Focus on Priorities and Results
By Kent Halstead

The Christian church exists to love, obey, and serve God and spread the Good News. These are the priorities and reason for our very being. How can church leaders, particularly those serving on governing boards, stay focused on these results?

Mission selection. The principal management responsibility of a church council or governing board is that of establishing mission priorities. Some councils are comfortable simply listing every commission without priority, "covering all the bases" so to speak. But in reality, congregations typically gravitate toward their strengths and favoring conditions. Resources are invariably limited; opportunities often are location dependent. Consequently, congregations gradually establish their agendas as much by assimilation as deliberate decision. And the alignment is invariably reasonable, if not optimal. However, rethinking priorities must follow as a yearly refining exercise and to accommodate changing conditions.

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BOOK REVIEW

Church on the Edge of Somewhere: Ministry, Marginality, and the Future
By George B. Thompson, Jr., Alban Institute, 2007
Reviewed by Lewis A. Parks

Some books remind us of the church’s mission to those on the margin of life. We read them; we feel bad. Nothing changes. Other books describe the culture of congregations. They show appreciation for its layers of meaning and its setting in the community. We read them and say, “Yes, that’s how it is.” Again, nothing changes. George Thompson wants to combine the biblical motivation from the first set of books and the relentless realism from the second set of books so something happens when a congregation remembers that they themselves were once strangers in Egypt.

Purchase this book from Amazon.com 

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Leaders do not need answers.
Leaders must have the right questions.

Some find that occasionally using the last five or ten minutes of a meeting for this question is helpful.

What is something on your mind that
you have not had a chance to say?

Editors:  Lovett H. Weems, Jr. and Ann A. Michel
Production and distribution:  Joe Arnold

Copyright © 2008 by the G. Douglass Lewis Center for Church Leadership. Leading Ideas material may be freely distributed with attribution (exclusive of material protected by separate copyright).