Externally Focused Church, Evangelism & Church Growth
In 2015 I received surveys back from 49 churches that had participated in Externally Focused Church / Missional Renaissance Leadership Communities that I’ve been part of over the past 12 years. The results were very encouraging regarding discovering the links between service, evangelism, conversion, and church growth. Leadership Network created a very easy to... Read More
What makes for a happy and healthy life?
For over 75 years (yes you read that right) Harvard University has been tracking and studying the lives of 724 men from two different control groups. The first group was from among the best and brightest—a group of sophomore men at Harvard. The second group was from Boston’s poorest neighborhoods, chosen specifically from the “most... Read More
3 Box Thinking—Structuring your church for innovation
As you enter 2016 it is helpful to put everything you do in your church into one of three boxes: Box 1 represents THE PRESENT and contains all the stuff that is currently working in your church—the weekend services, the topics and style of your preaching, small groups, global missions, the men’s steak fry, etc.... Read More
“Let’s go give the yellow guy some hugs”
A couple of months ago I was listening to the audio version of Simon Sinek’s 2014 book, Leaders Eat Last while walking on the open space near our home. Sinek introduced me to a different way to think about happiness, leadership, love, and accomplishment by introducing me to the different chemicals in our bodies that... Read More
Platforms and city transformation
Platforms are breaking the traditional rules of how value is created and how customers are being served. Platforms are the most disruptive business model in history. Think about it; “The world’s largest taxi company, Uber, owns no vehicles. The world’s largest media owner, Facebook, creates no content. The most valuable retailer, Alibaba, has no inventory. The... Read More
How Top Dog changed the world
In 1968 I started my freshman year at Cal Berkeley. I soon learned about a little hole-in-the-wall, called Top Dog on Durant Street, a few short blocks away, where a variety of hot dogs sold for 35 cents. I was hooked. For under a dollar I could get my favorite–a “German,” barbecued corn chips and a... Read More
Minimum Viable Spiritual Growth Plan
Leadership Network recently surveyed over 1,600 ministry leaders of large (1000+) churches. The most frequently cited issue facing churches today is “discipleship.” In response to where they felt their church was most innovative, the bottom two categories were “evangelistic emphasis” and “personal worship and devotional life.” What they felt weakest in was “evangelistic effectiveness and... Read More
What we can learn from Sequoia Capital and the 7 deadly sins
A few weeks ago my son, Jeff, mentioned in passing that Sequoia Capital didn’t invest in a startup company unless the founders could identify which of the 7 deadly sins the product or service was appealing to. Their logic is simple: “We don’t want to invest in something people should want to do. We want... Read More
The Lean Startup for church planters
Over the past few months I’ve been talking with church planters about what we can learn from the startup community about starting new churches. On my last trip out to the San Francisco Bay Area I brought ten copies of Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup and had some great conversations with planters about the soul-bound... Read More
Building a church startup ecosystem in your city
I work in a very creative and entrepreneurial city. Boulder Colorado is a magnet for entrepreneurs and business startups. Little wonder Inc. Magazine recently named Boulder as “America’s startup capital.” Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek named Boulder “the best town for startups.” Even The New York Times fawned over Boulder as a great startup community. And why not? Every... Read More