TOP Churches To MENTOR You

In Connecting: The Mentoring Relationships You Need to Succeed in Life, Paul D. Stanley and J. Robert Clinton place mentors into three categories: intensive (the disciple, the spiritual guide, the coach), occasional (the counselor, the teacher, the sponsor), and passive (the contemporary model, the historical model).

I want to add one more kind of mentor to the “passive” category: church model.

Churches can provide you with passive mentoring through (1) studying their websites, (2) reading books written by their ministry leaders, (3) watching YouTube clips of sermons, worship clips, teaching materials, and ministry promotions, and (4) analyzing ministry approaches and teaching materials.

Here are top U.S. churches that might can mentor you:

CHURCH MODELS – CHURCH GROWTH

Crossroads Community Church (Cincinnati, OH), Brian Tome
Lancaster County Bible Church (Manheim, PA), David Ashcraft
LifeChurch.tv (Edmond, OK), Craig Groeschel
Church of the Highlands (Birmingham, AL) , Chris Hodges
Saddleback Church (Lake Forest, CA), Rick Warren
Woodlands Church (Woodlands, TX), Kerry Shook
Seacoast Church (Mt. Pleasant, SC), Greg Surratt
Community Bible Church (San Antonio, TX), Robert Emmitt
Bay Area Fellowship (Corpus Christi, TX), Bil Cornelius
Cedar Creek Church (Perrysburg, OH), Lee Powell

CHURCH MODELS – CHURCH INNOVATION

LifeChurch.tv (Edmond, OK), Craig Groeschel
Granger Community Church (Granger, IN), Mark Beeson
Mars Hill Church (Seattle, WA), Mark Driscoll
Seacoast Church (Mt. Pleasant, SC), Greg Surratt
Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX), Ed Young, Jr.
Mosaic Church (Los Angeles, CA), Erwin McManus
North Point Community Church (Alpharetta, GA), Andy Stanley
National Community Church (Washington, DC), Mark Batterson
Community Christian Church (Naperville, IL), Dave Ferguson
Saddleback Church (Lake Forest, CA), Rick Warren

CHURCH MODELS - CHURCH PLANTING

Redeemer Presbyterian Church (New York, NY), Tim Keller
Mars Hill Church (Seattle, WA), Mark Driscoll
Northwood Church (Keller, TX), Bob Roberts
Perimeter Church (Duluth, GA), Randy Pope
Spanish River Church (Boca Raton, FL), David Nicholas
East 91st Street Christian Center (Indianapolis, IN), Derek Duncan
Community Christian Church (Naperville, IL), Dave Ferguson
Fellowship Bible Church (Little Rock, AR), Bill Wellons
Kensington Community Church (Troy, MI), Steve Andrews
Church at the Springs (Ocala, FL), Ron Sylvia

CHURCH MODELS – INFLUENCING OTHER CHURCHES

Willow Creek Community Church (South Barrington, IL), Bill Hybels
Saddleback Church (Lake Forest, CA), Rick Warren
North Point Community Church (Alpharetta, GA), Andy Stanley
Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX), Ed Young, Jr.
Lakewood Church (Houston, TX), Joel Osteen
The Potter’s House (Dallas, TX), T.D. Jakes
LifeChurch.tv (Edmond, OK), Craig Groeschel
The Brooklyn Tabernacle (Brooklyn, NY), Jim Cymbala
The Church of the Resurrection UMC (Leawood, KS), Adam Hamilton
North Coast Church (Vista, CA), Larry Osborne

See the complete list on Kent Shaffer’s blog Church Relevance

Rockbridge Seminary students who have completed the fully online Touchstone Course may want to review the work you did in the Mentoring Self-Discovery Workbook and assess how mentoring church models might benefit your ministry competency development.

Erwin McManus: MY TOP 25 QUOTES

Before leaving on a recent month-long trip to Bali, I downloaded all 7 books written by Erwin McManus to my Kindle:

• An Unstoppable Force: Daring to Become the Church God Had in Mind (2001)
• The Barbarian Way: Unleash the Untamed Faith Within (2005)
• Stand Against the Wind: Awaken the Hero Within (2006)
• Uprising: A Revolution of the Soul (2006)
• Chasing Daylight: Seize the Power of Every Moment (2006)
• Seizing Your Divine Moment: Dare to Live a Life of Adventure (2006)
• Wide Awake: The Future Is Waiting Within You (2008)
• Soul Cravings (2008)

Out of the hundreds of quotes I underlined while reading, here are my top 25 quotes which I organized into four categories:

The Church

When the church becomes an institution, people are nothing more than volunteers to be recruited. When the church is a movement, our stewardship becomes the unleashing of our God-given gifts, talents, and passions.

If your church is full of members, you get an occasional missionary. If your church is full of missionaries, the rest is just about geography. Most churches don’t send missionaries because they don’t have any.

You cannot advance the kingdom of God with people who are in retreat.

The purpose of the church cannot be to survive or even to thrive but to serve. And sometimes servants die in the serving.

We only truly come to know ourselves in the context of others. The more isolated and disconnected we are, the more shattered and distorted our self-identity. We are not healthy when we are alone. We find ourselves as we connect to others. Without community we don’t know who we are.

A member of Mosaic is a declaration that you are moving from being a consumer to being an investor; that you are joining not simply the community of Christ, but the cause of Christ. The motivation behind becoming a member is not what can be received but what can be given.

Leaders

If those who prepare for leadership are looking for the safe place, who will lead the church into the dangerous places?

If you’re not willing to lose your job over a key issue, then your core value is your security. If you’re not willing to lose your job, you’re not a leader; you’re a hireling.

In an organization, leaders must be brought from the outside. In a movement, leaders emerge from within.

Leadership is not about how much education a person has attained but how much they have actually accomplished in a ministry context.

Just as some churches are unwilling to follow genuine spiritual leadership, some pastors find it difficult to entrust and empower God’s people.

If you neglect the importance of building healthy relationships, you will find yourself alone in the midst of crisis. When you invest in others, they will leverage even your failures to be the material for your future success.

Knowing God

I don’t know how to prove God to you. I can only hope to guide you to a place where you and God might meet.

Whatever else Jesus came to do, one thing is clear—He came to set you free. God is not a warden; He is a deliverer.

We are all hypocrites in transition. I am not who I want to be, but I am on the journey there, and thankfully I am not whom I used to be.

At Mosaic you will rarely hear the word evangelism, but you’ll always hear the word relationships. When evangelism is not reserved for the elite, kingdom relationships become everyone’s responsibility.

Following God’s Call

You cannot follow God in neutral.

The God of light insists on traveling into dark places; the God of peace continuously involves Himself in the wars of men; the God who is good engages the depth of human evil. To follow Jesus is to enter the unknown, to relinquish security, and to exchange certainty for confidence in Him.

We are all chasing daylight. Our lives are but a brief moment in time. Blink and it’s gone. As soon as we are fully aware of life, we become fully aware of death.

Once you have lift, once you have takeoff, it just might hit you-on its worst day, a butterfly flies better than a caterpillar on its best day.

The skills and competencies and experiences you’ve had in the past will not be enough for every challenge you will face in the future. They are enough to prepare you, but not enough to sustain you. You must build on the past but live for the future.

When it comes to the future, our lives are more discovered than determined.

I think a lot of us are not on a path; we’re in a rut. We have confused comfort with peace, belief with faith, safety with wisdom, wealth with blessing, and existence with life. And for many of us, our dreams will be buried under the epitaph, “I refused to let go of what I had.”

I love the motto of Caribou Coffee, which I found up in St. Paul, Minnesota: “Life is short. Stay awake for it.”

What a tragedy to breathe your last breath and to discover that your life was not only unfinished, but also perhaps never really even began.

Digital DETOX in Bali

For a month I am living in a Balinese Hindu village in the home of Balinese friends my wife and I met while traveling here over the last decade.

I am perched on the edge of rice fields in central Bali with a view of paradise.

The green terraces extend forever with three volcanic mountains rising in the distance though the haze. Tall palm trees and tropical forests run along the edges of my view.

I think of the motto of Caribou Coffee shared by Erwin McManus in his book, Wide Awake: “Life is short. Stay awake for it.” This is a moment to be awake. But …

No broadband
No wireless connection
No worldwide web
No virtual community

Disconnected
Unplugged
Cut off
Disengaged

Reliance
Dependency
Obsession
Addiction

Moody
Irritability
Antisocial
Toxic

Digital detox in Bali?

An astonishing declaration of surrender to Jesus

I don’t ever remember a declaration of spiritual surrender capturing my heart as this one has.

Kay Warren wrote these words on the dedication page of her book, Dangerous Surrender: What Happens When You Say Yes To God:

MY KING, THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, I OWE IT ALL TO YOU.

I AM YOUR BOND-SERVANT; DO WITH ME AS YOU PLEASE.

MY LOVE FOR YOU IS BEYOND WORDS, AND MY GRATITUDE CAN ONLY BE MEASURED BY MY LIFE OFFERED IN YOUR SERVICE.

MY ANSWER WILL ALWAYS BE YES.

Free web apps that can help your ministry focus

Tony Morgan, author of Killing Cockroaches and Other Scattered Musings on Leadership (on my Kindle 2), shared on his blog the top 25 free apps that he uses in his ministry:

1. Gmail
2. Google Calendar
3. WordPress
4. Twitter
5. Google Reader
6. PeopleBrowsr
7. YouVersion
8. Mint.com
9. Google Documents
10. Lala.com
11. Google Analytics
12. FeedBurner
13. ChurchMetrics
14. Delicious
15. ScribbleLive
16. Facebook
17. YouTube
18. Hulu.com
19. Skype
20. Mogulus
21. Google Groups
22. Pandora
23. Woopra
24. YouSendIt
25. Bringo

Thinking about switching to a free app (like Gmail) but hesitant because of the lost productivity getting used to a new system? I understand. When I switched from Outlook to Gmail last year I had a learning curve I knew I would have to endure and dreaded, but now I’m more productive than before and wouldn’t go back.

Seth Godin wrote in a recent blog:

There’s always a gap between the short-term results of a well-polished system and the first results of a switch to a more efficient one.

If you stick with that thing you’ve worked so hard to perfect, the next few hours or weeks or months will surely outperform the results you’ll get from the new thing. That’s because there are switching costs, glitches and a learning curve.

The end result is that organizations that choose to switch are usually the ones with the least to lose. The upstarts and the outliers. One reason they’re always leapfrogging the market leaders.

One way to stay innovative is to understand that this gap exists and to budget for it. Denying it won’t make it go away.

If you are interested in the broader discussion about the use of technology in ministry, listen as Mars Hill pastor Rob Bell interviews Shane Hipps, author of Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith.

Hat Tip: Solar Crash

The Unmistakable Sign of NO Mentoring

Author and pastor Chuck Swindoll recently wrote about the unmistakable sign that an individual has not been mentored:

I’ve discovered when individuals are gifted and young, the most common tendency is to fall into arrogance, and sometimes, raw conceit. Almost without exception when I detect conceit in an individual, I say to myself, They haven’t been mentored.

I have never met a self-important individual who has been mentored. Truth be told, arrogance doesn’t survive mentoring. A mentor will point out blind-spots and will reprove you appropriately when you need to be confronted about your pride.

One of the reasons Rockbridge Seminary requires students to recruit a mentor for each course is to encourage a practice that helps emerging ministry leaders learn vulnerability and authenticity. Swindoll wrote:

As a result of being mentored, you learn the value of being vulnerable, open, unguarded, honest, and ideally, a person of authenticity. I still have mentors in my life. I welcome them. Why? Because I need them. So do you.

Read more about Chuck Swindoll’s mentors on his blog “The Pastor’s Soul, Role, and Home.”

The Value of a Mentor, Part 1

The Value of a Mentor, Part 2

The mentor’s changing role in seminary education

The role of the mentor is changing in seminary education.

Yesterday’s seminary student probably reported to a field supervisor (at least a semester) who then reported to the seminary. Since yesterday’s seminary student typically had little ministry experience, a supervisor was useful and, frankly, often needed. 

Today’s seminary student is different- more likely to have ministry experience and little need for a field supervisor assigned by the seminary. What the student does need, however, is a coaching mentor to provide support for the learning journey; in seminary and following graduation.

Coaching mentors can provide a seminary student:

• Wisdom and discernment
• Life and ministry experience
• Timely advice
• New methods
• Skills
• Principles
• Important values and lessons

The emphasis yesterday was on empowering a field supervisor to provide feedback to the seminary on the progress of the student. 

The emphasis today is on empowering a seminary student to learn and grow from the feedback provided by a coaching mentor. 

Here’s how Paul Stanley and Robert Clinton describe the process in Connecting: The Mentoring Relationships You Need To Succeed in Life:

Coaching is a process of imparting encouragement and skills … empowerment of the mentoree is the result. A key to good coaching is observation (when possible), feedback, and evaluation. An experienced coach does not try to control the player (or mentoree), but rather seeks to inspire and equip him with the necessary motivation, perspective, and skills to enable him to excellent performance and effectiveness. A coach understands that experience is the teaching vehicle, but a wise coach knows the power of evaluated experience.

Why you might need to leave a ministry position

When is it time to leave a ministry position? 

If you are a Rockbridge Seminary student, think about the Time Line of your life that you built in “Developing the Focused Life,” your first course. The Time Line helped you identify people, events, and circumstances where God was at work shaping you into the person you are today.

Could it be that your present ministry position is coming to a close and, in Time Line terms, you need to transition to a new ministry chapter?   

My experience is that ministers leave ministry positions far too often for the wrong reasons and sometimes resist leaving for the right reasons. 

Author Gordon MacDonald suggests 8 reasons why you might leave a ministry position:

1. Incompatibility.

Good church, good pastor, but a bad fit. Both pastor and congregation develop a suspicion of the other’s agenda, and no amount of mutual reflection brings about convergence.

2. Immobility.

The congregation has become trapped in an ecclesiastical whirlpool—lots of programmatic motion but little sense of direction. There is an inescapable sense that the congregation is a closed community that plays church as a way of meeting the social needs of its constituents.

3. Organizational transition.

Healthy organizations inevitably reach growth points where a new kind of leadership becomes necessary. A wise and humble pastor learns for which era of church life he is best suited.

4. Stagnancy.

Sometimes pastors conclude that they can no longer personally develop in giftedness or leadership effectiveness in their present situation. When a congregation prevents its pastor’s personal growth, the result will be boredom and mediocrity for everyone.

5. Fatigue.

Looking back, I feel I often created problems for myself by promising people more of myself than I was capable of delivering. In the end our congregation was too large; the programs were too many; the staff wanted more of me than I knew how to give. I grew weary of trying to please everyone—and often feeling as if I pleased no one. My problem, no one else’s. The result, however, was exhaustion and disappointment. When the fatigue reaches the chronic stage, going over the side may be necessary.

6. Family morale.

Occasionally there comes a time when it’s impossible to ignore the fact that one’s spouse or children are being more harmed than helped by the present situation. No pastor can afford to sacrifice the family to unrealistic expectations of the congregation. Perpetual financial suffocation is not a healthy thing. Living conditions that embitter children, or church contentiousness that constantly humiliates or demeans a pastor in front of his own family, are strong indications that a leave-decision is called for. Nothing has been gained if a pastor is successful in the church and a failure in the home.

7. Closings and openings.

This one—hopefully, the best of them all—is tricky and demands thoughtful, spiritual listening and the counsel of trusted advisors. One intuits that ministry in a particular church has reached a point of conclusion. Word comes that another congregation is seeking a pastoral leader. The new situation fits one’s sense of call and giftedness. There is the concurrence of a spouse, a bishop, or trusted advisors. Most of all, one feels that God is in the decision.

8. The age factor.

There comes a time when a pastor can no longer keep up with the pace of ministry’s demands. Usually this reflects one’s age. An aging pastor faces the terrible temptation to hold on to the job too long. The love he has for the people and the love they have for him is life giving. 

Read the full blog (Off the Agenda: Conversations for Building Church Leaders)

 

 

 

1. Incompatibility.

Good church, good pastor, but a bad fit. Both pastor and congregation develop a suspicion of the other’s agenda, and no amount of mutual reflection brings about convergence.

2. Immobility.

The congregation has become trapped in an ecclesiastical whirlpool—lots of programmatic motion but little sense of direction. There is an inescapable sense that the congregation is a closed community that plays church as a way of meeting the social needs of its constituents.

3. Organizational transition.

Healthy organizations inevitably reach growth points where a new kind of leadership becomes necessary. A wise and humble pastor learns for which era of church life he is best suited.

4. Stagnancy.

Sometimes pastors conclude that they can no longer personally develop in giftedness or leadership effectiveness in their present situation. When a congregation prevents its pastor’s personal growth, the result will be boredom and mediocrity for everyone.

5. Fatigue.

Looking back, I feel I often created problems for myself by promising people more of myself than I was capable of delivering. In the end our congregation was too large; the programs were too many; the staff wanted more of me than I knew how to give. I grew weary of trying to please everyone—and often feeling as if I pleased no one. My problem, no one else’s. The result, however, was exhaustion and disappointment. When the fatigue reaches the chronic stage, going over the side may be necessary.

6. Family morale.

Occasionally there comes a time when it’s impossible to ignore the fact that one’s spouse or children are being more harmed than helped by the present situation. No pastor can afford to sacrifice the family to unrealistic expectations of the congregation. Perpetual financial suffocation is not a healthy thing. Living conditions that embitter children, or church contentiousness that constantly humiliates or demeans a pastor in front of his own family, are strong indications that a leave-decision is called for. Nothing has been gained if a pastor is successful in the church and a failure in the home.

7. Closings and openings.

This one—hopefully, the best of them all—is tricky and demands thoughtful, spiritual listening and the counsel of trusted advisors. One intuits that ministry in a particular church has reached a point of conclusion. Word comes that another congregation is seeking a pastoral leader. The new situation fits one’s sense of call and giftedness. There is the concurrence of a spouse, a bishop, or trusted advisors. Most of all, one feels that God is in the decision.

8. The age factor.

There comes a time when a pastor can no longer keep up with the pace of ministry’s demands. Usually this reflects one’s age. An aging pastor faces the terrible temptation to hold on to the job too long. The love he has for the people and the love they have for him is life giving.