Leadership Principles

Four universal moral principles (figure below), honored by people of all cultures and creeds, are the foundation for organizational success and the health of the global economy.  Demonstrating integrity generates trust.  Practicing forgiveness for well-intentioned mistakes is necessary for innovation to flourish.  Compassion – caring for others as human beings vs. just a means to an end – has a direct impact on the retention of talent.  And finally, demonstrating responsibility by admitting mistakes, and showing that you “care for the commons” – or care about “leaving the world a better place” – inspires and energizes people.  “Caring for the commons” is more often known as “corporate social responsibility.”

[by Fred Kiel, Ph.D. & Doug Lennick:]

Top 10 Mobile Apps for Church Leaders

1. The Bible - When you can carry 800,000 words in your pocket, with lightning fast access to any book and verse (Do kids today even know what “sword drills” are anymore?), a church leader would be remiss to not have one of the hundreds of Bible apps installed on their phone. YouVersion, Olive Tree, The Voice, Logos, and the ESV Study Bible are all popular. Bible.is will even read the Bible to you!
2. Evernote - Evernote is a notepad on steroids who only drinks creatine shakes while striding down the beach in his muscle shirt, kicking sand in nerds’ faces. I would extol its benefits, but I still have sand in my eye. Michael Hyatt has a whole series of informative posts about Evernote. If you don’t have a central repository for all of the information you accrue as a church leader, this app could be just what you need. The fact that it seamlessly syncs your notes across platforms (mobile, desktop, web) is only the first of many wonders when it comes to this app.
3. Twitter and Facebook - If you haven’t jumped on the social media bandwagon yet, there’s always room for more. Whether you send out quotes from what you’re reading, updates from your blog, or pictures from your daily life, Twitter and Facebook, for better or for worse, are arguably the top two modes of communication for our current age. Whether you prefer Twitter’s in-house apps or third-party apps like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, these apps can help you stay connected to your team, your tribe, your church, and your friends. Need help with being consistent on Twitter, or only have certain times of the day to tweet? Try Buffer, an indispensable twitter-scheduling web app.
4. E-book Reader - You may be a Kindle guy. You may be a Nook girl. Regardless, e-readers are a necessity for church leaders. With instant access to millions of books both past and present, e-readers allow you to get inspired so you can inspire others. And, since many of the classics of Christianity are public domain, hundreds of them are free for the taking.
5. Leadia - Leadia is a new app, just released in September 2011 by Leadership Network, that provides invaluable leadership development resources. With four “experiences” currently available on the app at $5.99 apiece, from church leaders like Mac Lake, Stacy Spencer, Will Mancini, and Scott Wilson, the price of admission to hear from these leaders, through text, audio, and video, is quite low for its return on investment. As the app adds more “experiences,” it’s sure to be an integral resource for church leaders. The Catalyst Leader app is another useful church leader mobile application that offers articles, videos, and podcasts from a number of well-known church leaders.
6. Fighter Verses - Do you have trouble memorizing scripture? Fighter Verses is an app that provides a variety of ways for you to memorize Bible verses, like leaving multiple blanks in the verse, offering a multiple choice quiz for different words in a verse, and allowing you to set the verse as your lock screen.
7. Clips - If you like to incorporate visual illustrations from popular movies, Clips can be your virtual sermon illustration assistant. This app is a database of teachable moments from hundreds of movies. While the app doesn’t provide actual video, it does provide a description of the movie moment, the start and end times for the clip, a topical search, and discussion questions.
8. GoodReader - Pastors, small group leaders, and other church leaders who want to deliver their message via an iPhone of iPad may want to check out GoodReader, a robust PDF reader that allows for annotations. JR Vassar wrote a post detailing how he uses GoodReader, including screenshots of the app as he used it for a sermon on Hosea. Some church leaders use Apple’s Pages app that enables you to work in Word or Pages on your laptop, then upload to iPad via iTunes.
9. Siri / Dragon Dictation - With the release of the iPhone 4s and the hubbub over Siri, voice dictation is taking center-stage as the next evolution of how we interact with our mobile devices. (As my pastor recently warned us, “This is how the robots start the takeover.”) If you can’t get Siri-ous, Dragon Dictation has been around for quite some time, and they offer both a free mobile app as well as a robust desktop app for purchase. If you’re a pastor on the move, talking your thoughts into an app that can transcribe them for you may be just the help you need.
10. Angry Birds - No top ten list of mobile apps would be complete without the inclusion of Angry Birds. Just don’t make the mistake of playing Angry Birds when your iPhone is plugged into the church’s sound system. The unmistakable squawk-squee-squawk of a launched bird and the resultant sneering snort of a defiant pig might cause a distraction. If this happens to you, be sure to yell into the horrified silence . . . “I got all three stars!”

What are your favorite apps as a church leader? Which ones did we miss?

[by Blake Atwood]

10 Reasons Why 2012 Will Be Your Best Ministry Year Ever

#1 – You are going to spend more time on your face before God than on facebook, blogs and twitter…and in doing so are going to hear God’s voice and do what He says!

#2 – You are going to be less critical of other people who don’t think just like you and actually see what you can learn from them.

#3 – You are going to stop listening to people who want to do nothing but attack you and tear you down but actually care nothing about you, your family or your church.

#4 – You are going to start listening to people who love Jesus, love your church and love you…and when they push back on you in love you are not going to label them as “disloyal” but rather open yourself to the possibility that Jesus may be using them to speak to you.

#5 – You are going to start loving your people rather than demanding that they love you.

#6 – You are going to take bigger steps of faith than you have ever take before…understanding that when you begin to celebrate the past more than you anticipate the future, it’s OVER!

#7 – You are going to quit looking for handouts and drop the entitlement mindset and actually pay the price both personally and as a church to grow in your understanding of leadership.

#8 – You are going to quit trying to pray away what God has directly told you to deal with.

#9 – You are going to stop complaining about all of the staff and resources that you do not have and START being grateful to God for what He has given you…and then doing your best to honor Him!

#10 – You are going to stop comparing yourself to others and actually find your identity in the fact that Jesus saved you, called you, equipped you and is using you rather than how many people showed up to your church this past Sunday!

(by Perry Noble)

God's Not Through With You!

I am not sure who I am writing this to…but I feel led to let someone know…

GOD IS NOT THROUGH WITH YOU!!!

For weeks, months, maybe even years you have bought into the lie that “it’s over” when it comes to you doing something great for God; after all, you did (fill in the blank)…and because of that there is no way He could ever use you.

Let me be very clear and to the point:  If God were done with you then He would have killed you…but the very fact that you have air in your lungs right now means that HE IS NOT THROUGH WITH YOU!

“But Perry, I screwed up,” you say!

Of course you did!  We all do…which is NOT an excuse to go out and screw up your life, but rather a reminder that in the Bible the ONLY people God used were people who had screwed up.

David committed adultery AND murder (talk about a guy you don’t want to invite over for dinner!  Seriously, David would not have been allowed to serve and most likely attend a lot of churches!)  HOWEVER, David repented of his sin (see Psalm 51) and today we know him as “a man after God’s own heart!”

Moses killed a man…and God used him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt to the border of the Promised Land.

Paul was a murderer…and God used him to write most of the New Testament.

Peter denied Christ and chose to walk away from Him…and God used him to preach on the Day of Pentecost where 3,000 people accepted Christ in one day!

I could go on and on, but you get the point…your past does not disqualify you from an amazing future if you are in Christ!!!

God’s not through with you…and…as I so often say, if you don’t let your past die then it will not let you live and one of the consequences of that is you will allow the enemy to talk you out of the amazing things God has planned for you.

When we repent of sin (which is the most powerful thing we can do in our walk with Christ) we become unstoppable.  And so, if you screwed up…and if you have repented of sin…then STOP believing the lie that there’s no way God could use you!  Take a look at

I Corinthians 6:9-11!!!

God’s not through with you!  GET UP…GET ON YOUR FEET…and do whatever He tells you to do!

(by Perry Noble)