Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Challenging myself

Last week I got a chance to hang out with Dave Travis and Sam Chand. They came by for a tour of our facility. Then we headed to Greenville to hang out with Matt from Grace Church. It was a great day!

There was a lot of discussion about what it takes for a church to continue to grow, and breaking through potential growth barriers. And as you might imagine, the discussion turned to the responsibility that the Lead Pastor has to continue to grow personally in order for that church to grow.

Sam is an author and church consultant that travels all over the U.S. working with leaders. The average size of the churches that he works with has about 5,000 people in attendance. Dave is an author and on staff at Leadership Network . So these guys know what they're talking about.

I am still trying to process our conversation, but here are a couple of things that stood out to me:
A church can only grow to the level in which the leader is willing to endure the pain. (in other words, a leader must be willing to endure pain for his church to continue growing. If he can't endure the pain that comes with going to the next level, the church will stop growing) (If you're not a Lead Pastor that statement will probably not make sense)

As the church becomes larger, what type of structure and systems changes will need to be made?

As a church of 2,000 I have to become more focused on just a few things, and be strategic with my time now more than ever.

I am in the process right now of some more changes in my personal life, so that I don't become the bottleneck of our growth. I have shared some of this with our staff and they are excited about it. That's good because the changes will affect all of us.

There was so much more that we talked about, but that's it for now.

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