Breeze Blog

Do you know what drives us all nuts?  Inefficiency.  Sitting in a traffic jam.  Slow service at a restaurant.  Waiting five minutes for our outdated laptop to power up.  All these things drive us nuts.  Why?  Because, they’re inefficient.  Wasted time.  Wasted energy.  Wasted money.  There is no place that we should be more intolerant of inefficiency than our churches.  Why?  Because everything is funded through the sacrificial giving of attenders, who assume that their gifts are not going to...

I’ll never forget the day I learned that my social media accounts weren’t like other people’s social media accounts.  I was a young youth pastor, and my boss took me for a walk and gently but firmly explained to me how a blog post I had written was creating mistrust with the students and parents in my student ministry.  That’s when I realized that  because I was a pastor, my social media accounts aren’t like other social media accounts since I occupy a position of spiritual leadership in...

Vision is the subject of many leadership books,  podcasts,  and conferences. How do you…you know…actually lead with vision?  Vision just seems like one of those things that’s hard to define and even harder to implement.  So, practically speaking, how do we lead with vision?  Stated simply, it feels like this: This is where we are going and how we’ll get there.   But how do you actually do that?  I have a few ideas.   Define Your Personal Vision The most effective leaders know what they are...

There’s something that happens with young and talented staff members in churches.  They do great work.  They build a strong ministry and then…they leave.  They are presented with a better opportunity somewhere else, and they take it. You’ve probably lived through a few of these.  Or, maybe you’re that younger staff member who is considering an exciting opportunity.   Here’s a question:  How do you build toward the future of your own church when your best young staff leave?  If you’re going to...

Ministry is all about people. How is it that you can be constantly surrounded by people and yet feel lonely and isolated?  Weird right?   I think it’s because ministry leaders have very few peers.  It’s hard to find people with whom you can be authentically you.  There just aren’t relational spaces where we can drop our guard and reveal what’s really going on.  We are always on.  We have to have it all together.  We’re the pastors.  We’re the leaders.   Well, that’s just ministry.  That’s just...

Remember life before COVID when you had lots of volunteers serving in your church?  Those were the days!  Now, if you’re like most churches, you don’t have enough volunteers to open all your children’s ministry classrooms.  How do you rebuild your volunteer core?   When I first started at my current church, my job was to build a volunteer culture in our high school ministry.  Essentially, our middle school ministry was incredibly strong, and our high school ministry was lagging.  Over time, I...

One of the biggest complaints in any work environment is meetings. Meetings are boring. Meetings keep people from getting their actual work done.  Meetings are pointless. Meetings…we could go on and on.   How do people feel about meetings at your church? How do you feel about the meetings you lead?   Here’s the deal, meetings are critical to team success, and they don’t have to be a terrible experience.  In fact, they can be energizing and momentum-building.  You just have to lead a good...

How do you turn around an unhealthy team culture?  Maybe you’ve been in this situation with a staff or a volunteer team.  Morale is down.  Trust is low.  And, it’s your job to fix it.  You got promoted and discovered some problems.  You took a new job at a new church and after only two weeks on the job, you realized there were some challenges.  What do you do in a situation like this?  I hope the answer is to turn the culture around.  Build a healthy culture.  But how?     Having been in this...

I recently heard a pastor describe their church’s growth over the last two years like this, “We went backward a decade!”  Maybe you’re in the same situation.  Some churches grew through COVID…not yours.  Now you’re asking all kinds of questions about what to do.   So, what do you do when your church is growing in the wrong direction?  How do you turn things around?  Here are a few ideas that might generate something positive in your leadership.   Listen to Your Critics  In leadership,...

Let’s talk creativity and innovation.  Whether you’re a content creator, a preacher or someone who designs programs or ministry, this is a season where creativity and innovation are needed.  What we were doing doesn’t seem to be doing it.   Now here’s the problem:  You’re tired. Your schedule is full. And you have a church or a ministry to maintain.  Where do you find the time for creative thinking?  How are you gonna innovate when Sunday is coming?   I have a few ideas from my own creative...