We have already begun the line up with  Larry Osborne, pastor of Northcost Church in Vista, CA who talks about his book Sticky Teams, which is one of the best books I’ve read in 30 years.

In October I  will release my interview with Bob Logan, Founder of Coachnet Global.  Bob has been on the fore front of coaching and church planting. In fact he wrote the book on church planting.

In November, Mark DeYmas pastor of Mosaic of Central Arkansas, will talk about his multi ethnic work in Little Rock and his book Ethnic Blend.  It is Mark’s contention that by 2020 20% of all thriving churches will  be multi ethnic.

December brings Dave Ferguson to the plate. Dave has been a good friend for a long time and if you have followed his work at Community Christian and Exponential you know he is doing his best to fuel a movement. We will discuss his book Exponential, which is another one of the best books I’ve read in 30 years.

These coaching sessions are free. All you have to do is go to our website and click on Coaching for BZ People and register. A wealth of learning is at your finger tips.

This shift is happening for a variety of reasons but here are the top three;

• Times are changing faster than most pastors can keep up with and continue to pastor.
• There are more church plants underway among mainliners than at any time in the last 40 years and mainliners are beginning to see the value of a coach.
• The younger generations are more prone to a coaching relationship than are the boomers

Several learnings pop out from my coaching.

Many pastors…..

• are notoriously bad about not setting out clear expectations of their staff. So I have to found it helpful if the pastor and I agree on a Personal Mission Mandate for the pastor and hold them accountable to it.
• allow themselves to get pulled in so many directions it’s hard for them to focus on what really matters and need regular reminders to focus on the main thing. Often my role is to simply remind the person of the handful of leverage actions that are going to take the church to the next level. One of my favorite questions is “If your church were twice its size, what would you have to start and stop doing.” We actually make a list.
• have a hard time fully appreciating the fact that once they get beyond 150 in worship the burden for growth begins to shift from them to their staff (which many don’t have). Any pastor can grow a church to 200 without much help; but no pastor can effectively take a group of people past the 500 barrier all alone.
• find it difficult to set aside time for family and personal growth.  I have to remind them that it’s not how long they work, but what they do while working.
• need remedial work on know how to hire or fire staff.  It’s not uncommon for a pastor to have so high a mercy gift they simply find it devastating to fire someone and they are so rushed for time that they hire the first person who comes along.  One of the things I constantly remind my folks is that they need to constantly looking for staff that they don’t yet need.

There’s a huge difference between coaching and consulting, so I’ve been on a fast learning curve. But I’ve learned there’s also a lot of cross over. I’ve found that coaching without the consulting ability often leaves the one being coached dangling in the wind not knowing what to do or not to do next.  Failure to wear the consultant hat often results in fatale mistakes.

Because of this growth in coaching, my partner and I have set up The Next Level Coaching Network to assist pastors in growing their churches. If you’re interested in a coaching relationship, my partner and I still have a few openings.  If you want more information go to www.nextlevelcoachingnetwork.net .

Bill Easum
www.churchconsultations.com
www.nextlevelcoachingnetwork.com

The goal of a “to be” list is to move people along in their spiritual development. For example:

• a non-believer to a beliver
• a visitor to a participant
• a participant to a servant
• a servant to a leader
• a leader to a coach
• a coach to a paid staff position

Another way to view it is to mentor people up the leadership path. It goes something like this:

• Visitors- do not overlook the fact that fewer people will be joining organizations in the future and that one of the best ways to disciple a person is to involve them in a ministry. New Hope Christian Fellowship in Honolulu is one of the best at this.
• Apprentices in training – this includes potentially everyone in the congregation.
• Leaders of Committees . Almost anyone can lead a committee. All you have to do is call it to order, keep your mouth shut, and close it.
• Leaders of short term ministries like S.S. or VBS. At this point people need to become scouts, looking for potential new leaders, but they are seldom coaches.
• Leaders of major, on-going ministries like a small group system. It is not uncommon from here on for leaders to become scouts and coaches.
• Leaders of Systems such as Lay Mobilization
• Leaders of leaders – usually staff
• Leader of leaders – lead pastor

How do you mentor the new leaders in your future?

Bill Easum
www.churchconsultations.com
easum@aol.com

Just recently I received an email from a client I’m coaching asking my advice on what to do with just such a problem.  In this case it was with the youth ministry- secular sports were taking kids away from the churches scheduled meetings. Here is what I told him.

 Why not see this as a missional opportunity and train your youth to be ambassadors for Christ and participate in the sport rather than being at the youth group. Instead of fighting it, or bad mouthing the sport for conflicting with church, equip the youth to participate in the sports as an ambassador for Christ.  Let them know their church is behind them if they will practice their Christianity in a way that it brings people to Christ and the church.

I think we place too high a premium on church attendance.   Most of our people spend too much time a church and not enough time sharing their faith with their neighbor. We have led our people to believe that attending church is the mark of a Christian. But it’s not. The mark of a Christian is what we do in our everyday lives.  So help your youth minister see that their participation in the sport is more important than being at church. If he has too, let him count them in attendance when they are gone for sports or for practice. But also encourage him to equip them to represent the church while they are there and to know that you, the youth minister, and the church support them being missionaries to sports.

That’s the way I would handle it.

“United Methodist congregations that are thriving have a few things in common—whether large or small, urban or rural.
A new survey shows United Methodist churches with the greatest vitality are marked by inspirational preaching, plenty of small groups and programs for children and youth, and a mix of both traditional and contemporary worship services.”

The good news is that now when people like me say these things they are backed up by excellent research. Lets look at those findings again:
Thriving churches of all sizes and locations have the following things in common:

• Inspirational preaching
• lots of small groups
• children and youth ministries
• both traditional and contemporary worship

Now if the truth were known, and the survey had separated thriving established churches from church plants, the study would have shown one more important thing that the vast majority of thriving church plants have in common- contemporary worship without traditional worship.  I also wonder if the survey had taken a deeper look into the stats if it would have shown that in the thriving churches contemporary worship was always growing and traditional was most stagnant or declining. I doubt if we will ever know that from the study. But could it be like the rest of the study- those of us who consult for a living already know the answer and like the four common denominators, we have been saying for decades that traditional worship is on the downswing and contemporary is becoming the new normal for thriving churches.

The problem is, just as many denominational officials and pastors discounted our cry for the four things in common, they seem to want to do the same with our cry for more contemporary worship and less traditional.  Churches are doing the same thing because in most of the dying churches we work with that do have contemporary worship they are still spending more money on traditional worship (even though they are watching it die) than they spend on contemporary worship.  Go figure.

The survey also backed up what we have been saying about denominational life. Here is what the survey said.

“Among the findings? The denomination has lost its theological identity, experiences a general lack of trust and accountability, and struggles with a perceived distance between the general church agencies, annual conferences and local churches.

“The central focus was on a sense of loss of mission definition and relevancy and an accompanying sense of loss of identity,” the report stated. “At the broadest level, the church’s struggle for an identity as a global church was widely discussed.”

Areas for improvement include:

• More clarity and understanding about the denomination’s mission, culture and values;

• Less perceived organizational “distance” between the general church and local churches;

• Better defined leadership roles and accountability, and improving trust “between the pew and leadership”;

• More standardized management processes and reporting systems”

Sound familiar?

Now, since I love my tribe, it is my deepest hope it will heed the warnings in this survey and seek to remedy the issues that are tearing the UMC apart.  There are islands of strength, as the survey shows.   The trick is for us to learn from these vital churches.

Here is a four minute video of mine showing how to make this call to first time visitors.

Responding to first time visitors

It just so happened that the next day I am asked to read the galleys of Clif Christopher’s new book titled, “Whose Offering Plate is It?” This is a a sequel to his best seller “It’s Not Your Father’s Offering Plate.” As usual this new book is a gold mine of information and guidance on money issues for the church.  And one of the Chapters is strictly on the question of why a pastor should know what everyone gives.  You need to read this book if you have any doubts about this issue.

I’m not going to give away Clif’s insights.  But I am going to answer the question from my own experience.

Yes, every pastor or executive pastor ought to know what everyone gives for at least the following two reasons:

• So that no one is in leadership who isn’t adequately giving to the church.  For me adequate means 10%.
• So that I know how to approach the person about their spiritual maturity.  No one reaches spiritual maturity until they master their money instead of it mastering them.

Two stories should help here.

The first story is about a Dr. in my church years ago who came to me for counseling.  He wasn’t getting out of his spiritual life what he hoped he would.  I knew that he was no where close to a tithe. So I told him he never will get out of his spiritual life what he wants as long as he holds back his wallet from God. If I hadn’t known what he was giving, I couldn’t have counseled him biblically. Whatever I would have said would have let him down the wrong road and left him with unreasonable expectations about his faith.

The second story is about a young blue collar couple just getting but were tithing.  The wife came down with some form of cancer and the treatments were eating them alive financially to the point that she stopped going to the doctor. When I heard that I went to them and said, “Stop tithing for now. God will understand. You need your treatments more than God needs your money.” If I had not known what they were giving I could not have intervened. And my intervention helped save her life.

The fact that so many church people are so passionately opposed to their pastor knowing what they give says that there is something positive about the pastor knowing what people give.

Pastor it’s time you know.  There is no defense for you not knowing

Bill Easum
www.churchconsultations.com
easum@aol.com

I’ve lived through a number of seismic shifts the last twenty years.  These shifts have changed the way I think and consult and I’m watching how they have affected effective pastors. Those who haven’t assimilated these shifts lead declining churches and those who have assimilated them are leading growing churches. So I want to share them with you if the hope that you will incorporate them into your ministry. I’m only going to list them here.  If you want the full story, check out our website www.churchsoncultations.com and register to get our newsletter – On Track.

I’ve noted the shift from-

• more to less ministry
• the church being the hub of the community to being an outcast from the community
• congregational form of governance to apostolic leadership
• growing the church to growing the Kingdom
• place determining the scope of ministry to God determining the scope of ministry
• homogenous congregations to multi ethnic congregations
• churches that plant a church to churches that have church planting as their DNA
• seeing more churches close every year than are being opened to more churches being planted each year than being closed
• mainline dominance to the rise of the non-denominational church

The interesting about these shifts is that they are just the tip of the iceberg when you think about the next couple of decades. Who knows what these shifts will cause to happen in the future? Stay tuned for what will be a wild ride.

Want to know the whole story? Go to www.churchconsultations.com

On Monday morning send a FedEx package to every first time visitor who signs in and include all or some of the following:

• a veggie tale CD for children, or an appropriate CD for a youth, a CD introducing the adult ministries and leaders of the church
• a 25% discount to your bookstore
• an invitation to the next Pastor’s Gathering
• and an assortment of any other items that might be appropriate to your church.

You can be sure any Fed Ex package is going to be opened.