Learnings

Dave Travis is the CEO of Leadership Network. In this role he serves as a trusted adviser to many strategic pastors around the country to help them refine their thinking and to get from ideas to implementation to impact. Dave is the author of several books including most recently, "What's Next: A Look Over the Next Hill for Innovative Churches and Their Leaders" and also "Beyond Megachurch Myths: What We Can Learn from America's Largest Churches" that he cowrote with Scott Thumma and Rick Warren.

What would happen if your church gave away the entire offering from Easter Sunday? Tim Niekerk, senior pastor of Salem Ministries, shares an amazing story of generosity inspired by being a part of the Leadership Network Generous Churches Leadership Community.

Each year, Leadership Network convenes hundreds of multiste leaders to help them accelerate learning and multiply impact. Whether teams are preparing to launch their first campus or planning to move beyond ten locations, our Leadership Communities and InnovationLabs can serve churches regardless of where they are in their multisite journey. Over the past several weeks, we've conducted online meetings for two of our Multisite Central Support InnovationLabs. This post is a recap of those conversations.

Permission Granted: Churches Giving Marketplace Leaders the Green Light for Kingdom Impact Pioneering churches have discovered two factors that can help them move more marketplace leaders toward Kingdom impact 1) Marketplace leaders want to change the world—we must give them captivating opportunities to pursue. 2) Marketplace leaders are carrying God-sized visions in their hearts—unearth them.

The Global Connections Leadership Community (GXLC) focuses on breakthrough ideas to increase missional effectiveness on both the going and receiving sides of missions in view of new global realities of mutuality, partnering, cities, business as mission, when helping hurts, etc. This GXLC is NOT ABOUT getting everyone in your church to go on a short-term mission trip. It IS ABOUT increasing the missional effectiveness of your global ministry. We are not looking for incremental improvement or tweaking what you already do; we are looking for innovations that can be diffused throughout the greater missional church. At each of our four gatherings our meeting space becomes (in Steven Johnson’s words) “a dating service for ideas” where we transform ideas to innovations to impact.

Many churches try to use internet campuses to reach a wider audience, but some, like Westside Family Church in Lenexa, KS, found that they were only reaching those from their existing offline campuses. By taking advantage of Google AdWords, Westside Family Church has been able to connect with people all over the world and minister to increasing numbers of non-Christians.

Steve Saccone, is the author of several books including one he published with Leadership Network called, Relational Intellegence. His work can also be found on Leadia.tv, as an author for the Leadia Experience called, "Communal Morphing" which helps leaders maximize their time and draw on the strengths of those around them. Steve is the Director of Leadership Development and a Teaching Pastor at the Highway Community in the San Francisco Bay Area. He previously served at Mosaic Los Angeles for 8 years and he also leads an online training program for young and emerging ministry leaders.

If you are a leader in a church looking to launch your first multisite campus in the next 6-12 months, Leadership Network is preparing its third Multisite JumpStart InnovationLab this fall. The lab begins September 19-20, when teams from 6 churches will spend one year together learning from each other as well as thought leaders in the area of multisite. You'll leave the first meeting with a 6-month launch plan - moving from thinking about multisite to solidifying your churches roadmap for success!

Churches are often looking for ways to serve their communities through various not-for-profit ventures. Successful collaborations rely upon strong business models, building trust with the local community, and understanding client’s needs. The New England Dream Center has been able to do just that while serving the church, the community, and reconciling people back to God.

I have the pleasure of introducing you to, Bruce B. Miller, who is the founding pastor of Christ Fellowship, based out of McKinney, Texas. He taught systematic theology at Dallas Theological Seminary for four years and he also founded the Center for Church Based Training. Bruce most recently authored the book; Your Church in Rhythm, a Leadership Network publication published by Jossey-Bass and released in February 2011. As you'll see, Bruce draws from his wealth of experiences, giving us some thought provoking answers to this week's Q&A.