As a pastoral coach, I have worked with hundreds of pastors across the country. I love what I do and am privileged to meet and connect with some of the greatest leaders in ministry. I have learned many things from some amazing leaders. Below are a few common leadership principles I have observed that many strong leaders have in common:

1. They build great teams. In my opinion, this is what separates the good leaders from the great leaders. They are constantly looking for ways to mentor, develop, and coach their teams. Strong leaders understand the power of investing into a few. As Peter Digiammarino shared on the intelliven.com blog, “No one leader, and not even any two, has the breadth of competence and depth of capacity to do anything of much significance alone. Successful organizations often have a core leadership team of three to seven top executives who are aligned to accomplish specific goals as a cohesive unit.”

2. They recruit and develop people. Notice I didn’t say they recruit great people. They make leadership development a priority. The strongest leaders recruit people that have passion and potential and then develop them into great leaders.

3. They huddle together. Strong pastoral leaders not only have scheduled times to meet, collaborate, and discuss their team successes and failures, they also take advantage of “impromptu” teachable moments. Strong pastoral leaders also meet one-on-one with their leaders on a regular basis.

4. They listen to their team. Strong leaders aren’t afraid of feedback. The best leaders seek and gather input from their teams. This creates goodwill and builds trust with your team. But effective leaders don’t just listen to their teams, they also seek to incorporate feedback received where possible.

5. They are constantly casting vision. It is clear and compelling. Ronnie Floyd’s “The 4 C’s of Effective Vision Casting” says it best.

6. They love what they do. It is their passion. It is their caffeine, their coffee. Their love fuels them, drives them, and inspires them.

7. They encourage their team. All of us like to hear, “Atta boy – good job!” I loved what one Children’s Pastor shared – he would write and MAIL notes of encouragement and appreciation along with a gift card to several volunteers each month. Simple, yes, but a priority nonetheless. Appreciation goes a long way! Yvonne Hudson has eight great tips on appreciating and keeping volunteers.

Ministry passions can change over time and that is okay. We often ask pastors, “If God gave you a blank canvas and fresh color palette and asked you to paint a picture of what your heart desires to do next in ministry, what picture would you paint?” If your picture is different than what you are doing now, contact us and let’s discuss your future.

What are your thoughts? What are other great ministry leadership traits you have learned and/or observed over the years?

Though “making a list’“ might sound simplistic, it is important to track a church’s fixed assets at some level or another. Whether utilizing software specific for this purpose or general-use software such as Access, FileMaker or Excel, a church should develop a database of some sort to aid in this tracking process. Whatever solution it employs, churches should ensure that the database includes accurate relevant details such as the cost of the item, the date acquired, its service life, and any accumulated depreciation. Many CPA firms have depreciation software that can be utilized as well.

Once you make the determination of how to track this information, it should be input into the fixed asset module or another software program designed for maintaining fixed assets. Tracking property and equipment in a spreadsheet program like Excel can become an administrative burden, but is a viable solution in some instances.

A database should be kept up-to-date for insurance purposes as well as for proper accounting. These objectives might overlap, but each subset may contain different records, as the criteria for tracking are different. The church insures buildings and property in the event that there is a theft, tornado or some other tragic event, so having a detailed inventory of the church’s assets could be critical.  A current inventory listing of property and equipment allows the church to present to the insurance company an accurate record of the assets that were lost. This property and equipment inventory should include the date of acquisition, a description of the asset, quantity, and location.

In addition to a listing, we also suggest that a church make an annual video recording of the church property. Such a video would slowly scan church property, panning each room carefully, and should be done at least once per year. It could even be a fun project for the youth pastor and a couple of students. The inventory listing and/or video should be duplicated and stored off-site for safekeeping.

Finally, churches should prepare a periodic reconciliation of the fixed assets or depreciation schedule to the general ledger. That ensures that the physical listing agrees with the financial statements and records, thereby ensuring the accuracy of both.

A church practicing good stewardship will watch over its assets by maintaining accurate and thorough property records, taking periodic inventories of its holdings, and making security a priority.

What software do you use to track your fixed assets? Is it reconciled routinely? Do you tag your assets? When was the last time you performed a physical inventory?

I had an interesting experience shortly after I first started consulting with churches. Late in the day, I emailed an Executive Pastor to follow up on an inquiry he had made. And an hour or so later, much to my surprise, he called me back. From his cell phone. On his way to hospital visitation. After hours.

If your background is Corporate America, you might be asking yourself, “What’s so unusual about that?” But if you’ve spent any significant time working in “church world,” it’s likely that you completely understand my surprise at such a quick return call. Maintaining a proper work/life balance is difficult for almost everyone. But for church workers, it can sometimes seem impossible. Because their work overlaps virtually every other area of their life, from family time to volunteerism to recreational time, a church leader, particularly pastors, must make a concerted effort to keep his or her work life from overwhelming every other area of life. However, perhaps because of this emphasis, it seems that the pendulum sometimes swings too far in the other direction, often placing every other responsibility above work. Being unresponsive can be as unhealthy for your professional relationships as working late every night might be for your personal ones. The key, of course, is balance.

And lest anyone reading this post should become smug and judgmental toward church staff, who are often overworked and pushed beyond normal human limits, this unfortunate rule of thumb does NOT just apply to church leaders and staff, but to MANY of those who work in, for, and around churches.

Professionalism is more than just courteous behavior, though. It carries with it a degree of integrity. The Bible teaches that we are to “live our lives in a manner worthy of the calling God has put on our lives.” Whether you are a church leader, a professional who serves churches, an Executive Pastor or church business administrator, or even a volunteer, God has called us to act professionally. It seems mundane, but that is the way that we, as professionals, can demonstrate our commitment to Christlike living.

Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. Ephesians 4:1 NLT

Here are some practical tips on acting professional we’ve gathered from other administrative church leaders, and meeting the expectations of your customers (be they vendors, employees, church members and attenders, or volunteers). This list is not exhaustive, but if you can incorporate these habits into your workday, you will have come a long way toward the professionalism that properly represents our vocational calling.

• Speak to a volunteer or church member at least once per day. If you are too busy with duties, tasks, meetings, and other responsibilities to speak directly to your congregation, then, simply put, you are too busy.

• Meet face to face with any employee in your charge at least daily. This meeting does not have to have an agenda or be lengthy. A simple “Good morning” or other greeting during the day will suffice. You should be accessible to your staff, no matter what.

• Meet face to face with a church volunteer at least once per week.

• Respond to emails on the same day on which they were received. Even if your email says, “I’m sorry, I can’t respond fully right now, but I will make every effort to get you an answer by xx:00 pm tomorrow,” it shows that you value the correspondence. And, NO, an auto-reply does not count.

• Return all phone calls and voicemails within 24 hours.

A good rule of thumb would be to treat everyone you correspond with as though they were your child, spouse, mother or boss. That’s not to say that the conversations must be familiar or intimate, but every person matters to God, and should therefore matter to us and be treated with a sense of urgency. We all know that every relationship does not carry equal weight with us. The goal, though, is for those on the other side of the conversation to not realize that fact. Everyone should feel valued and important, and in our roles, the easiest way to do that is by responding.

“Everyone should feel valued and important, and in our roles, the easiest way to do that is by responding.”

It was not terribly surprising to me when I found out later that the Executive Pastor who had made such a priority of calling me back had spent much of his career working in the treasury department for a Fortune 500 company. But the kindness and compassion he demonstrated that day did not come from his Corporate America background. Rather, it was a natural outpouring of the fruit of the Spirit in his life.

What’s your experience? Have you ever been tempted to ignore a call or email from a vendor who wouldn’t quit? Have you ever had an email or call ignored? We’d love to hear your stories.

“There is one other thing about rules that should not be overlooked: they usually do not happen on their own. Rules usually come into existence after someone has done something wrong. They exist to remind us that the paths we walk on can be dangerous. Willful disregard can be an indicator of serious problems. We all complain about the IRS and the Tax Code it enforces. But they only exist because people sometimes have difficulty doing the right thing.” – Pg. 86, Weeds in the Garden by Verne Hargrave

There is a familiar story in the book of Luke where the Jewish leaders tried to trick Jesus that could be reported to the Roman governor and arrested.

“‘Now tell us—is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?’ He saw through their trickery and said, ‘Show me a Roman coin.t Whose picture and title are stamped on it?’ ‘Caesar’s, they replied. ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.'” ‭‭Luke‬ ‭20:22-25‬ ‭NLT‬‬

I grew up as a preacher’s kid. My dad had his own paraphrase of that last verse. “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but ONLY what belongs to Caesar!” In other words, good financial planning, and knowledge of IRS rules can 1) keep you out of trouble for not paying enough to “Caesar” and 2) keep more in your pocket by not paying too much, either. This is important for churches and non-profits as well as for the pastor.

That being said, if there are obvious signs of non-compliance, such as a stack of penalty notices from the IRS, that may be an indication of something much more nefarious than incompetence or apathy. Just as Paul wrote to the church in Rome, the law (even tax laws!) is there to show us our “sin.”

“Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful? Of course not! In fact, it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, “You must not covet.”” (Romans 7:7 NLT)

In some contexts (particularly for preacher’s kids!), rules were made to be broken. But rules were also made to point out shortcomings, directly and indirectly. The rules exist anyway…we may as well use them to help us in our prevention efforts!

How do you feel about rules? Are you a rule-breaker or a rule-follower? Have you seen situations where a rule had an unexpected effect?

Join the conversation by commenting below. Or ask your own questions, and we’ll try to address them in a future post.

I was talking to the headmaster of a large Christian school, and the conversation quickly turned to metrics and church health. He told me that he recently spoke to the pastor of the church (a mega church in the Dallas Metroplex) his school is associated with about that very topic.

The pastor shared some of his thoughts, then asked this headmaster for his. And my friend was ready with an answer. “Lots of churches measure attendance and offering,” he began, “but how do you measure the spiritual formation and health of your attenders? Isn’t that the real measure of a church’s health?”

As he told me the story, he looked at me intently, clearly concerned, then went on. “Talking about that same thing, a student pastor said to me, ‘That kid right there is on fire for the Lord!’ I pushed back and asked, ‘How do you know?’ He said, ‘Because he’s here every single week, helping with setup, bringing his friends, in a small group. He’s even one of our student worship leaders.’ I wondered as he told me that, ‘But how do you know his spiritual health if you’re only looking at the outward signs?'”

Then he asked a challenging question. “Spiritual formation is, at its core, an internal matter. So how do we measure it?”

“I don’t really know,” I admitted. He went on to share with me that “there is always a risk in attempting to assess spiritual growth in students, or the spiritual climate of a school, because of our human limitations in truly seeing into the hearts of students. Although only God looks into the human heart perfectly, since spiritual maturity is our deepest desire for our students, it makes sense to stop and look at character and climate in our schools.”

He then told me about several up and coming tools available to schools:

1. Spiritual Transformation Inventory. This instrument was developed by Dr. Todd Hall, professor of psychology at Biola University. There is a version for college students that has been used by several Christian colleges.

2. Christian Character Index. This suite of assessments were developed by Dr. Michael Zigarelli, formerly of Regent University and now a professor at Messiah College. This is a measurement of Christian character qualities that has been taken by thousands of individuals; comparisons to the norms can be included.

3. Engaged Schools is led by Chris Brown, Bible Department Head at Wheaton Academy and an adjunct professor at Moody. Their site introduces the Global Student Assessment which is designed to lead to “engaged” discussions with students. Wheaton Academy uses this each year – it is a combination of a survey and some teaching tools.

I poked around the internet a little on my own and found a couple of others that are perhaps more church-centric than school centric, like the Spiritual Growth Assessment by LifeWay and Randy Frazee’s Christian Life Profile.

Whatever the tool used to measure it, I’m haunted by his question, “How do churches measure spiritual formation?” Or one may ask, “Do churches measure spiritual formation?” Many churches (most churches?) don’t even try. Why? Probably because it’s hard.

What about you? Do you measure spiritual formation? What tools do you use to do so? Are there outward indicators you look for that indicate the inward?

Spiritual formation is definitely important. So let’s talk about it.

I had an interesting conversation with a banker who specializes in church loans. Knowing ahead of time that he is a banker with over 20 years experience doing loans for churches, I knew that I would find the conversation interesting. We talked about a variety of matters, but he said a couple of things that really stood out.

The first statement he made that really stood out had to do with loan brokers. He told me that bankers are generally skeptical of loan packages brought to them by a loan broker. In fact, they insist that the actual application package be delivered to them directly by the church. They don’t want the church to have “plausible deniability” about the veracity of the content of the loan package. They never want a church to be able to say, “We gave the broker our numbers, but he must have changed them before he gave them to you.”

The second statement was almost as startling to me. “If a church can’t produce their own internal financial statements, we won’t do their loan.” This was startling on a couple of levels. First, the implication that there are churches (and probably a surprising number of churches) who cannot produce an internal financial statement astounds me. It also saddens me. Second, I was impressed by the insightfulness of the bank to recognize that the inability of a church to produce its own financials is a likely indicator that the church will not have the sophistication it needs to meet the long term obligations the loan.

Tell us about your banking experiences. What insights has your banker given you? Has your church ever been turned down for a loan? What were the reasons? What sorts of stories have YOU heard from bankers? What interesting stories have you TOLD your banker?

Let’s talk about banking. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

If you’re a pastor, or if you’ve ever spent time around pastors, you’ve heard this question: “How many folks did you have this weekend?” or “How are your offerings?” It seems that every pastor everywhere wants to know the answer to these questions. And they secretly want to know how they measure up!

Sometimes this is referred to as counting “nickels and noses” or “bucks and butts” (I apologize to my Baptist friends if “butts” is offensive).

In our experience, these two data points only scratch the surface of the kinds of questions to which pastors are seeking answers.

Are you curious about what makes churches tick? If you’re a layman and could sit down with your pastor, what kinds of questions would you ask about your church? Or if you’re a pastor and could sit down with, say, Furtick, Chandler, Morris, or even Osteen, what would you ask? What about the pastor of the church down the street? Or across town? Or in another state? Are Baptist metrics the same as Methodists? What do Independent Christian Churches measure that Assembly of God churches do not?

What kinds of questions are you asking yourself? What are your key performance indicators? Baptisms? Conversions? Giving numbers? Small group attendance? What are you tracking and measuring? What do you want to know about your church?

Maybe our geek is showing, but this stuff fascinates us! We’d love to know, besides nickels and noses, what are you counting?

We love to talk about churches and what inspires church leaders. What inspires you? Join the conversation. Please comment below and let us know what YOU want to talk about!

I’ve been thinking about churches and church metrics for a long time. In fact, as a PK, I suppose I’ve known about church metrics since I was a kid. Mom and Dad would talk about “nickels and noses” at the dinner table.

I’ve been an intentional, active layman most of my adult life. Then in 2009, as I began exploring a new career, I started consulting with pastors about various topics, and began using the moniker “professional layman” to describe my approach to ministry.

As I began talking to my colleague Todd about churches, we realized that we shared that interest, that is, consulting with pastors. We both enjoyed talking to pastors and the impact we could have on the Kingdom through those conversations, specifically in the area of exhortation (a spiritual gift of both Todd’s and mine).

We were brainstorming about influence and leadership development and Todd mentioned part of his strategy around asking couples in their small group to consider the possibility of starting their own small group. Todd shared a phrase that his church uses to raise up and develop future leaders – they use the phrase, “I see in you …”

“I see in you the ability to encourage others.” or “I see in you the gift of giving.” We use this to build each other up in our faith and to encourage one another.

As Todd said “I see in you…” I instead visualized “I-C-N-U” as letters instead of a phrase. I said, “That would make a cool t-shirt.” Responding to Todd’s puzzled look, I walked over to the whiteboard and wrote the letters I-C-N-U.

A simple misunderstanding launched another entire conversation: How can we get pastors talking to one another in intentional ways in order to promote encouragement, exhortation, and growth? How can we get pastors to consult with other pastors by fostering conversations with insightful questions? The answer? We could start with a simple phrase: I see in you…

The acronym came before the phrase, but the idea came before the acronym. Inspiring Churches to New Understanding. ICNU. I see in you.