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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 Becoming a Leader Who Says Yes!

During my tenth year as pastor of a large multi-staff church, the laity offered me a twelve-week study leave for rest, renewal, and learning. I was absent during the summer months as volunteers and staff planned the fall schedule. Upon my return, I discovered a program full of great new ministries — an eight-week lay academy that offered a dozen…

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Leading Ideas
0 Next Sunday is Not a Presidential Primary

Following the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a remarkable focus emerged among churches. We know there were instances of religious prejudice and harassment, but many churches immediately understood they had a role to play in fostering better understanding across diverse faiths. They felt called to educate themselves about faith groups beyond Christianity. When someone…

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Leading Ideas
0 Next Generation Leaders

At an event I was approached by a well-dressed older woman who said, “We are willing to do whatever it takes to get the next generation of leaders involved. We will invest our time to train them, equip them, and guide them as they learn how to run this congregation. It’s their turn to step up, just like we did…

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Leading Ideas
0 Creative Lenten Activity Encourages Reflection

Lent, the forty-day period before Easter, is set aside as a season of soul-searching and repentance. The forty days of Lent reflect Jesus’s withdrawal into the wilderness for his own time of spiritual reflection and preparation for his sacrifice on the cross. At Floris United Methodist Church in Herndon, Virginia, we invite families and groups to spend time together in…

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Leading Ideas
0 Speak More Effectively by Asking Three Questions

Perhaps the most important component to giving an effective speech is asking the right questions. There are three very simple questions your talk, speech, or sermon should be built upon: “Why?” “Who?” and “What?” Why? When I’m asked to give a speech, talk, or sermon outside of my home church, I want to know, “Why am I being asked to…

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Leading Ideas
0 Should We Go From Two Worship Services to One?

Just as some churches are adding worship services, others are considering reducing the number of worship times they offer. The most common circumstance is a church that traditionally offered two Sunday morning services and is considering replacing that pattern with a single worship experience. The question of one service is not which option I prefer personally, but rather which option…

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Leading Ideas
0 Do You Need a New Worship Service?

Our church had hit a plateau. We continued to welcome new members, but worship attendance stubbornly remained flat. We were bumping up against what consultants call the 80 Percent Rule. When 80 percent of ideal seating is full, the feeling of crowding will limit a church’s continued growth. So we began a third worship service, and, within the year, worship…

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Leading Ideas
0 Quiet Leadership by Public Leaders

Dale Bumpers was a very public leader for most of his adult life — as governor of Arkansas for two terms and then United States Senator for 24 years until his retirement in 1999. When he died recently at his home in Little Rock at the age of 90, I thought back to the first time I met him at…

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Leading Ideas
0 Reclaiming Conversation

One of the most profound and disturbing books I’ve read recently is Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (Penguin Press, 2015). Turkle is a professor at MIT, author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (Basis Books, 2010), and a researcher into how technology is reshaping human…

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Leading Ideas
0 Community Outreach Essential to Launch New Worship Site

Saint Mark United Methodist Church in Wichita, Kansas, recently launched a new worship service at a second campus in southeast Wichita that became part of our church through a merger. The worship launch team came up with a four-phase plan to connect with the new community. While these were done to launch a new worship site, they may offer ideas…

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Leading Ideas
0 More Than a Nonanxious Presence

When I came to my first local church appointment in California from the East Coast, about the only thing I had been told about the place was that it was “a beautiful plant.” Indeed, the sanctuary was quite lovely. What the district superintendent had failed to mention included such details as the discovery, about a month prior, of the body…

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Leading Ideas
0 When Higher Giving May Not Be Good News

As a new year begins, there will and should be a careful review of the past year. Perhaps there will be reports made to the church council or congregation on “how we did last year.” If statistical trends are shared, they probably show a mixture of increases and declines. Such is the ebb and flow of most congregations. The economic…

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Leading Ideas
0 Setting Stewardship Goals for the New Year

Setting annual goals for your stewardship and generosity ministry is very important to help create focus and energy. These goals can come out of brainstorming sessions; however, they will need to be refined with those who are going to be working on these goals before final decisions and approvals are made because ownership is important for best results. Your leadership…

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Leading Ideas
0 Take an Annual Church Health Checkup

At the beginning of every year, many people take time to evaluate their lives and determine new priorities and directions. The same should be true for churches. You need to evaluate honestly your church’s progress during the previous year to define the right direction. Measure Your Church’s Vital Signs You probably have heard discussion about metrics within the church. Metrics…

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Leading Ideas
0 Spiritual but Not Religious. Really?

A common phrase used in recent years to describe some people is “spiritual but not religious.” It sounds good and believable given our modern individualistic tendencies and self focus. In a sense, it was a bit comforting to think that those who no longer attend church or practice their religion publicly are still personally spiritual and attuned to the things…

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Leading Ideas
0 Living with Open Hands

My wife, Danelle, and I have always tried to live our lives with open hearts, open hands, and an open home. We have fed hundreds of people gathered around our dinner table. We have invited struggling college students and families with children to live with us until they could get back on their feet. We sponsor Compassion International children, give…

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Leading Ideas
0 Christmas Carols in Advent? Yes!

This year, worshipers at the Washington, DC, church where I serve will be hearing Christmas carols on November 29, the first Sunday of Advent. In the past, we’ve saved Christmas carols for the liturgical season of Christmastide, which begins on Christmas Day and continues through Epiphany on January 6. During Advent, we enjoyed Advent hymns, such as “O Come, O…

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Leading Ideas
0 A More Empowering Christmas Gift Give-Away

The gifts of the Magi make perfect sense theologically, but the presents certainly weren’t practical. The arrival of a child requires diapers and bottles, cribs and strollers, feeding supplies and bathing equipment. Sometimes the gifts we give to our neighbors resemble those of the traveling kings in terms of their usefulness. One Christmas Eve at Cass Community stands out in…

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Leading Ideas
0 Collective Genius

Much conventional wisdom about leadership has assumed a sole visionary providing primary leadership for a group. The temptation, likewise, is to think that the answer for our congregation is a single innovative leader. The right pastoral leader is surely important, but we are long beyond the ability of any single individual to solve today’s challenges. One leader, even one with…

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Leading Ideas
0 Does Everyone in a Church Need to Know Everything?

Every congregation has a set of expectations, mostly unspoken and never completely identified, about making decisions. And sometimes, these expectations are unhelpful. One such unhelpful expectation is the belief that everyone needs to know everything, and the church can’t act until everyone approves. The expectation that everyone must know and approve gives tremendous power to discontented members. The whole church…

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Leading Ideas
0 Putting Ourselves in the Places Where Life Happens

Keith Anderson says our churches must get outside of our buildings, both digitally and physically, and claim a broader understanding of where faith happens. I’m convinced that one of the major challenges for today’s church leaders is a matter of perspective. For ministry leaders, the church, whether by that we mean the building or the institution, is often at the…

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Leading Ideas
0 Ten Ways Congregations Can Promote the Financial Wellbeing of Clergy

Financial wellbeing is essential to the overall health and well being of those in pastoral ministry. Accordingly, the United Methodist Board of Pension and Health Benefits’ “50 Ways to Support Your Pastor’s Health and Well being” included these ten suggestions for how congregations can contribute to the financial health of their pastors: Compensate the pastor fairly according to his/her experience,…

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Leading Ideas
0 Why Clergy Personal Finances Matter

“For where your treasure is, there your heart shall be also.” (Matthew 6:21) Jesus talked a great deal about money. And in our monetized society, effective pastoral ministry has a lot to do with how it is acquired, how it is spent, how it is accounted for, and how it can be both a resource and a stumbling block for…

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Leading Ideas
0 Making Space for Faithful Following

As people live longer and are healthier and active further into older adulthood, a logjam of sorts is created. Older adults who have found great meaning in their congregational roles over the years are reluctant to step back from those roles. Sometimes holding on to those roles becomes a way of denying the effects of aging or the coming end…

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Leading Ideas
0 A New Way to View Vitality in Smaller Congregations

I spend my working days as a pastor trying to name reality for my congregation as we wind a precarious way between the heights of aspiration and the depths of self-criticism. We know that we are supposed to be the tree planted by streams of living water that brings forth fruit in due season (Psalms 1:3), but some days feel…

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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.