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Leading Ideas
Delivered every Wednesday, our free e-newsletter Leading Ideas offers articles by thoughtful, cutting-edge leaders on subjects you care about — navigating change, reaching younger people, financing your ministry, communicating effectively — to help you be the leader God is calling you to be.

The Lewis Center is committed to helping congregations and denominations thrive and grow by providing ideas, research, resources, and training for vital and fruitful leadership. Through Leading Ideas, we share vignettes of leaders and congregations, book reviews, leadership quotes, and helpful “right questions” built around the premise that leaders don’t need answers — they need to know the right questions.

Leading Ideas
0 Doing Mission Fundraising Well

Do you wish your church could do more to support mission? Pastor Lisa Kipp gives tips for how special fundraising for mission can be done effectively to enhance stewardship and increase a congregation’s overall mission giving. Several years ago, our congregation decided to try an experiment. We wondered what might happen if we held specific fundraisers through the year for…

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Leading Ideas
0 The Importance of Why

Healthy churches know why they do what they do, says pastor and author Graham Standish. When what we do is based on a clear why, we act with purpose. When we don’t know why we do what we do, we lose focus. Why do some churches flourish and others struggle? Those that flourish generally know why they do what they…

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Leading Ideas
0 Effective Church Websites

Web designer and consultant Scott Dixon shares tips for designing a good church website. He says three traits are essential — great content, good design, and easy navigation. I can’t count how many times I’ve been asked “What makes a good website?” Or, better yet, “What can I do to make my website better?” I’ve learned there are three essential traits…

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Leading Ideas
0 9 Things Preachers Should Never Say

Many preachers shoot themselves in the foot when they start off with hackneyed or formulaic phrases that fail to capture the fleeting attention of those in the pew.  Charley Reeb, a Florida pastor known as a gifted preacher, outlines nine opening lines that good preachers avoid. Preaching is challenging. When someone suggested to Winston Churchill that he ought to put…

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Leading Ideas
0 Blessing Boxes Energize Churches to Meet Needs

The idea of a Blessing Box, shared widely on social media, has inspired many congregations to take direct action to meet community needs. Amy Forbus describes how Blessing Boxes have energized churches in the Arkansas Conference of the UMC to provide for their neighbors in creative, participatory ways. The concept is simple: Stock a container with nonperishable food items, toiletries…

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Leading Ideas
0 Keychain Leadership

One core commitment that can help a congregation engage younger people is a willingness to entrust teens and emerging adults with the “keys” to real influence and agency by giving away access, power, and responsibility. The authors of Growing Young call this empowering style of leadership “keychain leadership.” Is leadership style a critical variable in helping a church reach younger…

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Leading Ideas
0 The Leader as Communicator

Effective leaders are good communicators, according to Lovett H. Weems, Jr. They understand the importance of all forms of communication and that communication is always two-way, receiving as well as giving information and feelings. One study of leadership analyzed how leaders spend their days, concluding “for formal leaders in organizations … the world consists of many activities (most of them…

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Leading Ideas
0 The Lent Challenge

Tom Berlin, pastor of Floris United Methodist Church, challenges his congregation to deepen their spiritual journey during Lent by taking up the disciplines of worship, study, and scripture reading rather than giving up chocolates or dessert. Lent is a time for going more deeply into Christian discipleship. Church members are often aware that Lent is a season for increased devotion…

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Leading Ideas
0 Should You Add Another Easter Worship Service?

Lovett H. Weems, Jr., encourages churches to consider whether adding an additional worship service on Easter Sunday will increase their ability to reach more worshipers. He says an unexpected, positive benefit of modifying your worship schedule is that you need to be more deliberate in sharing information with members and potential visitors. Easter is the special day of the Christian…

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Leading Ideas
0 When Volunteers Aren’t Working Out

Churches often put up with ineffective volunteers because they don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, says Lory Beth Huffman, a pastor in Western North Carolina. She describes how to help volunteers succeed, but also how to remove a dysfunctional volunteer with grace and honesty when necessary for the sake of fruitfulness in God’s Kingdom. One of the hardest dilemmas we…

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Leading Ideas
0 Organizing a Missional COMMUNITY

Hal Knight and Doug Powe discuss nine characteristics of transformative Christian communities that allow them to nurture spiritual growth while also remaining open to others and connected to the broader community. Whether starting a new church or renewing an existing congregation, leaders must be able to organize communities so that their members are growing in spiritual depth while also focusing…

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Leading Ideas
0 Lead Positively

Lovett H. Weems Jr., explains why leaders need to affirm the positive and assume the best of others — even when things aren’t what they ultimately need to be. Critique and judgment have their place — but not at the expense of projecting a grace-filled and hopeful attitude toward others. Leaders sometimes are reluctant to affirm good things among those we serve…

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Leading Ideas
0 Is Your Vision a Mural or a To-Do List?

Tiffany Deluccia says that for too many churches, their de facto vision is nothing more than a list of the next things to be done. Instead, your vision should be an inspiring and compelling portrait of what God is doing in the life of your church. When someone asks you about your church’s vision for the next 3-5 years, how…

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Leading Ideas
0 The Multiplying Effect of Community Partnerships

Rather than creating new programs that reinvent the wheel, Rosario Picardo says congregations can multiply the impact of their outreach by seeking out the people and organizations in their community already doing God’s work and forging creative partnerships. As churches, we have a tendency to create “new” programs either out of a desire for control or because we simply don’t…

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Leading Ideas
0 Two Views of Vision

What kind of vision helps a church finds its way forward? Lovett H. Weems, Jr., says a vision needn’t be grandiose, nor is the process necessarily linear. Drawing on Margaret Wheatley’s “circular” understanding of vision, he explains that visioning can involve a series of small, next-step visions that become a field of energy from which a larger vision emerges. Margaret…

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Leading Ideas
0 A Spiritually Inviting Food Pantry

Sue Nilson Kibbey, author of the new book Flood Gates: Holy Momentum for a Fearless Church, describes how a food pantry ministry provided the opportunity for a congregation to develop deepening relationships with the food pantry clients. It started with serving a warm meal and eventually led to the creation of a new community of Christ followers. A church leader…

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Leading Ideas
0 Ten Ways to Build the Beloved Community

Baltimore Pastor C. Anthony Hunt lifts up Martin Luther King, Jr.’s powerful vision of the Beloved Community, calling on individuals and churches to continue to promote peace with justice. He provides ten suggestions for heightening our commitment to community building and social engagement. A universal human striving is for authentic community. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was among those who…

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Leading Ideas
0 Why Some Ministries Need to Die

Every ministry has a lifespan, according to pastor and author Graham Standish. When a church forces dying ministries to stay alive, it prevents new ministries from being resurrected from the death of the old. A major problem of any struggling church is that it consistently does what it’s always done before, and avoids doing what it’s never done before. Whenever…

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Leading Ideas
0 Stewardship Resolutions for the New Year

Stewardship consultant Cesie Delve Scheuermann suggests planning your calendar of stewardship activities for the year. But before you do any asking, she stresses that you need to be deliberate about thanking contributors and telling the story of how their giving is changing lives and making the world a better place. Now that Christmas is over, you have (maybe) a moment…

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Leading Ideas
0 Top Lewis Center Resources of 2016

Lewis Center resources guide you in strengthening your personal leadership and renewing your congregation. Following are our most popular free and purchased resources of the year. Save 10% on downloadable and DVD/CD video tool kits and PDF ebooks with coupon code TOP2016 through December 31, 2016. Top Free Resources 50 Ways to Increase Worship Attendance Free to read, share, and…

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Leading Ideas
0 Top “Leading Ideas” Articles of 2016

What Leading Ideas subjects are trending this year? We have assembled this list to give you another opportunity to glean insight and inspiration from the authors and articles most popular with our nearly 18,000 subscribers. 10 Ways to Reach Unchurched People at Christmas Pastor Carey Nieuwhof says unchurched people want to celebrate Christmas, so there is no better time to…

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Leading Ideas
0 A Birthday Party for Jesus

Margie Briggs, pastor of two small churches in Missouri, describes how the annual tradition of hosting a “birthday party for Jesus” has attracted children and families from their community into the church, helping to bring new vitality to an aging congregation. A few years ago, our small rural church in Calhoun, Missouri, wanted to do something at Christmas time for…

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Leading Ideas
0 10 Qualities Your Church Doesn’t Need to Grow Young

What types of churches attract young people? Kara Powell, Jake Mulder, and Brad Griffin, the authors of Growing Young, dispel a number of common myths. Their research indicates that size, location, denominational tradition, worship style, and several other variables don’t matter as much as imagined and that congregations of all types have the potential to “grow young.” Whether you’re a senior…

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Leading Ideas
0 7 Ways to Help Unchurched Guests Feel Welcome without Selling Out

Making new people feel welcome isn’t a sell out to a marketing and customer service mentality, says Rich Birch. It’s consistent with Scripture’s overarching theme of making space for the outsider. He outlines seven basic ways of making sure guests feel welcome. Some church leaders look down their noses at churches that go out of their way to create environments…

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Leading Ideas
0 So That: Two Powerful Words for Mission Results

Lovett H. Weems, Jr., says that churches often invest a great deal of energy in activities without ever asking how they relate to what God is calling the church to accomplish. He says that one of the simplest ways a congregation can stay focused on the ends it seeks to achieve, rather than becoming preoccupied with the means, is to…

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This article is reprinted by permission from Leading Ideas, a free e-newsletter from the Lewis Center for Church Leadership of Wesley Theological Seminary available at churchleadership.com.