Author: Chris Marshall

On Monday I wrote that today we would look at the most important question Church leaders can ask. The question comes from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Andy Stanley is the first person I heard ask the question. In fact, he’s written a book about it. The question is based on Ephesians 5:15-16: Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of time, because the days are evil. Do you see the question embedded in the statements? Here it is: What is the wise thing to do?

As leaders we make dozens if not hundreds of decisions every day. The best way to lead and lead with success and significance is to choose the wise thing every time. Can we always know the wise thing to do? Not with 100% assurance, but we can choose wisely far more often than we sometimes do, if we pause to ask ourselves the question before we make a decision. Is this the wise thing to do? The question can be asked in every area of life, and can lead to more effective leadership in each of those areas.

For example, the next time you’re deciding what to have for breakfast, if you ask, “Is it wise for me to eat several donuts and a Pepsi?” If you’re thinking, “That’s crazy! Who would eat several donuts and a Pepsi for breakfast?” I did. When I was in my early twenties and was doing carpentry work six days a week, I often had a regular breakfast of eggs and bacon or cereal and fruit, but later in the morning, I’d have donuts and a Pepsi at the local store.  It wasn’t the wisest choice I ever made and I made it multiple times. These days I have green smoothies five mornings a week and eggs, bacon and fruit on the weekends. That’s a much wiser choice over the long haul.

What does that have to do with being an effective leader? Everything. After all, when we eat wisely we feel better, live healthier and potentially longer. In my experience, being healthy, alive and feeling well generally leads to more effective leadership.

Moving to a much more serious side of things, the next time you’re making a decision about whether to implement a change to your worship services, small groups, or pastoral care, instead of asking, “Will this work better?” or “Will this attract more people?” Ask, “Is this the wise thing to do?” Or “Is this wiser than what we’re doing now? Most churches are looking for ways to be more effective these days, or at least we ought to be. After all, what we’re doing is the most important task there is: sharing the Good News of Jesus with those who haven’t received it, and helping those who have to grow into maturity as followers of Jesus. As Church leaders the decision we make have eternal consequences, because as we remind ourselves frequently at New Life: The decisions we make now matter for eternity

We are constantly tweaking our existing ministries and asking ourselves whether they are still advancing our mission, which is to share, grow and live the new life of Jesus Christ with the world–one person at a time. As Andy Stanley and many others have said, “We need to marry our mission and date our methods. It is wise to ask ourselves whether our methods are effective on a regular basis. We make it a practice to evaluate everything we do and to ask ourselves whether there’s a better (read wiser) way to do it. We do a lot of reading, watching and listening, because we know the Bible is our guidebook for life, and many other resources have taken its principles and developed wise ways to apply them for the context of 21st century America.

Many churches either don’t ask or have stopped asking the question, “What is the wise thing to do?” for a lot of reasons. Perhaps the way it’s always been done is so ingrained that to question it is considered sacrilegious. Maybe things are already good enough and if it isn’t broken why should we fix it? Maybe someone has donated a piece of furniture and to stop using it or to use it differently would be considered ungrateful or would cause conflict. Many times doing the wise thing stirs the pot, and results in conflict. The key is to do the wise thing anyway, because over time doing the wise thing more and more brings health and vitality to a local church, and over time healthy things grow.

As you read these posts you may wonder whether my goal is to provide “church growth” pointers. I’m certainly not opposed to that, because I do believe healthy things grow, but my bigger concern is to help church leaders lead effectively, and produce healthy church cultures, because that is the long-term means of glorifying God and advancing His Kingdom. While I invest most of my time thinking about how to do the next wise thing for New Life, my heart is always for Jesus’ Church to be healthy and growing, because I want everyone to know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. That job is too big for any person, or any local church. It’s all of our job together.

So, what is the next wise decision for you as a leader of the church where you serve? What is the most important next wise decision? Do you need to get training in an area where you are inexperienced? Do you need to change a system or a program? Take some time right now to consider prayerfully what the three most important areas are where you need to make wise decisions, or even where you need to gather more information so you can choose wisely. Remember, prayer is the starting point, but at some point you’ll need to choose wisely and then do something. That’s what leadership means, actually developing a plan and seeing it be implemented in the life of the church you serve, or in the particular area of the church where you serve.

Here’s to leading better by taking the time to make the next wise choice or choices–today!

One of the most important components of a leader’s leadership is the ability to make mid-course corrections when things aren’t going well, or aren’t going as well as they could be going. Now, is such a time. Over the weekend, I decided it was time to make the focus of this blog church leadership. Up to this point my focus has been leadership in general. I’ve always had a bent toward church leadership, but in some ways leadership is leadership. The key difference or shift in my focus is instead of attempting to focus on all aspects of leadership and then at times make it clear my focus is as a follower of Jesus, from this point forward I’ll be coming to everything I write from the perspective of being Jesus follower, and helping church leaders to do that better.

Why the change of focus? I am a church leader, and have become a more, and more effective church leader over the years. While at the end of the day all the glory goes to God for anything good in any of us, leading a church has some unique characteristics.  First, a church is a faith-based organism. Without focusing on Jesus first, no church will ever do anything of eternal value. I start with that premise in everything I write, everything I say, and everything I do. When you read these posts from this point forward you won’t be wondering on the one hand, “How does this apply to my church?” Or on the other hand, “Why does he keep talking about Jesus in a leadership blog?”

I want to challenge you readers to consider what is the foundation of your leadership? Is it Jesus Christ? Is it a philosopher? Is it a business guru? Is it the latest technique to come down the line? Whomever or whatever is the basis of your leadership ought to determine how you lead and how you make the decisions and commitments before you each day. Why not take some time right now to consider who or what is your foundation? As you do, I hope you’ll choose to come back on Wednesday as I address the most important question every church leader must ask.

Here’s to leading better by determining the basis of your leadership–today!

What does going to the Pittsburgh Pirates home opener have to do with becoming better leaders? Nothing. And everything! I can’t think of any facets of leadership I’ll be honing today as I sit in frigid temperatures watching the home team square off against the Atlanta Braves. No easy or difficult steps to follow to being a better leader. Perhaps, perseverance in the face of challenging circumstances, but that’s pushing it.

On the other hand, as leaders we need to have times of renewal and refreshment. Today’s my Sabbath, so I’ll be resting at the ball game. It will also be RE-creation for me as I’ll be attending the game with Bill, my accountability partner of more than two decades. We’ll have the opportunity to catch up with each other in a way we don’t during our weekly accountability check-ups.

I wrote the word recreation as RE-creation intentionally. Many years ago, I used to do leadership talks for a youth and children’s program called Logos. When we talked about the recreational aspect of the ministry we said, we can approach recreation in one of two major ways: RE-creation or wreck-reation. The words are self-explanatory, aren’t they? Perhaps, particularly so when applied to children and young people.

But, the truth is many times what we call recreation is “wreck-reation,” we wreck ourselves physically or emotionally. We compete as if whether we win or lose is a matter of life and death. We leave the experience either pumped with adrenaline, because we’ve won or angry because we lost. That type of recreation isn’t restorative.

The interesting thing is we don’t even have to be participants in recreation for it to become wreck-reation. As we’ve all experienced the word fan isn’t a shortened form of fanatic for nothing. Some folks live and die with whether the home time wins or loses. I’ll be honest, it’ll be more fun for me if the Pirates win, but at this point in my life, I’m not going to sit in the cold for three or four hours, because I think my being there is crucial for the Pirates to win.

I’m going because attending opening day has become a tradition for Kenn, my younger brother and me. He isn’t able to be with me today, so Bill is standing in. Kenn lives in Harrisburg, and we both love baseball, so when Jim, our oldest brother died several years ago, we thought, “If we don’t do something intentional to spend time together, we’re going get old and die and we’ll miss out on being with each other.”

We had travelled to Oregon together a couple of times and spent a week with Jim during his last year with us, and we realized that although we lived just three hours from each other by car, we spent more time together in Oregon that year, than in Pennsylvania. While this is a bit of a tangent, it really applies to the main focus: RE-creation. Relationships are re-creating for all of us. Whether we’re leaders or not, we need time to build relationships, but particularly when we’re leaders we need to carve out time to built them. Otherwise, we tend to lead our business or organization and miss out on what’s ultimately important.

So, I’ll be in Section 314, hopefully not freezing my butt off today, as the Pirates take the field agains the Braves. I won’t be screaming my head off, or living and dying with every pitch. I’ll be talking with my friend Bill and enjoying deepening what is already one of my closest earthly relationships. That will be RE-creational, and I’m looking forward to it.

Here’s to leading better by investing some time in RE-creation–today!

One of the most important aspects of leadership, one that is easily forgotten when the goal of leadership is to “get ahead,” or “win,” is the power of partnership. Many times we get so caught up in our particular role as leader of a company, a church or other organization that we forget the adage made popular by President John F. Kennedy, “A rising tide raises all the ships. Even in the church world, a place where we ought to understand partnership implicitly, because our goal is for everyone to know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, competition can get in the way. I was reminded of the vital importance of partnership this past weekend, when my good friend, Pastor John Nuzzo preached at New Life.

John is the lead pastor of Victory Family Church, a thriving church in Cranberry Township, PA. Victory ministers to more than 3,000 people each weekend and has significant influence in that community. Yet, this past weekend John came to Saxonburg and preached at all four of our weekend services. What message does that communicate to those who had any idea it happened? New Life and Victory are working together! John, his wife Michelle, and Victory Family Church  have walked with New Life throughout our sixteen year history lending prayer, expertise, guidance, and the more tangible resources of time and money in their partnership with us. Recently, I had the opportunity to reciprocate as I spoke at Victory’s weekly leadership school.

This partnership shows any who are watching that our goal is to advance our common goal of increasing the influence of Jesus Christ in western Pennsylvania and beyond, to give as many who don’t know Jesus as Savior and Lord the opportunity to do so as possible. I recently read that the original meaning of the word competition, which comes from the Latin computer, was “to grow together.” That sounds a lot more like partnership than like what we usually mean when we say the word competition today, doesn’t it?

How are you partnering with those who are in a common field of endeavor in order to raise all the ships around you, or are you? It may sound ridiculous to help your “competitors,” but is it? Perhaps you recall the classic movie Miracle on 34th Street, in which the Santa Claus of Macy’s (in the original screen version) or Coles (in the 1994 remake) tells parents of other stores where they can buy toys not available or in his store, or at a better price in the other stores. The result? The Macy’s/Cole’s customers become more loyal than ever to their favorite store and Santa.

Yes, the story is fictional, but the premise is valid. Loyalty doesn’t diminish, but grows when the people we serve realize we are serving their best interests rather than our own. As Pastor John was preaching and then greeting the people of New Life after each service, I enjoyed watching the interaction. The goodwill of everyone involved was obvious to see. I don’t know how you might apply the power of partnership in your situation, but I’m sure it will benefit those you serve, and it will also benefit you, because it will expand your spheres of influence, and your spheres of growth and learning.

Here’s to leading better by investing in the power of partnership–today!

Larry Osborne is a pastor of a thriving church in California who has written a number of books about leadership. The one I read most recently was Sticky Teams. The sub-title says it all “Keeping Your Leadership Team and Staff on the Same Page. Whether you’re a church leader or a business leader, the principles Osborne presents are worth reading, remembering and implementing. Having served as a leader in churches for more than three decades, I found myself nodding my head with most of what I read, either because I had done what Osborne suggested to my benefit, or had not done it to not only my detriment, but the detriment of the teams on which I served.

The overall premise of Osborne’s book is that the one thing we cannot leave to chance in leading a team is “the unity factor.” Osborne recognized from early challenges as a leader that when everyone is not on the same page it’s incredibly challenge to get anywhere. If we’re leaders then by definition our task is to move people forward, but if those we’re called or paid to lead don’t buy into the direction, or don’t believe we have their best interests at heart, or believe what the team is doing is meaningful, there’s not much chance of success. Even when all those things are in alignment, we still aren’t guaranteed we’ll have unity, because many times the policies, processes and procedures we’ve inherited or developed get in the way.

The book is packed with helpful information about how to get people in unity, and how to overcome the come roadblocks to unity and teamwork. Yet, the most helpful aspect of the book for me was the sports analogy Osborne used to demonstrate the difference in staffing as an organization grows. While he was talking primarily about leading churches, the concept has application in business as well from what I’ve experienced over the years. Osborne points out that when a church first starts out, or has a small number of participants, the leader/pastor is like a “track star.” The track star has a great deal of independence, and his or her effort has a great deal to do with the outcome.

When the track star succeeds in moving the organization forward to the point that it needs additional paid leadership, it morphs into a new type of organization, one where “golfing buddies,” are the new model. Golfing buddies play the sport together. The spend time in the talking together in their golf cart or as they walk from shot to shot. After the game, they often go to the course bar or restaurant for more time together. It’s a matter of “playing the game you like best with the people you like best.” When a couple of leaders join their love of each other with skills and commitment to their cause, the work is fun and the organization moves forward.

The next stage is when the church/organization becomes mid-sized and needs additional staff. The model moves to basketball at this point. Every basketball team needs a couple of star players, and some role players. Each must know his or her role and play it effectively for the team to succeed. When things aren’t going well the coach calls a time-out and all the players look at him and each other, and make adjustments. No longer does every teammate need to be a “best buddy,” but esprit de corps is needed for continued success. The team realizes that when everyone plays their role, everyone wins. The challenge is if two or three of the “players” have moved to this level from being at the golfing buddy stage, some of the fun and intimacy is lost, and a bit of specialization starts to take place.

Finally, when the organization grows to being large, in the church world somewhere between 500-800 participants, the “team” needs to become a football team. More and more specialization is needed and now everyone may not know what everyone is doing. In fact, in order for the team to win, the “defense” needs to be huddling up with their coach when the offense is on the field. The quarterback doesn’t mind that the defense isn’t watching him play. He just wants the defense to stop the other team’s quarterback.

As I read these analogies, I realized how true they are. Having moved through each of these stages over the sixteen years since we planted New Life, I see why we’ve hit some of the bumps we’ve hit, and how we can move effectively to becoming a very large church, even though we’re located in a rural area. We need to play football instead of basketball. We need to understand that everyone in leadership doesn’t need to know everything that everyone else is doing, but each of us must have the same goal, and understand what our role is in order for the team to win.

Whether you’ve ever been an athlete, I hope the analogy helps you see where you are as a leader right now, and where you need to move in order to become more effective and move your team forward. It’s so important not to play golf, if you’ve become a basketball team, or basketball if you’re becoming a football team. Where are you in your leadership right now, and what do you need to do to take the next step toward being what your are and becoming what lies ahead? That’s a vital question, and one I’ve been investing time answering over the past couple days since completing Sticky Teams. It’s a book well worth the investment for you, if you’re looking for how to lead more effectively in a team environment.

Here’s to leading better by investing time and energy in making your team better–today!

When navigating uncharted waters (the theme of this week’s posts), one of the best leadership ideas is: find an expert. I had the opportunity yesterday to talk with a pastor who is responsible for leadership in a particular area of ministry that is uncharted for us. What made it so helpful is he serves in a church with 4,000 in weekly attendance. He has twelve years of experience in that environment and during that time he has seen the church grow from 3,000 to 4,000 people, so he has the kind of experience that could be extremely helpful to me as a leader who is in the process of leading a local church into the 1,000 people per weekend “waters.”

As I spoke with the pastor I realized not everything he said was immediately applicable in our situation, and some of it may never be applicable, but much of what he said was transferable to our situation, and provided a starting point from which our leadership can make informed decisions that will lead to informed commitments and actions. Everything I’ve said may be intuitively obvious to some of you, but sometimes it’s the intuitively obvious that we overlook. It’s so simple we forget to do it.

I have known for a long time that finding an expert can make a big difference when moving into uncharted waters, and yesterday’s conversation underlined that truth for me. The experience and expertise of someone who has “been there and done that,” who has learned from the missteps along the way, and who is willing to share it is invaluable to leaders who want to make the best use of available time, talent and other resources along the way.

Whatever uncharted waters you’re navigating today, you’ll do well to consider finding an expert who can help you navigate them. Sometimes the resources will cost time and money, and the question is one we must ask ourselves all the time: is the resource and investment or an expense? In other words, will my pouring time and money into the resource be an investment in charting the uncharted, or an expense that costs us time and/or money, but doesn’t make the way ahead any clearer. As every leader knows, sometimes you don’t know whether it was an investment or an expense until farther along the course, but we are leaders because we are in a position to make those calls.

If you are heading into uncharted waters in any area of your organization, and if you are healthy and growing, or wondering why you aren’t you probably are, then take some time to consider whether investing your time and other resources into finding and expert and getting help is a step you need to take.

Here’s to leading better by evaluating whether to get the help of an expert–today!

When we’re navigating uncharted waters (see yesterday’s post), the tendency is to look for a silver bullet, for that one new idea, or policy, or plan, or process, or leader who will move us forward. If you’ve been leading for any period of time, you know there are no silver bullets, but what I’ve found over the past several years in particular as we have navigated a great deal of uncharted water in growing from a church with 300-400 hundred in worship to a church approaching 1,000 in worship is one of the most important leadership shifts necessary has been the identification and implementation of clear, repeatable and replicable policies, procedures and systems.

I know that is not sexy. If you’re a pure leader, you don’t want to hear it. I know I didn’t. I’m a visionary. Writing policies and procedures and developing systems is like poking my eye out with a fork. When we had a consultant come in three years ago to identify the next steps we needed to take in order to move to the next level as a church, you can’t imagine my thoughts when we were told one of the three key “roadblocks” to our health, growth and effectiveness was the need to develop clear, repeatable and replicable policies, procedures and systems in every area of our church life. We’ve all heard, “The system is ideally suited to produce the results you are getting,” and it’s corollary, “Therefore, if you want to change the results you have to change the system.” The leader in me wants to read those statements and say, “Yes, but…” Yes, but if I just lead better, if I just cast the vision more clearly, if we just call another staff member, if….

We may well need to do all those things. In fact, when it became clear we needed to develop policies, procedures and systems to move us to greater effectiveness, I realized I was not the one to lead us in that area. We needed someone who could lead us through it, and no one on staff at the time had the time to do it, and really no one had the expertise or desire to do it either. Over the next several months it became clear to me that while it wasn’t necessarily in the budget, if we were going to navigate the uncharted waters of moving to the next level, we would need someone, a new “crew member” to champion the process of developing processes. The rest of the leadership team agreed, so we identified a potential leader for this area, Barry Leicher.

Barry was not already serving in a church of 1,000 or more. In fact, he wasn’t even serving a church. He was an administrator in a secular business, with a heart for the church, and some background in church leadership. I met with Barry on several occasions to discuss the possibility of him becoming our executive pastor. While the process we needed would be uncharted waters for Barry, his skill set and motivation made him what I considered to be a great candidate. The past two and half years have proven that assessment more than correct. With Barry’s leadership we have navigated the uncharted waters of developing polices, procedures and systems for New Life that are helping to pave the way for our next step and future steps of health and growth.

You may notice that I typically link the word health with growth. Healthy things grow. But sometimes unhealthy things also grow. Cancer, for example, grows rapidly but if left unchecked produces death rather than health. Our goal at New Life is not only to grow, but to grow more healthy and to provide more effective leadership and ministry along the way. Many times we aren’t 100% clear (or even 90%) on what we need to do next, but we are a church, which means we offer our best effort and rely on God to provide what we’re lacking.

I know that statement may not line up with what some of you believe, but I am not naive enough to think that our best efforts, along with identifying and developing new leaders is enough for us to see the miraculous results around us. Remember, we’re in Saxonburg, and we’re about to break the 1,000 barrier in weekend worship attendance. While there’s no silver bullet, we do rely on God to provide supernatural wisdom and blessing on a daily basis in order to make up for some of the lack in our resources, skills and systems.

Whatever you lead, whether your family, your business, your church or something else are you hoping for a silver bullet to bail you out, or to move you through the uncharted waters your sailing right now? In my experience the best combination is to trust God, assemble the best team, and develop the best possible practices in your area of endeavor and then trust that together God and you will move through the uncharted waters with an effectiveness than no human solution alone will ever provide.

Here’s to leading better, by doing your best and letting God add the rest–today!

At New Life we’re about to “break the 1,000 barrier.” As it sounds, it means we’re about to experience having 1,000 people join us each weekend for worship. For us that is an “uncharted water.” Being located in a small, rural town in western Pennsylvania, we are moving into uncharted waters. Statistically, only about 10% of American churches have more than 350 people in worship on a weekend according to Them Ranier, who has done church research for decades. The number that where the worship attendance exceeds 1,000 people per weekend is less than 5%. I am in no way commenting on bigger being “better,” because many factors determine the size and health of a local church. My point is what we’re experiencing is uncommon in America, and that we’re experiencing it in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania makes it quite rare.

None of our staff have ever served on a church with more than a 1,000 in attendance, so leadership at every level is quite important. The basic principles of leadership remain constant, but what we have found at New Life over the past several years is one of the primary barriers to moving forward has been the need for being able to replicate what we are doing in every area of our church family. For example, our Relevant Youth Ministry has grown exponentially since we moved into our permanent building a little less than four years ago. After worshipping in local school buildings on the weekends for nine years, and renting space for youth ministry and other church activities during the week, when we moved into our own building in 2013, we saw immediate growth in every area, but in no place as in our youth ministry.

The challenges to know everyone who came, to identify and welcome first-time guests, to minister to the needs of dozens of young people instead of a dozen required effective leadership and many more leaders and volunteers. A system for identifying and equipping volunteers and leaders was developed. As a result the ministry has grown rapidly, and much more importantly has reached many more young people in our local communities with the good news of Jesus.

The same reality has been part of every area of ministry. Our worship ministry has continued to grow and improve as our worship pastor has developed additional worship members and leaders and technical support team members and leaders to staff a weekend worship service schedule that now offers four weekend worship services. Neither our youth pastors, Mark Lutz (who is now our discipleship pastor) and Alex DeRosa, nor our worship pastor, Brad French, had served in churches with more than 1,000 in worship so we have done a lot of reading, watching and listening along the way.

The key is: when traveling uncharted waters you must have a map (a plan), a boat (a structure), a crew (leaders and workers) and navigational methods (repeatable and reproducible policies and procedures.) What works when you’re rowing a boat, doesn’t necessarily work when you’re sailing a ship. The bigger the boat the more necessary the map, boat, crew, and navigational methods become. Which of these is most important? While John Maxwell would undoubtedly say, “Everything rises and falls on leadership,” and I would agree, leaving out any of these aspects will make sailing into the uncharted waters of being a church with more than a 1,000 in attendance each weekend much more difficult, and perhaps impossible.

One of the realities we have found important during the process is to distinguish between “not knowing what we’re doing,” and “never having done what we’re doing.” For a while, some of the staff members would say, “We don’t know what we’re doing.” The actual intent of the comment was, “We’ve never done what we’re about to do before.” The difference is crucial. Of course, if we have never led in a certain area before, there is at least some degree of lack of knowledge, but it doesn’t mean we don’t know what we’re doing. It means we don’t have experience in leading, in our case, a particular size of organization. There is a difference between a church of 100 people and one of 1,000 and it isn’t simply ten times more people. If that were the case all that would be necessary would be to have ten times the staff and everything would work. The logistics of hosting 1,000 people are far different than of hosting 100. Communicating with 1,000 people is vastly different than communicating with 100. The resources necessary to provide ministry for 1,000 people is often more than ten times what it would be for 100, although at times it is proportionately less.

The opportunities of leading 1,000 people instead of a 100 are also multiplied. We are able to do vastly more than ten times what could be done with 100 people in certain areas. Again, my goal is not to say having 1,000 people is “better” than having 100. My goal is to point out that every growing organization will find itself navigating uncharted waters. When that happens leadership is at a premium, and finding the right team of leaders is absolutely crucial. Tomorrow, I’ll point out some of the lessons we’ve learned while navigating the unknown. For today, think about this: What will it take for you to navigate the uncharted waters you will face as a leader, because your leadership is more effective over time? Have you considered the uncharted waters that lie ahead? Are you merely working to keep the boat afloat? As you know, I’m going to press us to think and ask questions, because the unexamined life is not only not worth living, it is far more challenging to live.

Here’s to leading better by preparing to navigate uncharted waters–today!