Unlocking the Five Motivations for Work in Your Ministry Leadership

by: Will Mancini

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We all have motivations that get us out of bed in the morning. And, we all have a wide array of forces that impact our sense of identity as it relates to work.

I have found it helpful to identify these and to explore their interrelationship. In doing so there are multiple benefits to fortifying your life as a ministry leader. In fact, great leaders deeply understand these benefits  in their own life. In addition, these motivations and the benefits of understanding them, become very helpful in stewarding the gifts and talents of others. What are the benefits of exploring the five motivations? They include:

• Building self-awareness
• Bringing a higher perspective to everyday work 
• Enhancing a God-focused life
• Aiding in value-based, directional career decision-making 
• Finding health and balance in your job. 

Explore these  five motivations for your work. While some of these categories may be defined from a negative point of view, (Careerism is selfish), I consider them from positive perspective.

#1 Work as Job: “I get paid in order to live.”

All of us, with few exceptions, start here. You get a job to put bread on the table and to pay the rent. It’s a baseline and noble motivation- survival.

#2 Work as Career: “I advance my life.” 

In addition to getting paid, its nice to know you will get paid more in the future. Progress is a life impulse biologically and emotionally. When you ad a little testosterone to the equation, watch out.  The impetus to win and to have more influence and to “better your position” becomes a significant, if not dominating motive for most people. While Jesus never rebukes the motivation for progress, he does rebuke the selfish and worldly interpretation of what progress looks like (lording over people verses serving them).

#3 Work as Fulfillment: “I enjoy using my life’s talents and abilities.” 

When people cultivate an awareness and practice of their gifts, new things begin to emerge in the motivational dynamic. “Work as job” and “work as career” motivations begin to shift. For example, I might be willing to trade financial benefit or title of influence for the euphoria of a tightly aligned role match with my passion or talents.

#4 Work as Calling: “God created my life for a unique purpose.” 

The definition of calling may have some nuances depending on your faith background. Here, I mean the term to reflect a personal relationship with God that brings the revelation of a life agenda or purpose or destiny.  It’s the movement from occupation to vocation. This is more specific than a generic, “I follow Jesus” or “God has a wonderful plan for your life.”  And this specificity is very real and concrete to those who discern it or find it or receive it. Luke wrote of Paul in Acts 13:36, “For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep…”

#5 Work as Convergence: “I enjoy life for God’s glory.” 

I have struggled with the idea of calling being the ultimate “right” motivation. In some ways, that is the obviously answer. In other ways,  I believe in the nobility of every level and the opportunity to engage in as many levels as possible. “Work as convergence” is the answer. Even though one may be clear on calling, isn’t it still natural to desire a sense of fulfillment and advancement? I think so. As the Westminster Confession reminds us, glorifying God isn’t separable from enjoying him. On another practical level, convergence brings the overlap of “work as job” and “work as calling.” Many feel like they have to work a “job” in order to serve God (calling) in some other area of life. In this case there is an opportunity to explore convergence.

What’s your motivation for work?

Read more from Will here.

Tags: Healthy Staff, Staff, Will Mancini

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Pastor’s Primer for Periscope Now Available

by: VRcurator

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 You may have heard of Periscope, the shiniest new app on the social media landscape. It’s an insanely simple, live streaming tool that connects with your twitter account. (Twitter bought it for $100 million.) Whatever you broadcast, people can comment on and “heart” showing real-time interaction and engagement. Best of all, it archives your live-streaming event for 24 hours so that your followers can watch later if they weren’t immediately available.

Breaking out during the Spring of 2015 in Austin at South by Southwest, it is still too early to know whether Periscope will mark the next big movement in social media interaction or just be a momentary blip on our current landscape of cultural over-communication.

Either way, the ability to broadcast video from a handheld device and instantaneously interact with live viewers certainly opens new doors of connectedness in ministry.

For pastors uninterested in social media, or unconvinced that digital engagement is worth the effort, consider these statistics, as of this writing:

• 302 million people are active on Twitter each month
• 1.44 BILLION people are active on Facebook each month

Could you imagine the Apostle Paul, remaining unconvinced that new routes of commerce and cultural communication were not worth the effort in spreading the gospel of Christ?

This Pastor’s Primer for Periscope is designed to educate and inspire the everyday leader, even those only marginally involved in social media, to the possibilities of Periscope for you and your team.

Download the Pastor’s Primer for Periscope here.

Tags: Bryan Rose, Pastor's Primer for Periscope, Periscope, Will Mancini

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Communicating Your Vision Visually

by: Will Mancini

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If you are clear about who you are and where you are going as a church that’s awesome. Now it’s time to help everyone else in the world to see it, catch it and pass it on. The single most powerful way to help people become contagious carriers of your vision is to give it to them visually!

Did you know that of all five of your senses, your brain allocates 80% of its energy to the eyes. We are visual thinkers. I have watched over and over and over, how many people NEVER get the vision through words alone. So what kind of visuals are we talking about? Allow me to explain two ways.

First, I will ask you some simple questions as a bit of a litmus test. Second, I have attached Auxano’s brand process guide to illustrate how we build a design and communication toolbox for churches.

Have You Communicated Vision Visually?

• Does your logo tell a story or create a conversation starting point?

• Do you hand out a program or worship guide during services that is hard to throw away?

• Is your church’s mobile website easy to use and engaging?

• Can you draw your church’s strategy as a simple napkin sketch? (i.e., how you make disciples)

• Do you capture video testimonies that illustrate your church’s mission, vision and values in the lives of people?

• Do you have stylistically appealing tagline? (font, color, placement)

• Can you read and see things about your church on social media (facebook, twitter, instagram)?

• Do you have a 3-5 minute anchor video that shows where God is taking your church?

• Do you have a consistent set of purposefully chosen design elements (based on you mission and values) that make up the look and fee of your primary communication tools?

• Does your space intentionally utilize your church’s brand from architectural pieces and symbols to banners and signage?

Would you like to do a better job this year with this important aspect of vision-casting? If so, check out the brand process guide that we use at Auxano. It tells the story of the design and communication toolbox we did for Christ Fellowship in West Palm Beach.

DOWNLOAD:  The Auxano Brand Process Guide

If you are interested in getting some outside help for branding & design, you can let us know here.

> Read more from Will.

Tags: Brand Process Guide, Christ Fellowship Palm Beach, Vision visually, Will Mancini

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Church Unique’s Vision Pathway and Tom Paterson’s StratOps

by: Will Mancini

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Over the last few years, I have enjoyed learning more and more from the contribution of Tom Paterson. Tom is a brilliant consultant and friend of Peter Drucker who innovated a very specific, high-impact model of strategic planning in the business space. I am grateful for five gentleman who have been a part of my own access and “digestion” of StratOp as a certified facilitator : Doug Slaybough (pictured above & former guy beyond the success of Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven organization), Michael Murphy (current president of the Paterson Center), Greg Hawkins (executive pastor of Willow Creek Community Church), Buck Rogers (friend and master facilitator) and Todd Wilson (kingdom entrepreneur behind Exponential and a fellow clarity junkie).

Most recently, I have completed the integration work of utilizing Paterson’s StratOp process for churches as a follow-up to Vision Pathway process that I have developed and used for twelve years, through the ministry of Auxano.

Why?

Simply put, The Vision Pathway and StratOp are the two best ways to solve two different but related problems for the local church leaders.

In this post I want to explore the basic differences. In the rest of a series I want to show:

• Part 2: The REAL Chemistry of Vision Pathway and StratOps
• Part 3: Why StratOps is a Waste of Time if You Don’t Have a Vision Frame
• Part 4: Why Every Church over 400 in Attendance Should Use StratOps 

VISION PATHWAY AS A UNIQUE SOLUTION

The Vision Pathway  was created to solve the problem of cut-n-paste ministry models and photocopied vision proliferated by books and conference in the church space. The result is a lack of freedom, confidence, passion, credibility and ultimately progress for a local church leadership team.

The Vision Pathway was developed in 2001-2004 from a biblical  understanding of the church in order to develop new competencies in thinking, leadership and communication for local church teams. The deliverable of the process is a fully articulated vision and ministry model that takes into account a church’s heritage, the unique community context, the distinctive congregational strengths and Spirit-guided passion of the leadership. The process was formally articulated in the book, Church Unique in 2008 with the subtitle of “How Missional Leaders Cast Vision, Capture Culture and Create Movement.” Church Unique continues to be the leading book in the church vision and planning category since it’s publication.

The baseline Vision Pathway requires a minimum of 6 days of collaborative work over a several month period. The Pathway is built with 5 master tools, that cover 8 big ideas, with 10 specific deliverables with dozens of “add-on” features and optional sub-tools based on church’s theological bent, size, life-stage, growth challenges and culture. There really is no other comparable process for church leaders to experience.

STRAT-OP AS A UNIQUE SOLUTION

StratOp was created to solve the problem of lengthy strategic planning process that don’t get total buy in across the executive team of large businesses.  The result is a lack of daily cooperation and coordination of diverse functional units towards the strategy priorities of the business.

StratOp was birthed through a challenge in 1980 issued to Tom Paterson to reduce the timeframe and increase the effectiveness of formal strategic planning. The design parameter was three days, which was given to Paterson by Thomas E. Bennett, who was the the Vice President for Corporate Planning for Ingersol-Rand Company. The content of the process is available only through the Paterson Center to certified consultants and facilitators. (Approximately 180 have gone through the process in the last 15 years.)

The StratOp process is a 3-day event (with a typical 2-day follow-up process with key individual leaders).  It works through 25 “tools” that are collaborative conversations ranging from 30 minutes to 2 hours. The deliverable is a set of dashboard-like documents that can be used in the operational flow of leadership and management. While there are many planning processes out there, I have not seen one better for creating priorities within a one-year horizon. In addition several Paterson disciples are Jesus-followers who have applied what was originally designed for business, to the local church.

Read more from Will Mancini on his blog: WillMancini.com

Are you ready for a new level of team focus, energy, and productivity? Connect with an Auxano Navigator and start a conversation with our team.

Tags: Church Unique, StratOps, Strategy, Tom Paterson, Will Mancini, church leaders

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Deal with Problems in Your Church by Speaking of Current Reality and Future Possibility

by: Trevin Wax

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A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post called“Assessing the State of Your Church and How it Got There.” I looked at a few business and leadership books and then considered some ways their advice might apply to a local church. I concluded with this word of warning:

Don’t miss the importance of learning “what time it is” for a church and how it has progressed to this point.

If the church culture has stifled honest conversations about the current realities and challenges, people will begin to shield the leader from “grim facts” for fear of being criticized or penalized for telling the truth. Then, once the “brutal facts” are ignored, the organization suffers and, sometimes, dies.

Of course, the next question is: Okay, now what? If I’ve prayerfully and honestly assessed the state of my church and how it got here, how do I move forward with my congregation?

I would sum up the next steps in two phrases: tell the truth and face the future.

Tell the Truth

Helping others see the urgency of the situation is important in communicating what must change.

In the business world, John Kotter says the biggest mistake leaders make as they seek to implement changes in an organization is to move forward without establishing a sense of urgency. In How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins warns that simply communicating facts is not enough to stimulate change. In declining organizations, he writes,

“there is a tendency to discount or explain away negative data rather than presume something is wrong with the company; leaders highlight and amplify external praise and publicity.”

A Burning Platform

How should communication of the state of the organization take place?

Kotter recommends a “burning platform.” This refers to the ability of a leader to communicate the truth that complacency in the organization is the real danger, not change. People in the organization will not sense this to be true until they realize they are on a “burning platform” in which fire starts on the floor beneath their feet, spreads around them, and eventually forces them away from the status quo.

In other words, the leader must communicate the true state of the organization and help others view the reality of the present situation and the dangers on the horizon if the organization fails to make the proper changes. The pastor has more of a “burning platform” than any mere business or secular organization. We believe in the reality of hell, the urgency of evangelism, and the success of God’s mission through His Spirit.

Some business books go so far as to recommend a new leader “create” a crisis, if necessary, in order to implement changes quickly. For example, Kotter believes since crises are always rising, a real leader should “create artificial crises” and make use of them rather than waiting for a true crisis to come along. Such a strategy is unacceptable for the Christian leader. The Christian who understands the reality of the current situation must communicate the truth; manufacturing crises for the sake of implementing change is unethical and manipulative.

Face the Future

A leader who knows “what time it is” organizationally will not only diagnose the current situation and communicate the “brutal facts,” but the leader will also envision the future of the organization and take measures to pursue the path forward.

A Plan of Action

Prescription is vital, which is why a plan of action must be set forth. If the leader focuses only on the urgency of the situation, people are likely to fall into despair rather than move forward with an optimistic outlook. Description of the bad and prescription of the solution are both necessary.

The timing of implementing changes is important. Reggie McNeal warns: “The right issue tackled at the wrong time faces certain defeat.” However, most of the time, the right issue is determined by the trail the leader is blazing toward the future.

Be Clear

The vision of the future must be clear, which is why leaders who know “what time it is” organizationally will be relentless in the pursuit of clarity, both for themselves and the people they lead. Without clarity regarding changes, people will disagree on the direction, perhaps due to confusion or questions about the necessity of the decisions.

Church consultant Will Mancini synthesizes several definitions of clarity:

It means being free from anything that obscures, blocks, pollutes, or darkens. Being clear as a leader means being simple, understandable, and exact. The leader helps others see and understand reality better. Leaders constantly bring the most important things to light: current reality and future possibility, what God says about it and what we need to do about it.

Clarity must include not only the win, but also the path to the envisioned future. The Christian leader must know “what time it is” organizationally and be able to communicate the present reality and the path toward to the desired future.

> Read more from Trevin.

Tags: Clarity, Face the Future, Tell the Truth, Trevin Wax, Will Mancini

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Three Sources of Original Ministry Vision in a Cut-n-Paste Church World

by: Will Mancini

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Recently I spent some time with my wife, Romina on Canyon Road in Santa Fe. It is one of the most concentrated art gallery areas in the world with over one hundred and fifty galleries in a mile stretch.

At one of the galleries, named the Gaugy Gallery, I met Michelle Gaugy who runs a nice shop and consults with artists. She caught our attention with one of her statements:

Most artists are just tweaking someone else’s work.

It became clear that aspires to help artists to move toward originality of expression (in a similar way that I do with church leaders and church vision). And her gallery was a clear testimony to her life pursuit. As her robust intellectual style drew me in, I knew I could learn something on behalf of church leaders. What follows is my simple question and her responses. I will let you make the connection to ministry. I asked,

“So how does an artist develop originality?”

Michele replied with three answers:

#1: You must have a deep inner life. 

She emphasized the role of reflection for the artist emphasizing the ideas of personal surrender. She explained that the role of visual art is to be a conduit or language of the things that are most valuable to human beings, like the stuff that matters on your death bed. If the artist is not aware on that level, its easy to be tempted by technique and duplicating the style of others. 

#2: You must have a vibrant outer life.

The idea Michele unpacked here is that visual expression is most dynamic when the artist is not just focused on art. She explained how many great artists have occupations that defined their life that gave uniqueness and grounding to their work. The more that an artist can cross different life spheres including vocation, hobbies, and relationships, the better and more original the art will become.

#3 You must have a kindling mechanism

Finally Michele emphasizes the great artists must define and perfect a what she called a kindling mechanism; a way to jumpstart their best creative energy. She explained that for some it might be as simple as starting first thing in the morning to stay closer to a dream state. One famous artist would begin by putting his feet in cold water, while another would stay in prayer and meditation before painting.

It reminded me of why I love coming to Santa Fe to begin with as visiting here is a kindling mechanism for my writing. In fact, I wrote most of Church Unique while visiting Santa Fe.

So, what else would you add?

Read more from Will here.

Tags: Original Vision, Will Mancini

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Six Reasons Why Most Church Strategic Planning is a Waste of Time

by: Will Mancini

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 Have you ever personally experienced a time-waster planning retreat?

The planning may be called lots of things like:

• long range planning
• vision planning
• visioning weekend
• goal-setting
• strategic operations

In addition to the variety of names, the planning may be spawned for numerous reasons like facility planning, attendance decline, website design, or capital campaign initiatives to name a few. But whatever you call it and and whatever got the process started, Many pastors confess that the outcome of strategic planning  is left wanting. The usefulness of the deliverable itself—the plan, the report, the vision—is so limited, it will soon be stored in a church closet otherwise known as the strategic planning notebook graveyard.

Sound like a doomsday message? I hope not! Because a well designed vision process is one of the most exciting things to lead and experience. It’s why Auxano has eight full-time consultants (we call ourselves navigators) with dozens of Church Unique Certified and Network Navigators who practice our Vision Framing Process part-time. Literally hundreds of churches go through the process every year with amazing success!

So what are the reasons why most church strategic planning is a waste of time? 

Reason #1: Most planning deliverables have too much information.

Two weeks ago, I looked at a current strategic planning document for a church. In addition to a statement of mission and values, the plan contained 5 overarching objectives and 22 goals. It’s not unusual to see this much information. The problem with “too much: is that the only person who benefits is the executive pastor type or board member with a high need for control. It helps them feel good to have all of the objectives and goals listed in one place. The real problem is thatno one else in the organization cares that much about the goals.

Does that sound harsh? It shouldn’t. It’s not a negative commentary on the people and their motives, its a negative commentary on the model of planning. In a nutshell, a plan with too much information misses the human element. It doesn’t connect on an emotional level and doesn’t help the average person, really know what to do.

How much information should your plan have? At the summary level it should have five things: mission, values, strategy, measures and “vision proper.” Vision proper means that everyone knows the one, most important goal at any time. For certain people in the organization, there are tools for more complexity, but not much more.

Reason #2: Most mission and values statements are too generic.

We have been so saturated with generic in church leadership we don’t even realize what it is any more. Here is the key principle to understand: Mission and values should be broad but not generic. They are broad because many types of activities are required to accomplish the mission and many different kinds of tasks can flow out of a deeply held value. Therefore your mission and values should be broad yet specific, rather than broad and generic. Consider these definitions to help you think about this idea:

Broad: to a great extent, ample, vast, extensive, large

Generic: applicable to all members of a group; a name not protected by trademark.

Specific: precise or particular; peculiar to somebody or something.

Applying these definitions we would say that your church’s mission should be extensive and vast, but peculiar to your church. 

Perhaps the best way to describe idea of broad yet specific is to think of oceans. There are five oceans in the world, Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic and Southern. These are broad bodies of water with complex ecosystems and each is a world of its own. But they are also specific and unique. To make the bridge to church, the better analogy might be a lake. There are over 112 millions lakes in the world larger than half an acre. Each one is peculiar, despite the fact that to a frog, each of the lakes provides for a “broad” environment.

A broad and generic mission is: love God, love people and serve our community. A broad and specific mission is: inviting people into the unexpected joy of desperate dependence on Jesus. To get to broad and specific read this post on why churches operate at less than 50% effectiveness. It will help you get past generic.

The last four reasons are below and will be unpacked in follow-up posts:

Reason #3: Most strategic plans don’t clarify how the mission is accomplished.

Reason #4: Most strategic plans for churches don’t clarify  when the mission is accomplished. 

Reason #5: Most planning processes involve too many people.

Reason #6: Most planning processes neglect training on vision competencies.  

So how many strategic planning experiences have you had that you considered a waste of time? I would love to hear the total!!!

> Read more from Will.

Tags: Will Mancini, church strategic planning, strategic planning

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10 Ways We Get in the Way of God Building His Church

by: Will Mancini

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Scriptures clearly remind us that God is building his church. But the reality of church can seem so contradictory to this truth. Reggie McNeal once wrote, “We have the best churches men can build, but we are still waiting for the church that only God can get the credit for.”  When things don’t go well at church, is it possible that we are getting in God’s way?

The quote from Reggie  has been retweeted quite often. It got me thinking about theses question:

• How am I unintentionally trying to build a church without God?
• How I do become an obstacle to the Spirit’s work, without realizing it?
• I am making ministry harder than it should be?

As I reflected on the possible answers I become all too aware of my own failures and mistakes along the way. While tempted to do a short paragraph on each point,  I believe the single statements alone say enough!

10 Ways We Get in Way of God Building His Church:

• Way #1: We rely on human wisdom, not God’s, by copying what we see in other churches. 
• Way #2: We misdirect our energies by confusing the ends and means of ministry.
• Way #3: We use our ministry platform to display our gifts more than to develop the gifts of others.
• Way #4: We avoid transparency thus making ourselves more than we really are. 
• Way #5: We decide to stop growing thereby limiting  the growth of others around us. 
• Way #6: We settle for ministry assignments that are disconnected from the entire rescue mission of redemptive history. 
• Way #7: We choose denial instead of facing the answers to difficult questions.
• Way #8: We use our influence to stay in a ministry position longer than we should.
• Way #9:  We loose our love for people but pretend we don’t.
• Way #10: We take ourselves too seriously by not resting in weekly sabbath. 

Dear Father,
Please rescue us from ourselves. Forgive us when we unintentionally get in the way. We acknowledge that we can operate out of pride and self-strength as easily as we can be tempted by comfort and inaction. Thank your for the privilege of participation in your church-building, kingdom-expanding work on earth. We want to see you get all of the credit and work more than we could possibly dream!

> Read more from Will.

Tags: Building His Church, Reggie McNeal, Will Mancini

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The Top Ten Reasons to Advance Church Goals One Big Goal at a Time

by: Will Mancini

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Most church leaders never experience what it feels like to have one big goal for their entire church. (Unless of course they are raising funds in a traditional capital campaign.) Yet, to be a part of a church culture that sets and achieves big goals time and time again is as God honoring as much as it is exhilarating!

What do most churches do instead of having one big goal? Its pretty simple. They either have no clear and stated aspirations at all or they have too many goals in an overwhelming strategic plan or cumbersome dashboard. The sweet spot is a rare yet priceless in-between: one highly visible, broadly supported goal. At Auxano we call this a “missional milestone” and it usually is based on a time horizon of 6 to 12 months out.

One key to understanding the value of having one goal, is that you have one goal at a time. That is, you keep resetting the next big goal to advance the longer-term vision of your congregation. (Learn more about the different horizons of planning.)

So what are the top ten reasons to set church goals one at a time?

#1  One goal at a time focuses the attention of staff and leaders.

No goal = little focus. Too many goals = playing for different teams.

#2  One goal at a time creates greater energy among the congregation.

No goal = unactivated potential. Too many goals = depleted energy.

#3  One goal at a time directs everyone’s prayers as a concert of dependence on God.

No goal = random prayers. Too many goals = low likelihood of any goal-directed prayers at all.

#4  One goal at a time helps leaders think bigger about what God might be doing.

No goal = smaller thinking. Too many goals = fragmented thinking.

#5  One goal at time means we will set goals for disciple-making outcomes not just for raising money.

No goal = you only set goals when raising funds. Too many goals = people never see the importance of  disciple-making goals.

#6  One goal at a time generates a sense of momentum.

No goal = people define success any way they want. Too many goals = splintered momentum.

#7  One goal at a time helps us build toward bigger and bigger goals.

No goals = no “ramp” to bigger goals. Too many goals = each goal stays smaller.

#8  One goal at a time fosters healthy risk-taking.

No goal = no reason to risk. Too many goals = much lower risk threshold.

#9  One goal at a time connects people to the larger story of God’s redemptive history.

No goal = live in a smaller story.  Too many goals = disconnect people.

#10  One goal at a time demonstrates God-honoring unity.

No goal = missed opportunity to show people our “togetherness.” Too many goals = shows people our different agendas.

>> Read more from Will.

Tags: Church Goals, Missional Milestone, Will Mancini, horizons of planning

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The Four Deadly Sins of Emerging Church Leaders

by: Will Mancini

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The following four sins are excerpted from a TeamUp tool that helps your team engage key concepts for emerging church leaders around Steve Saccone’s book, Protege.

You can download the TeamUp tool here.

Character is doing the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do, no matter the cost. That is the essence of true heroism, and the defining mark of a Christ-centered leader. Unfortunately, character is not required to be an effective leader. On the other hand, character is what makes a leader worth following—and it’s what gives people a compelling life to follow.

#1 – The Sin of Imitation: Envy Envy is not only a deadly sin, but probably one of the most uncomfortable sins, especially for emerging leaders as they strive to distinguish themselves from everyone else. And sometimes it’s immensely difficult to distinguish the difference from personal development and imitation development. The pathway toward overcoming the sin of imitation involves the pursuit of living an original life, a pursuit all can attain, one we were in fact created to attain.

#2 –  The Sin of Performance: Self-Reliance Every leader faces the challenge to produce or perform. Although this ambitious pursuit and intentional focus isn’t inherently wrong, I’m convinced that what ought to motivate us and what actually does motivate us gets all too blurry. The mindset of productivity is so pervasive in our culture that it can result in a subtle but critical shift in our approach to how we view and do ministry leadership and understand what great performance is really about.

#3 – The Sin of Overconfidence: Foolishness Where do we draw the line between healthy confidence and unhealthy overconfidence? Where does the balance lie between knowing you have specific gifts to offer, and thinking you are better than you are? And how does knowing the difference actually make a difference? My experience shows me that ministry leaders don’t always seek the right kind of wisdom, thus maintaining characteristics of what the Scriptures call, “a fool,” which is where the sin of overconfidence leads us.

#4 – The Sin of Entitlement: Greed Greed is a deadly sin because it takes more than it gives. It consumes rather than creates. It is never satisfied. What makes it worse is that greed is difficult to recognize and then acknowledge within yourself. As a result of going unchecked, greed begins to fuel and pollute our ambitions, the very ones that look good on the outside but wreck havoc in our leadership, marriage, ministry, and personal lives.

>> Read more from Will.

Tags: Emerging Church Leaders, Protege, Steve Saccone, Will Mancini

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