1194 words … a little longer read … but worth it to avoid some dumb tax
Dave and I were profoundly impacted by Bob Buford, the founder of Leadership Network, where we each served over 20 years. Bob contributed many things to the kingdom, but perhaps his greatest gift was the introduction of the peer learning model. There is significant power in the gathering of true peers that leads to leader and organizational health and accelerated results.
In my coaching practice, I continue to gather leaders in small peer cohorts. These cohorts are hosted by the church of one of the mentors. Through the years, we have been honored to be served by so many great senior pastor mentors. A couple of my favorite have been Michael Fletcher and David Ashcraft. Michael was formerly senior pastor at Manna Church. Manna’s original campus is located in Fayetteville, North Carolina the home of Fort Bragg Army Base, one of the largest military bases in the world. Their effectiveness in reaching the men and women that serve has been the impetus for their “military highway” strategy. This strategy drives the plan to plant sites, in many cases, micro-sites, near every US military base in the world. Manna Church’s “multiply strategy1” includes city sites, multisites, and micro-sites defined as follows:
City Site: a Manna Church location with 100-1,999 people in attendance for weekend experience(s)
Multisite: an extension of a City Site
Micro-Site: a gathering of people who are committed to glorifying God by helping to equip people to change their world.
David Ashcraft, now CEO for Global Leadership Network, formerly served as senior pastor of Lives Changed by Christ (LCBC). David began serving 1991 at the original campus in Manheim, PA and over 25 years grew the church from one campus location, a weekly attendance of 150 people and a staff of one to 19 campus locations, with a weekly attendance of 19,000 (60% of precovid in person) and a staff of over 250. His successor, Jason Mitchell has also served as a mentor along the way.
These incredible leaders poured into the lives of senior pastors who are leading growing churches between 1200 and 3000 in weekly worship attendance.
Their one goal – help keep leaders from having ti pay the dumb tax they had spent along the way.
These leaders not only benefited from the input of great mentors but in the interaction with one another’s stories of strength, challenges, and desires to accelerate Kingdom impact through the opportunities that they were experiencing.
In this issue, and likely a couple more, I am going to share with you some of the pearls of wisdom refined in the trenches and some of the unique insights birthed from a group of amazing leaders.
Measuring Engagement
David Ashcraft shared the following quote from Elmer Towns that shaped the work of LCBC during his season of leadership:
Don’t expect what you don’t inspect.
Though we are “past Covid,” many churches are still struggling with understanding engagement. It was always a topic of discussion, but when the buildings closed, they were forced to determine some new measures beyond “butts, budgets and baptisms.” As they explored, they concluded that engagement is really about discipleship, raising the question, how do you measure this somewhat personal, fluctuating, uneven journey in people’s lives? The team decided to “inspect” the following to get a read on their expectations of engagement/discipleship.
Gather – Gather together with other Christians to worship.
Connect – Connect and invest in Christ-centered relationships.
Serve – Serve others as Christ served the world.
Get Out – Have a heart for people far from God.
Give – Give generously with what they have.
So what were the metrics?
Gather – 4 of last 8 weeks
Connect – 4 times in last 6 months
Serve – 4 times in last 6 months
Get out – TBD
Give – 4 times in previous year or $2500 in last year
I loved David’s transparency in saying, “We don’t have this all figured out. In fact, we are still trying to determine what the metric should be for ‘getting out’.” He is modeling what got him and his team on the track to growth in launching campuses – a push from a peer to “just start” when they were struggling to find the perfect solution for the first campus. And now characteristic of their commitment to the principle of build, measure, learn.
They are tracking these metrics on every person with whom they have had at least one contact with in the last 12 months. Each campus pastor is responsible to select one of the metrics to focus improvement on each year.
The goal is not perfection, but to move people forward.
Shoulder tapping genius after the following info on how you can join a group.
Wherever you find yourself on this journey, don’t do it alone.
LeadWell Senior Pastor Cohort
There is significant power in the gathering of true peers that leads to leader and organizational health and accelerated results.
Join with a group of large church senior pastors of growing churches for a one year experience that includes a mixture of in person gatherings, video resource calls, personal and professional coaching and access to some of the leading senior pastors as mentors. This cohort will gather 10-12 senior/lead pastors who are leading healthy, growing churches with congregations of 1000+. Learn from peers and other expert resources how to navigate the challenges of leading your churches to the next stage of growth and impact. Mentors will be Travis Eades, Oak Hills Church, San Antonio and Mark Batterson, National Community Church, San Antonio.
The next groups are forming now for October launch. The Senior Pastor Cohort has only two spots available. If you are interested in applying for a spot, email me at greg@ligongroup.com or select a time to talk that works for you here.
Shoulder Tapping
Being in a military town, Manna Church experiences a lot of “leader turnover” and because of how the Department of Defense works they rarely can predict who will go when. They need lots of new leaders all of the time. So how do they do it?
The genius (or at least one of them) of the leadership culture and engine at Manna Church is shoulder-tapping.
So what is shoulder-tapping? At its most basic level, it’s inviting people into ministry by asking them to join a team.
No clipboards, connection centers, ministry fairs or mass appeals. Shoulder-tapping is an organic process and very fluid. It can take place in a passing conversation or it can be the result of a weeks-long process. Key principles include the following:
Selection – Know who you are looking for. Leaders or doers? Leaders respond to vision. Doers respond to need.
Connection – Invite them in. Responders select you; you select leaders.
Vision – Determine their vision, their passion. If they don’t know it, they can’t lead it.
Next step – Ask if this is God’s next step for them? Clarify the commitment and welcome them to the team.
For more of the leadership insights, check out Michael’s book, Empowering Leaders.
Formula for Results – Hope to Alaska
Senior Pastor of ACF Church, Brian Cook shared about their innovative approach to address the accelerated mental health crisis in Alaska. Suicide has always been a concern in Alaska, but the Covid challenges were creating spikes in the stats. I loved their formula for action.
Identify the need: Suicide
Develop strategy to address the need: Pay for counseling
Create visibility and mechanism to fund: Sell “Hope to Alaska T-shirts.”
Other Leadwell Cohort quotables:
“Don’t do outreach as a church … become outreach.”
“Always find ways to give people excuses to invite their network to church.”
“If you find you’ve built a life that you can’t keep up with, ask for help.”
Reach out any time – email me at greg@ligongroup.com or select a time to talk that works for you here.