According to our research, teenagers today are the most unreached people for Christ in the nation. Less than 10 percent of America's youths have accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior. Our research team has interviewed hundreds of young people. In the course of these interviews we came to understand and appreciate them even more.
Among the many areas where we learned so much, perhaps the most revealing ...
To be a team requires at least two things: unity in purpose and commitment to a group dynamic. In other words, it doesn't mean team if individuals merely work on the same staff as independent contractors who oversee separate domains. But it's not always easy for men and women to work together. Here is some practical advice—three attitudes that are needed in every leader who wants to harvest ...
I've noticed that in the church the differences between men and women sometimes clash and hinder us from fulfilling Christ's work. Only when I began to recognize and appreciate these differences did I see how men and women could overcome their differences and become effective partners in ministry.
What follows are generalizations, yet they reveal tendencies that appear in ministry:
Most ministry teams have not consciously created their own staff culture, but rather accepted the culture as it has been developed and handed down to them. But better relationships depend on an improved atmosphere.
Leaders can strategically guide their teams through the process of defining the staff's cultural values.
Here's how to examine and reshape your working environment:
Get away and ask some questions. Take a couple of half-day sessions to articulate collectively what is and is not acceptable for staff members. The genius of this exercise is that staff members get to participate in shaping the cultural norms.
Ministry brings with it serious built-in hazards, moral land mines that can destroy leaders, their families, and even their churches. I recall with embarrassment my naiveté as a young pastor. Every time I heard the stories of Christian leaders falling into sexual sin, I thought, It could never happen to me.
What level of pride is required to believe that sexual sin could overtake Samson, David, ...
Printer view of these results
