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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 Church “as Usual” Is Not Working

The Pew Research Center’s recent report on changes in religious affiliation in the United States received major attention among both secular and religious media. Some of the findings were expected. The report shows Protestants declining to below 50 percent of the population, continuing a long trend. The U.S. Protestant majority that began in colonial times has been eroding more rapidly…

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Leading Ideas
0 Surmounting Leadership Defeats

How do we rebound from setbacks to our best-laid attempts to exercise responsible leadership in ministry? I recently returned from a large denominational gathering where a major reform effort into which persons had poured incredible amounts of research, labor and time, was overturned at the last minute on a legal technicality. There was shock, anger, and various degrees of resignation.…

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Leading Ideas
0 Stewarding God’s Gift of Time

God has given each of us the ability to do many things. Yet we have to make choices, to say no to some activities in order to do well the things God has called us to. Using our time wisely requires focus and discipline. Stewardship is the theological principle that underpins making such choices. God blesses us with material resources,…

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Leading Ideas
0 Worship as Mission

When congregations and their leaders think about worship or about mission, it often appears that they think of the two as compartmentalized and entirely separate from each other. Worship and mission are, it seems, quite different aspects of a congregation’s life and ministry without any necessary or intrinsic relationship to each other. In a new post-Christendom world, everything a congregation…

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Leading Ideas
0 The Risks and Rewards of Being an Associate Pastor

Let’s face it. Working as an associate pastor is not glamorous. You are not preaching every Sunday, your name is not on the church sign, you get paid less (or in some traditions, not at all), and many church members assume your tenure will be brief. Some senior pastors have been solo pastors for so long that they tend to…

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Leading Ideas
0 The One Room (Church) Schoolhouse

My mother attended a one room schoolhouse for all but the last two years of her public education. As a Baby Boomer, I grew up riding the wave of school growth and consolidation and the several accommodations that went with the territory: school buses, area rather than local sports, and, above all, specialization in curriculum with division of the student…

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Leading Ideas
0 Focus Can Help Christmas Mission Giving

Many churches confront a question of missional focus, especially as the holiday season approaches. One group proposes an angel tree project. Another wants to do a coat drive. Someone else is collecting toiletries for the homeless, grocery cards for the hungry, toys for needy children. Needs are great everywhere. So shouldn’t your church offer many opportunities for people to help?…

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Leading Ideas
0 Showing Appreciation for Your Pastor

Some of you may know that October is designated Pastor Appreciation Month in some denominations and congregations. This is not a major national observance, but some churches do use the designation to make sure they show appreciation for their clergy leadership. While such gestures are thoughtful and appreciated, most clergy would settle for more modest ongoing respect and encouragement. It’s…

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Leading Ideas
0 A Keystone Habit for Our Time

A much-talked-about book currently is The Power of Habit. The author, Charles Duhigg, attempts to answer the questions, “Why do habits exist, and how can we change them?” While Duhigg presents scientific evidence about how habits set our patterns of behavior, the most important part of the book, in my opinion, are the stories of how habits are changed, not…

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Leading Ideas
0 The Digital Ministry Bible

The “hope for revitalizing our churches,” maintain Elizabeth Drescher and Keith Anderson, “is related to the ability of leaders in ministry to engage people exactly where they are. And ‘where they are’ increasingly includes social media spaces like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.” Their book, Click 2 Save: The Digital Ministry Bible (Morehouse, 2012) is packed with information about social media tools…

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Leading Ideas
0 Metrics: A Tool for Learning, Not Judging

The current focus on setting numerical goals for ministry and reporting on the results is not new, though it is now greatly expanded. In the past, virtually all the goals churches set had to do with money. The most obvious example is the annual budget. A budget is a goal that the church works all year to achieve, monitors the…

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Leading Ideas
0 Thinking Like a Host

From beginning to end, the Bible teaches us how to be hospitable. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, we find stories of people acting as hosts, welcoming strangers, and discovering that there is something truly holy in their acts of hospitality. Yet, we have largely forgotten this in the life of the church. As hosts, we are constantly challenged to…

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Leading Ideas
0 The Older Clergy Bubble Grows Larger in 2012

The Lewis Center for Church Leadership today released the 2012 version of its annual report on Clergy Age Trends in the United Methodist Church. The report, prepared with assistance from the General Board of Pension and Health Benefits, also includes figures from other denominations for the first time since 2008. The preponderance of older clergy is a trend across all mainline…

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Leading Ideas
0 Feedback without the Pain

A limitation to most feedback systems is that they tend to accentuate the negative. We know that leaders want and need feedback for growth, but the normal evaluation systems often leave them more discouraged than energized to improve. We also know that while people tend to remember the criticism from reviews, it is praise that truly motivates people to change.…

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Leading Ideas
0 From Assimilation to Acculturation

I believe that when we talk about the integration of new members into a congregation, we need to embrace the language of acculturation, not assimilation. In the 1980s, literature and workshops about assimilating new members became the rage in church circles. People were asking, “Why are attendance and membership numbers showing such rapid decline?” Leaders were convinced that better systems…

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Leading Ideas
0 Shifting Entry Points

Traditionally, worship has been regarded as the primary venue through which individuals enter the life of a congregation. In The Inviting Church (Alban, 1987, 74-75), Roy Oswald and Speed Leas linked new-member assimilation with spiritual growth. They named six levels of incorporation into the spiritual life of the church that progressed in this order: joining, belonging, participating, searching, journeying inward,…

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Leading Ideas
0 Stewards of God’s Grace

A noted British economist recently submitted to the government a review of the equity markets in England. In writing about the current situation of financial institutions in general, John Kay noted that “trust in the financial sector is at an all-time low.” He chose an intriguing title for his piece: “Finance Needs Stewards, Not Toll Collectors.” That is a very…

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Leading Ideas
0 A Wilderness Experience

For a number of years our leaders have been using “exile“ as a metaphor for the situation of the church. Their assumption is that we have been removed from our place of prominence in the culture and find ourselves without power and status, much like an exile. Even if that language is not used, the numerous charts showing the decline…

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Leading Ideas
0 Expanding Small Group Involvement in Your Commitment Campaign

Small groups are an important setting for conversation around the theme of a church’s annual commitment campaign. In churches with a consistent, coordinated small groups ministry, this can be as simple as incorporating study material related to your stewardship message into their program. But there are ways to extend the impact of small group conversation beyond those who regularly attend…

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Leading Ideas
0 The Parable of the Sower and the Experience of Church Growth

The parable of the sower speaks deeply of my experience of church growth and vitality. In the parable, seeds were sown. Good seeds. It is not far-fetched to assume that somewhere there were likely many unnamed seeds planted in nice neat rows with plenty of room for plants to expand — that would be only expected. But in this parable,…

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Leading Ideas
0 Church as an Uncommon Community

“My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples,” says the LORD through the prophet Isaiah (56:7). What could this possibly mean for us today, in our highly fragmented society? I am a parish pastor, and my passion for hospitality comes out of a deep love for the church and a strong desire to see congregations become…

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Leading Ideas
0 Continuity and Change: Two Tunes All Leaders Must Know

It is exciting to hear of the energy and vitality with which so many churches are planning for the future. Many of you report changes planned for this fall that have much potential for helping your churches reach more people in deeper ways. God’s new future for churches is always connected to their past. Connecting the changes with the church’s…

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Leading Ideas
0 Planning Inspired by the Spirit

Drawing on his experience leading a strategic planning process, Pastor Myung Sun Han identifies key lessons to keep a church-wide planning exercise positive, productive, and Spirit-led. What makes a strategic planning process fruitful? The church I serve recently undertook a long-range planning exercise to create a clear mission statement, identify key priorities, and develop plans for accomplishing our goals. This…

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Leading Ideas
0 Tapping the Gifts of Homebound Leaders

People who must remain at home because of physical limitations have often been seen by the church as recipients of ministry rather than as active disciples. The healthy church engages these people in ministry that fits their life situations. Coordinating this ministry is a special leadership opportunity and can often be handled by a homebound person. Following are some ways…

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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.