought and researched, eventually writing out nine teaching priorities for the year. Here were those priorities and how we did.
- Finances and money management. This is something that we want to talk about regularly, but hit in a series every 18 months or so. Back in February, we did a series called Bailout. We learned that February is not the best time for a money series, but the series was great.
- Marriage and Relationships. We’re beginning a series called Storybook Sex this weekend, which walks through the Song of Solomon.
- A Bible book or section of a book. In addition to chapter-by-chapter through the Song of Solomon, “Break Free” walked through ten chapters of Exodus and “Uncomfortable” walked through the life of Abraham
- Something controversial. We like to keep people on edge so I wanted to do at least one series that some would consider controversial. We landed on “Stupid Christians”. We also answered some pretty controversial questions during the “Questions” series…things like divorce and drinking.
- A blow out three year celebration. We hit this during the “Contagious” series which covered the purpose of the church. He had streamers, a marching band, and an old-school pot-luck lunch where we baptized about 40 people.
- At least 4 big Gospel presentation days (we present the Gospel a lot, but I wanted at least four days where we tell our people to invite). We did that with Easter and Break Free, but probably could have done a better job here.
- At least one message on volunteering and serving. We always talk about volunteering, but during “God at the Movies” we did a big volunteer push.
- At least one message on inviting, challenging people to write the name of at least one person they will invite. We actually ended up doing a whole series on this called “Contagious.”
“It’s the End of the World as we Know it” and “Faith and Doubt” were two other series that we did earlier in the year, and both of those were great. It was encouraging to me to look back on my teaching priorities for the year and see how our team followed through.
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