Bill Easums Observations

“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Pray the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

Jesus directly asked us to pray that more leaders would be sent out into their networks to reap a spiritual harvest.  Yet, I find most pastors seldom pray for leaders to go into the harvest. Instead they spend hours trying to find people who will volunteer to serve in some church capacity.

When was the last time you prayed for leaders to emerge in your church who are willing to go out into their networks and share the Good News?

So, what is it that makes a pastor pray for leaders of the harvest instead of spending time taking care of the church? The answer is simple. Just look at the text. Prior to Jesus’ statement he was going through the country preaching and healing because “he had compassion on them.”

The primary thing that separates the thriving pastor from the not-so-thriving pastor is their understanding of the difference between compassion and caring.

There’s a thin line between compassion and caring. Pastors in thriving churches tend to have so much compassion for the lost that their hearts are broken;  whereas pastors in dying churches tend to have a desire to care for the people period.

I’ve found that pastors who care for church people as opposed to having compassion for the lost usually have a deep seated need to be needed.  I’ve also found that these pastors avoid controversy with all costs. As a result, their prayers are mostly for the survival of the institution rather than the salvation of people and the creation.

Finally, Jesus wasn’t behind a desk or the four walls of the temple. He was out among the people who were the harvest. Pastor, no one ever comes to Christ in your office.  If you spend more than a couple of hours a day in your office the odds are your church isn’t growing. If you want to be lead more by compassion than caring, get out of your office and into the harvest and see what happens.

If you need help with ideas how to make compassion and outreach more a part of your church go to the Hitchhikers Guide to Evangelism website.

Bill Easum
www.churchconsultations.com
www.21stCenturyStrategies.com

Most worship growth comes in spurts rather than in increments. So it’s important to have two or three major pushes a year designed to grow your church forward in a significant way.

When I was pastor, I tried to plan for two or three Easters a year.   We called them “Double Days.” We would do various things to make this happen. Sometimes we would do Friends Day. Other times we would end VBS in Sunday worship by having the children sing songs they learned during VBS.  At other times we would flood TV with ministry spots announcing a major sexy sermon series that caught people’s attention. One year we capitalized on the opening of our city-wide youth center where the Mayor was going to cut the ribbon and dedicate the facility to the community.

If you choose to do a Double Day you need to do several things in advance.

1. Spend several weeks prior to the Double Day preparing your people to understand the biblical importance of sharing the Good News with their networks.
2. Tie all Double Days to the opening of a major four week series of messages with the first message being so sexy the title itself attracts people.
3. During worship the week before the Double Day, give your people a slick handout to give to their friends and encourage each one of them to write down the name of two friends they are going to invite to the Double Day (do this at the end of the service).
4. The week before send out as many people as you can to put out door hangers announcing the Double Day.
5. Add more hospitality people to handle the increase in people.
6. Spend as much advertising the event as you can in whatever way works the best in your locale.
7. Look for ways to get free advertising as well.

It’s amazing what happens when a church plans for growth rather than waiting for it to happen.

The Exponential Conference has assembled a lineup for 2010 that is as good as any conference I’ve seen in a long time. Opening with Louie Giglio, closing with Francis Chan, including well-known and proven motivators like Ken Blanchard, Mark Batterson, Matt Chandler, Dave Gibbons, Brenda Salter-McNeil, Ed Stetzer, Efrem Smith, Dino Rizzo, Dave Ferguson, Greg Surratt, Alan Hirsch, Neil Cole, Bob Roberts, Larry Osborne,  and yours truly (not sure why they let me in again).

I’ve been a speaker the last two years and I’ve found it to be one of a handful of conferences worth attending. You ought to consider registering

Bill Easum
www.churchconsultations.com

I am transfering most of my attention from my facebook profile to our 21st Century Strategies page.  Please go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/Port-Aransas-TX/21st-Century-Strategies-Inc/151403676470  and become a fan

Recently, I received an email from a member of our Advanced Leadership forum asking an excellent question that many pastors ask. Here it is.

“I just received George Barna’s latest e-news where he has an article ’30 Respected Leaders Weigh in on What It Takes to be a Master Leader.’ I want to shift the focus from the individual to the whole community/congregation/organization and ask ‘What does it take for a community/congregation/organization to master the shared gift of leadership in a community/etc?’”

Here’s my response:

I’ve never seen what you’re asking for. One of the tenets of biblical leadership is that it always comes through a person, never a group. It might be a team like Moses and Jethro, but still Moses was clearly the dominant figure. The same would be true with teams like Paul and Barnabas.

I know it is fashionable and honorable to think about the congregation being the leader but that just doesn’t work and when it is tried the organization itself fails or it dwindles down to nothing. God just doesn’t work through groups.  If you can find a place God did, let me know.

One recent attempt at a team based leadership where everyone was equal was at Bible Fellowship in Little Rock, a church that is now several thousand in several locations. Three guys started the church and their goal was them collectively to lead the church. But over time one of them clearly came to the front as THE leader. They became clear that in order to continue to grow one of them had to be seen as the leader.

Price Waterhouse did a study on team based leadership more than a decade ago and their conclusion was it was the quality of the leader that determined the quality of the team. Put a great leader in the team and the team became great. Put a mediocre leader in the same team and the team became mediocre.

When it comes to succession of leadership, again it is the leader who has to make this happen by spending time over several years or decades forming a leadership pipeline that will result in not only his or her successor but also other leaders throughout the congregation.

I know this doesn’t answer your question but I hope it deters you from seeking your goal. All it will do is keep your church small or if it isn’t small now, grow it down to a small size. This is clearly one of the reasons why very few large congregations have congregational meetings to vote of major issues.

Now the question I think you should be asking is “How do I empower the congregation to share in the mission of the church? That is a totally different question, one that will grow healthy, thriving congregations that have the potential to reproduce themselves.”

How does a leader to that? To offer a quick, simple answer-

1. Set out a clearly defined mission.

2. Set out clearly defined, realistic, stretch goals.

3. Discuss how to reach those goals.

4. Provide the resources and coaching to reach those goals.

5. Continual follow-up on how the mission and goals are progressing.

6. Hold people accountable to the goals.

7. Reward those who get it and make it happen (this is more of a staff issue)