Church Design

Leadership development may often be perceived as vague, time-consuming, or intimidating. In reality, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Using “Tony” as my fictional example, here is a proven, five-step mentorship/apprenticeship model that can be used to develop new leaders in church ministry.

When you see leadership potential in someone at your church, how do you develop them into leaders, especially when they’re new in the faith? According to Dave Ferguson, lead pastor of Community Christian Church, a multisite church with 12 locations throughout Chicagoland (including 2 within prisons) and cofounder of NewThing Network and Exponential, it takes an intentional strategy of leadership development to grow new leaders.

Those of us living in the Southeast prepare for the worst and hope for the best every hurricane season. For churches, hurricane season can massively disrupt ministry plans, especially in the aftermath of a direct hit. Here are some tips we've curated by experts for what to do when a major storm hits your church.

Before a person ever steps foot in your brick and mortar church for the first time, they likely will have visited your church website to see what you’re all about. Are you communicating who you are and what they can expect in a way that’s clear and inviting so that they’ll want to learn more? Are your overall church communications helping you reach more people and engage your congregation? Or do your communications reveal some underlying problems that may need attention?

In 1963, Edward T. Hall coined the term “proxemics” to describe the perception of the physical space around us. When social scientists examine this perception of connecting space, they generally speak of four zones: Intimate (<2’) Personal (2-4’) Social (4-12’) Public (>12’) We need to design for connection across all four zones to foster healthy, dynamic social lives. Let’s take a look at each of these zones.

When I talk with churches about how to launch an online campus, I always share my own story of how I became connected with Church Online. I married an Oklahoman, and we initially settled in his state. We moved into our first little house and lived across the street from this church with very loud music. When I was pregnant with our first child, I felt terribly sick one Sunday morning. We were part of a great local church, but in that church, I had to wear heels and a nice dress to service. I told my husband, "I cannot do that today. I just can't do it, I'm so sick." He said, "Well, I'll just walk across the street to that church where you can wear jeans."

How can your church—especially if you have multiple locations or plants—grow and develop in the critical ministry area of communications? How can you reach multiple generations of people? How can you connect with new people? How can you help people take next steps to learn more about your church, get involved, and grow in their faith? It takes a dedicated communications leader and a team (of staff and/or volunteers and other support) to intentionally and strategically organize the various communications messages that your church has to share with your congregation and community.

When it comes to multisite church ministry, we find that there are so many approaches, ideas, challenges—and questions! Here are a few of the top questions we hear and tips on how to meet communication challenges.

Is worship a significant priority in the life of your church? What about the children's ministry? Or the student ministry? Adult discipleship or small groups? I'm sure you said yes to all (or most) of these.

Many of us who have been in church leadership for a long time have lived through different eras of ministry. The era of the conference, for instance, sprang up when Willow Creek and Saddleback Church began hosting large-scale events to help churches envision how to be more purposeful and strategic. Today, there's probably a conference or two every week that you can attend.