Sometimes I think we judge the success of our churches with how much stuff is happening and how many people come to the stuff. I like it when we have stuff and I like it when people come to the stuff, but I want to evaluate our success from a different grid.

My question for you is this – what does church provide for you that is helping transform you into a more committed follower of Jesus? What do you take away from the Sunday worship gatherings? Has your participation in a small group caused you to grow, remain stagnant or caused you spiritual harm? What resources could the church provide that would equip you, your family and your friends to be more mature disciples?

These are dangerous questions for church leaders to ask because the results could cause major changes to programs that are now considered sacred cows. Are we willing to make the painful changes if it means better results for the people we are leading? Could the results mean a major shift of the ministry budget? Could the results mean some staff is not needed while more staff is needed in areas that have been ignored?

The team here at New Life is about to ask these questions. I am bracing myself for the answers. We will not know the results for a few months because we want to be thorough but I can guarantee that everything is on the table for discussion. Sometimes putting a dent in the universe requires honest evaluation and courageous change.

We may also find that we are doing better than we think. It is possible we have strategically positioned ourselves to produce disciples and not many things need to change. That would be great, but what would be better is a healthy streamlined church that is operating in its calling with full forward momentum. Stay tuned!

New Life was recently named one of the 100 fastest growing churches in America and one of the 100 largest churches in America. It was quite an honor to be named on both lists, but it also caused our team to discuss the purpose of counting attendance. Our conclusion – it is not the most important measurement or indicator of success.

I don’t think it is wrong to count attendance. Jesus knew how many people needed food and he told a story of a missing sheep. He knew how many people were on that hillside that afternoon and he knew one of the 100 sheep was missing. So counting is ok it seems.

The problem with the list in the magazine is that it can cause pastors to compete for people in the seats instead of things that more important. Attendance matters and it can be a sign that a church is doing great things for the Kingdom, but attracting a crowd on the weekends is the not mandate of the Great Commission.

I would rather count and celebrate the number of people who have said yes to following Jesus, or the number of people who have been baptized. Why not focus all of our attention on the number of people who have been mobilized to minister in the city or the number of people who have taken the next step to becoming more like Jesus?

I made the decision this week to not look at my attendance numbers for a season. We will still count, but I do not want to know the number so I can focus on the more important things. I do not want to be distracted by the ebb and flow of attendance or allow a low attendance weekend to discourage me. I also do not want a really high attendance weekend to lure me into any false perceptions of success.

Success can only be measured by people being saved, baptized and formed into disciples. For sure, our church will grow when these things happen and we will have to add worship services and open new campuses to accommodate the crowds. I just want my focus to be on the main thing right now and not become infatuated with our name on some list.

Dear God,

It’s  the Monday after Easter Sunday, but I am sure you’re already aware of that fact.  I hope you were pleased with what happened at church yesterday. By the way, thanks for being there. Church is always better when you attend. I hope you felt honored and I did not hinder people from meeting you personally.  I realize I am already rambling here, but you know how tanked I feel on Sunday afternoons and on most Mondays.  Why can’t I be one of those pastors who are hyped after a service instead of one who feels like a can of Spam?

It was great to see 102 people baptized last night and hundreds more praying to follow you during the morning gatherings. I hope you felt honored and trust that the spotlight was on you more than those of us on the stage.

Lord, help me not to notice the empty seats more than I see the faces of people sitting in the occupied chairs. I do want to pray for new people to attend New Life and fill the empty seats, but I also want to be a good shepherd to those who are there.

Lord, help me to not be so aggravated when people give me immediate criticism about the Sunday talk or wait for me off the stage to point out one minor detail I got wrong. They should wait a day or so to give me their opinion but they don’t and probably never will. Forgive them Lord, because they have no idea how vulnerable and tired I feel right after a service. They have never been on a stage in front of people talking about life and death issues. When you give them that chance, I am sure they will then be more considerate about when to give their feedback.

Lord, help me not feel like every Sunday has to be “the best Sunday ever, in all of church history.” Not every talk has to be epic and not every worship service has to be “off the chain.” Remind all of my pastor friends on Twitter not to hype every weekend like it is the Super Bowl of all church weekends, every single week.  You know that every Sunday service is not that great, because you attend their churches, too.  Help us to build disciples with our weekend gatherings and not to create consumers who expect a new and improved product every weekend.

Lord, thanks again for allowing me to pastor New Life.  Keep me focused on the important things and help me to ignore my own carnality. Thanks for the time. I hope to talk to you again real soon.

Love,

Brady

How do you decide to do something or not? Should I go to a meeting? Should I go on a trip? Should I serve on a board?  Is your decision based on how you feel at the moment, or is there a reason for your answer? I find most people do not know how to say “no” to unnecessary things because they have not discovered what to say “yes” to.  How should we spend our time, since time is really valuable and there is only 24 hours in one day?

  1.       Discover your assignment

What is your purpose? What has God uniquely called you to accomplish right now in your life? Most of us bog down right here. Before we can plan our day we must discover the plan for our day.  My assignment is to love Pam, be a dad to Abram and Callie and to lead New Life Church. These three are priorities and get the first and the best of my time. I am writing a book and I am praying about serving on the board for a national ministry, but neither can interfere with my primary assignments.

 2.       Say “yes” to your assignment

When our assignment is clear, our schedule should reflect our priorities. If marriage and children are primary, they will get a lot of our time.  Then I say “yes” to anything that is strategic at work. For me, I must have time to study and pray because I speak and teach every week. That time is set aside in the mornings. In the afternoons, I have meetings with pastors, leaders and elders.  I also have time set aside during the week to meet with members of New Life and I have time set aside to meet with other pastors and leaders in the city.  Also, I have time set aside to rest and enjoy the Sabbath.  If we do not prioritize our schedule, the strategic things that we should be doing will be choked by meetings that are not necessary in the first place.

 3.       Say “no” to distractions

I say “no” to some meetings for one of these three reasons:

a.       If they are not strategic or do not build key relationships.  I love all the people at New Life, but most of my time is spent with established leaders or emerging leaders.

b.      If guilt is a motivator. If I am saying “yes” to a meeting because I will feel guilty for not attending, I say “no” and get over the false guilt later.

c.       If fear of man is a motivator. People expect me to attend everything and I simply cannot, even if it means that people will be upset or disappointed.

Cynics of the church, both young and old, want to know why they should come to our meetings and why they should give their money to the church. Both are valid questions and we must be able to answer them. If we were truthful, most of us attend church and give our money because of tradition, ritual or to ease our guilt or shame.  These are lousy reasons for sure so I think it is time to re-evaluate our answers.

Why should I come to your meetings?

Church in its purest form is a gathering of Christ followers where right doctrine is taught and the sacraments are rightly administered.  The Greek word for church is ekklesia – which means “a meeting of the called out ones.”  Jesus is the head of this meeting and Jesus should be the main focus. There should be recognized leaders at the meeting who are responsible for the welfare of the people and who are responsible for what is taught and how the sacraments are administered. These meetings are meant to strengthen the people with sound teaching, worship God through the sacraments and for each of us to come alongside each other for encouragement.  While the church has become corrupt at times and leaders have misbehaved, church is still important to Jesus.  Church is His bride and only those who love the bride will be allowed to participate in her healing and her redemption. Cynics need not apply.

I have been hurt by church, but I have also been strengthened and matured by church.  So, I choose to love the bride and help the bride get healthy instead of walking away from her in her time of greatest need. If we love Jesus, we must love the church because He still does.  We cannot say “yes” to Jesus and “no” to church. The two are forever connected and to forsake one is to forsake the other.

Why should I give my money to the church?

The church in America has done a great deal to tarnish the pure idea of church.  We have reduced church to steeples and buildings while ignoring the urgent needs of our cities. Pastors have used church to fund their lavish lifestyles and to sell their products instead of using the resources to meet the needs of people. Church was supposed to be a fellowship. The Greek word for fellowship is koinonia which is a covenantal word that means everyone’s resources are available to meet any need among the people. If our neighbor has a need we can meet, we meet the need. If someone is without a home, they can stay in ours. If someone does not have food, we share our food. If someone needs clothes, we give them some of ours. Simply put, we believe we are blessed by God to be a blessing to others.  When church is really working well, there are no needs among the people and the needs of the city are being met with the surplus.

My prayer is that cynics of the church or those who have been hurt by the church would come to New Life and discover a tribe of people who are living in ekklesia and koinonia.  Let’s be a church where our love for one another is proof to the world we are His disciples.  I am falling in love with the bride again and I hope you are as well.

Church planting is an ancient idea that needs to be rediscovered by the modern church. Imagine if the first church in Jerusalem had decided one church was enough for the entire world.  What if the early church had refused to obey the Holy Spirit and had held onto to its best leaders instead of sending them out to build local gatherings throughout Asia, India and Europe?

Local churches must rediscover the mission and mandate of church planting. This is a critical hour in world history and we must be aggressive in taking the message of Jesus to every corner of the earth. What happens to a local church that embraces church planting as a core ministry?

1.       Church planting builds the Kingdom not an empire

Most leaders make it difficult for young leaders to leave their team to plant churches of their own. If the church is like a family, then the family should celebrate leaders who are ready to leave the church family to start a family of their own.  For sure, there is a process that leaders and potential church planters should follow for the transition to be blessed. Young leaders should not leave prematurely, without the covering of their local church and the local church should allow young leaders to dream openly about church planting without being made to feel disloyal for having the thought.  Leaders should have the faith that God will send them new leaders if they will not hold on tightly to the ones they have. This is when the church becomes a river and stops being a reservoir.  To get serious about church planting, we must be serious about building His Kingdom and repent for only building our personal empire.

2.       Leaders get to lead

Church planting is a great adventure and a huge challenge. It requires an enormous amount of prayer, wisdom and coaching. Even then, success is not guaranteed.  But that is the point. It is mysterious, risky and dangerous which is exactly what leaders crave.  On a recent visit to a New Life church plant in Denver, I watched a group of young leaders leading with great passion and realized that planting a church was the next step in their development as Christ followers. Sure, they could have learned some of the same lessons if they had stayed at New Life, but it would not have been nearly as difficult and not nearly as exciting for them. They are walking the tight wire without a net. They are getting to lead their own church and I am proud they were willing to take the risk.

3.       New ideas surface

Sometimes a church plant is the best soil for new ideas to emerge. Church planters get to start from scratch and examine every tradition and idea with a new set of lenses.  Church planters get to take the best ideas from their sending church, but also get to experiment with new paradigms. The ancient message of the Gospel can then be communicated with the fresh ideas of today and we are all the better for it. Some of the best ideas for church in the past 20 years have emerged from young pioneer church planters who had the courage to ask, “Is this really the best way to do church?” We all benefit in the end.

I am committed to planting as many churches as God allows New Life to plant. I want to send out our best leaders to plant churches around the world. It will be sad to see such great leaders leave our church, but all weddings have a bit of sadness. But weddings also mean the start of new families and future grandchildren.  I believe that is the point of the Great Commission – to make disciples.

I have a challenge for New Lifers – let’s be a church that builds His Kingdom, sends leaders to lead so the best new ideas can surface. Let’s celebrate the weddings that are coming and let’s give all we have to plant churches around the world.

This is the lament of many leaders after they realize that goals, objectives and required results were not met. Somewhere in the leadership process, trust was broken, commitment waned and nothing was accomplished. This is the pattern at many churches and certainly in many businesses.  What happened that trust was broken between the leader and the team?

Many of you are listing things like integrity, expertise or experience. It is true that if any of those things are missing, the team will stop trusting a leader. Let me add one more to the list. Have you ever considered that people may have lost trust in us as leaders because we are completely unpredictable? Can they depend on us as leaders to respond in a consistently healthy way to stress, challenges or even success? Do we have the emotional maturity as leaders to harness our irrational behavior during times of testing? If we don’t, our teams will stop trusting us.

I am not advocating the mundane or the boring.  I believe there should be room for spontaneous thoughts and ideas. I also believe we should be able to quickly respond to opportunities before they pass. While those things are fine, compulsive, unpredictable behavior is not cute and can ultimately sabotage your influence with other people. People need leaders with mature emotions or what some experts are calling emotional intelligence, which the ability to connect and tame your impulsive feelings with the rational side of your brain.

When people find a leader who is predictable, they feel safe. It is in this safe environment of predictability that the healthiest conflict happens and the best ideas surface. Predictable means a leader “says what he means and means what he says.” There is no code of double speak. While people around us may not agree with what we say, they will trust that we were genuine and sincere in what we said. They know that debate and conflict will not cause one reaction from us one day and another tomorrow.

How predictable are you as a leader? Do you typically respond in a healthy way to stress or success? If so, you are on your way to earning the trust of your team and great ideas and great success will soon follow.

I finally decided to write a book. It is only in rough outline form right now and I do not even have a publisher, but I have started the process. It was only after a lot of prayer that I decided to enter the world of books. First, I wanted to make sure writing was God’s idea for me and not my plan or other’s plans for me. Second, I wanted to make sure my first book really captured the core of my values and my beliefs. Without giving away the title prematurely, I believe it has done just that.

I have found myself encouraging the team here at New Life and others around the country to write books. I think books have a place in advancing the Kingdom of God for several reasons.

 1.  Books are portable

Not everyone can come to a Sunday gathering or is tech savvy enough to download a podcast, but most of us can read or can listen to an audio book. Books make revelation and truth accessible to just about anyone at just about anytime. Books can be read sitting in a waiting room, during a trip on a plane or on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Books can be consumed in one sitting or processed at a slow, easy pace that is best for the reader.

2.  Books are perpetual

Long after I have left earth for heaven, the truths captured in books written by me will remain. Many of the books that have changed my life were written by men and women who have long since departed this life. Written words can transcend time and generations and continue changing lives for perpetuity. My heritage will be defined by more than just books, but what I write will certainly add to my body of work on the earth.

 3.  Books are personal

Books allow me into the world of the author. I get insights from amazing leaders, thinkers, and futurists without the benefit of spending personal time with them.  I often feel that I know the author while reading their work. I have met many of my favorite writers in person and most often, I feel an immediate sense of relationship with them. The great writers reveal the core of their being in their books and I am certainly the better for knowing them.

Being a pastor is a privilege and I am grateful I get to spend my life serving people in the context of the local church. Growing up, though, I imagined that working at church was a dreadful way to spend your life. I was wrong.  While it is a blessing to be called “pastor”, there are three key elements that must be in place for this calling to be fulfilling to me. Without any one of them, ministry in the local church becomes a burden that can literally overwhelm me.

1.       Ministry must be innovative

Innovation makes ministry fun and keeps me coming back to the church office everyday excited about the new thing that God is doing.  Ministering ancient truths with new ideas and methods fends off the boredom and routine that can settle on a church that is resistant to change or in love with the old wine. I am rarely the one that comes up with the new ideas, but I love the tribe of innovators that surround me at New Life and I love the energy from heaven that is released when we simply ask the question – “Is there a better way to do this?”

2.       Ministry must be for the Kingdom

This is not about the fame of people or of an institution. Notoriety is an addictive drug and the only cure is humility. We must stay committed to making Jesus famous and not ourselves. This is not about mega book deals, although I love to write books. This is not about getting on the conference speaking circuit, although I love to host and attend conferences.  Most of us came into ministry with pure motives only to be ensnared by narcissism, greed or pride. Ministry must be for the benefit and growth of God’s kingdom on the earth and not for the benefit of our own personal empire.

3.       Ministry must be done with friends

I like to work with my friends. I usually hire my friends. I make no apologies. Ministry is too hard without friends around you to help carry the burden. When I came to New Life two years ago, a few friends came with me and literally helped me survive the first 24 months. Now, I am becoming friends with the team I inherited and my ministry has moved from surviving to almost thriving. Friends make a huge difference. Without them, the mountain seems impossible to climb, but with them. you feel like you can slay giants.

Are you fulfilled with the calling God gave you? If not, maybe you have stopped being innovative? Maybe it has become too much about you and not enough about God. Maybe, you need to bring some friends around you to help carry the burden.

I have some great coaches in my life right now. Jimmy Evans, Tom Lane and Robert Morris have all walked closely with me for many years and give me personal insight and constant coaching. I am certain that without them I would have made some huge messes, especially the past two years as the Senior Pastor of New Life Church. 

God has given me key coaches at key times in my life. I will never forget Pastor Jack Hayford standing by my side the entire afternoon after the shooting. His coaching and advice was priceless. The next day, Larry Stockstill flew to Colorado from Louisiana and encouraged me for several days.  I have been coached and loved by all these men and my life is richer and fuller because of their investment.

 No matter what we do in life, we all need coaching and that is why I agreed to participate in the PCC Coaching Network.  The church in America has a great opportunity to be salt and light right now, but I am convinced that coaching can help all of us for four reasons. 

1.       Coaching allows us to learn from the experiences of others. There are a lot of mistakes we can avoid if we pay attention to the mistakes others have made. A really good coach shares his own hiccups so the rest of us can avoid the same ditch.

2.       Coaching allows us to stop and evaluate what we are doing. All of us are probably busy, but are we really being effective. Coaches make us hit the pause button and evaluate how we are spending our time. Are we really living in our strengths? Are we using our resources the best way? Have we built the right team to support what God wants to do?

3.       Coaching allows us to look at who we are becoming. What we are doing is important, but not as important as our personal transformation and development as Christ followers. Coaches require us to take off our pastor/leader mask and to look honestly at our own hearts.  How are we doing as a spouse or as parents? Are we personally in love with Jesus? Are there any private strongholds that could disqualify us?

4.       Coaching allows us to live in authentic community. Pastors and leaders are often lonely people without any real friends. It is sad but true. Coaches push leaders out of isolation and into tribe.  Coaches require vulnerability and honesty which leads to real friendships.

I know firsthand the power of a good coach and I hope every leader finds someone to walk alongside them. If you are a leader in a church and need coaching, check out http://pcccoachingnetwork.com/ for more information.