Thank you for making August a great month here at Helping Churches Make Vision Real! It’s great staying connected with you through social media and hearing about how helpful different articles have been. So, thank you for connecting with me through the content on this blog! You made these the top 5 Posts from this last month. If you missed out on any of them, here they are all in one place for your convenience!
1. A Large Multisite Church in Phoenix is Hiring a Preteen Pastor
I’m pleased to announce a new Staff Search. Sun Valley Community Church, the church I have the honor of serving at, is beginning a national search for a Preteen Pastor to lead the ministry to 5th & 6th grade students on our Gilbert Campus. Sun Valley began as a church plant in 1990 in Chandler, Arizona. Over the years Sun Valley has grown into a large mult-site church in the Phoenix metro area. Currently there are three campuses located in Gilbert, Tempe and Casa Grande with a total weekend attendance of over 5,000 people. Sun Valley was recently named by Outreach Magazine as one of the top 10 fastest growing churches in America. The Gilbert Campus is the original and largest campus with well over 3,500 in weekly average attendance. Sun Valley was recently featured in a new book by Leadership Network about church mergers: Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work. To learn more about that story click here Part-1 and Part-2.
2. 5 Reasons I Would Never Hire You
Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to hire a lot of people. Student Ministry Pastors, Campus Pastors, Children’s Pastors, Worship Pastors, Executive level roles and Administrative roles. I’ve run the searches myself and used an Executive Search Firm. I’ve even had the opportunity as a consultant to help other churches find their right next hire. Hire the right person and the whole team benefits. When you invite the right person to join your team not only is there is an infusion of new talent, but also new ideas, fresh eyes, and a new well of experiences to go to. One new hire can make the entire team better. On the other hand, hire the wrong person and you can pay a price you weren’t prepared to pay. While at first pass this post may come off as negative, the goal I can assure you, is to be helpful. I’ve had to say no to more people than I’ve said yes to. My hope is that this post will help move you in the direction where you’d hear me, or someone else, say yes to you in the near future.
3. How to Identify Young Leaders in the Church
Do a quick Google Search and you’ll find volumes written about this next generation entering the workforce. Much of it is written from a negative perspective. The search will tell you that this generation is entitled, lazy, they don’t follow through and they can’t be trusted with real responsibility. This trend has great implications for the modern day church. And while the researchers might be right, I still believe that there are great up and coming leaders in the next generation taking their place in the church today. Two reasons stand out and have convinced me.
4. The Art of Difficult Conversations
If you lead a team long enough, eventually there are going to be some difficult conversations that are going to happen. No one wants to have difficult conversations, there’s nothing fun about them. But if you care about the team and if you care about your teammates then eventually someone is going to need to be confronted. It could be poor work ethic, breaking organizational values, underperformance, misrepresenting the organization, or it could even be a moral or ethical problem just to name a few. But who is the right person to have that difficult conversation when it needs to happen?
5. Leading Through Change: What Game is Your Church Playing?
On a regular basis at Sun Valley Community Church (the church I have the honor of serving at) we get the staff together from all three campuses for leadership development and training. This past week one of our Lead Pastors, Chad Moore, shared about the different games that churches play. I thought I’d share with you some of the key take-aways and learnings. Do you know what game your church is playing? Follow this link to learn more about the “4 Stages of a Church Staff Team.”
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