Are you tired of the same old workshops and seminars that send a big talking head to tell YOU how to do ministry in YOUR community? Are you frustrated with trying new ministry approaches that seem to fail before they get off the ground? Do you want to build meaningful relationships with other lead pastors who will partner with you to build the Kingdom?

If answered “Yes” to any of those questions, ¡switch! coaching networks is for you! ¡switch! is a new peer-to-peer network that connects passionate church leaders with other passionate leaders for the purpose of contextual ministry development. Through the synergy of the Holy Spirit and Christian community, you will discover the eternal principles of a healthy church and how to build your ministries off of God’s surpassing dreams rather than man’s failed structures.

¡switch! will help you think biblically about ministry, create synergistic relationships with other leaders, and build momentum for you to create change in your church!

So, how exactly will it work?

6-8 ¡switch! coaching network members will meet once a month for six consecutive months

• Each session will meet on the first Monday of the month and last 4-7 hours with a 1 hour break
• Sessions will operate as follows:
  • Focus setup (20 min)
    • Identify question, problem, concentration
  • Deconstruction (45min – 1hr)
    • Reveal weaknesses in current methods and SOP
  • Principle Discovery (1.5hrs)
    • Working backwards to irreducible minimum
    • Must be scripture-based and prayer-centered
  • BREAK (1hr)
  • Prayer/Future Thinking (45min-1hr)
    • What do you want your church to look like in 2yrs? 5yrs? 10yrs?
  • Development (2hrs)
    • Creation, customization
    • Presentation with strengths and weaknesses
• Participants will be asked to prepare prior to meeting
  • Reading books, listening to podcasts, and other self-directed study

In my last post on leadership, I encouraged you to begin using an annual preaching calendar. I was thinking about it, it can be intimidating initially, especially if you’ve never thought in this way before. So, I decided to make my 08-09 annual preaching calendar available to you.

It’s a simple word document that has 4 Key Components

1. Tracking of guest influx weekends. Every church has weekends that attracts more guests than other weekends. It’s to your benefit to track these times in an organized way. Why should I track guest influx weekends? Because you can launch provocative series that will entice guests to return the following weeks to see how the series progresses. You might be thinking, “Well, now I have to wait a year to begin tracking that if I haven’t already.” Not necessarily. There are natural influxes too. Such as the beginning of the school year, Christmas season, and Easter. Use these times to encourage those guests to take next steps in your church.
2. Planning for holidays. When you plan ahead of time, you can start series on holidays, end on holidays, or avoid them all together. This way you don’t start into a powerful series one week and then realize Mother’s Day is next Sunday, so you have to take a break and lose momentum.
3. Focus series. You can create focused series throughout the year. Nelson Searcy recommends using felt needs series during guest influx periods, discipleship series immediately following a felt-need series, and then, the “Others” sermons (things you have to teach on that may not be your strength or passion). Preach your “Others” on low attendance weekends (like summer, Labor Day, etc.)
4. Purposeful movement. Through my calendar, you will see things like “teach on membership” or “teach on baptism” and shortly after that, there will be a baptism service scheduled or a membership class coming up. When you teach on these things and then give people an opportunity to respond quickly, you will find yourself maximizing these moments and your time. If you do this, you’ll find more people signing up for baptism and membership class when you couple these things together.

To download my preaching calendar, click here or right click and choose “Save As…”

Hope it helps. When you purposefully plan ahead, your teachings will be better and your church will be healthier.

P.S. I’m not always the most creative person either, so it’s okay to get inspiration and creativity from other preacher’s series or sermons. Don’t plagiarize, but let others inspire you! Besides, John Wesley said, “Anything that’s new isn’t true and anything that’s true isn’t new!” We’re all preaching the same Gospel for the same kingdom. We can work together!!

Week four focuses on that fact that are different from the world. We are chosen and purposed by God.

Click here for the meeting notes.

Click here for the manuscript (version 3.0).

**Note: There is a clip at the beginning of the sermon that is created by Greg Henry. Again, the file is too big to upload here, but you may be able to find other suitable clips of peculiar people or go to Youtube and look up The Big Mac Man.**

Click here for the message notes.

Click here for the PowerPoint.

Pastors, you know the time crunch that’s experienced every week. Get messages done for Sunday. Prepare lessons for Wednesday night. Create board agendas each month. Day after day, it’s another deadline that has come or, worse, already past.

I am convinced that our churches would operate more healthy and successfully if we played ahead of the game instead of behind the eight ball.

If you’re familiar with Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, you’ve been exposed to his four quadrants.

Too often, I think pastors hang out in Quadrant I and Quadrant III. While some things in Quadrant I can’t be worked around (deaths, illnesses, conflict), we can still be prepared for them by spending time in Quadrant II. If you look back over the last 3 months of your ministry, you can probably attribute many of the QI issues to lack of time spent in QII.

Think about it:

• Your up-late-Saturday-night sermon because of an unexpected funeral that week
• The disorganized board meeting because you were sick for three days prior to
• The last minute Bible study because of your 2hr phone call with a pastor friend

I’m not saying that you should say no to funerals, never get sick, or even stop connecting with other people. What we can do is prepare and give ourselves cushions should  these things arise. The more time we spend planning for the future, the more time we will have to work excellent now.

Let me give you a few ideas of what I’m talking about:

1. Create a one-year preaching calendar. You will be more organized and plan better when you know what you’ll be preaching on in three weeks or 6 months. You can be collecting material through the year. You can also incorporate holidays, special occasions, and other people into your series this way. The painful question comes out right about here: “Aren’t you squelching the Holy Spirit when you plan in advance like that?” The answer is: YES!! Because God can’t possibly know what my people need 7 months from now. He only has the ability to know 3-7 days out. (**Note the tongue in cheek**).
2. Write your sermons three weeks out. If you start writing your sermons three weeks before you preach them, you’ll have time to tweak them and make them better. I started doing this 7 months ago and it has made all the difference in the quality and preparedness of my messages. Give it a shot and see if you don’t love being three weeks out!
3. Create a calendar with alarms reminding you of due dates. A lot of times, we fall behind just because we simply forget. With all the reminders and alarm clocks on phones, iCalendar, and Outlook Express, there’s no reason to ever forget an appointment or due date again. Set due dates for things that happen regularly (board meetings, weekly sermons, etc.) and put them on a cycle (weekly, monthly, etc.). Then, as other due dates arise, immediately enter them.
4. Spend one hour on Monday scheduling the rest of your week. The best habit I have ever built into my life is taking the first hour on Monday to schedule out the rest of my week. It makes it much easier to stay on task and complete the things that need to be done. Then I leave cushion for other things like emergencies, long phone calls, and an occasional round of Tiger Woods 2007.

I know if you implement these tips, you’ll increase your creativity, boost your excellence, and save yourself some much unneeded stress! If you have any tips to share, feel free to leave a comment on what helps you maximize your time.

I’ve been reading What Customers Really Want by Scott McKain for the last few weeks. While he comes from a purely business background, his suppositions are very relatable to church systems. McKain’s basic premise is that there is a major gap between what customers want and what businesses provide. Through the book, we’re taken through six major disconnections of what customers are looking for and what businesses are offering.

The first disconnection is that customers want a compelling experience but businesses provide customer service. Most of our churches are providing customer service to the people who come to our churches. We’re basically moving them through our systems: Sunday School, worship, Bible studies, various events. We inform them of opportunities they can be a part of and leave their response to chance.

As churches, we can create environments that lead to a compelling experience with our organization and with God. How do we do that though? First, we can have superior information about our people. We can know what they like, what they hate, how they learn best, the ways they connect with God the most, and their special days.

Second, we can couple that with systematic empathy which causes people feel like you really care for them. As leaders in the church (especially paid staff), our job is to make things easier for our people and our volunteers. We should be bending over backwards to help them connect with God and complete their roles in ministry. We can equip and educate our people to succeed rather than to struggle, fail, and walk away in frustration. When I put myself in the shoes of my volunteers and my people, I can begin to empathize with them and create more compelling experiences in which they can encounter God.

The third aspect is to have an obsession with sensation. Do you ever think about what your people are sensing when they walk into your building or when they are a part of one of your ministries? What do they see when they enter? Who are they interacting with, if anybody? How are they invited to participate? What do they smell? Is the room temperature too cold, too hot, or perfect for most people? Is there a sense of awe because the Holy Spirit is present and God is here? All of these aspects (and more), play a huge role in how people will perceive your church and therefore, perceive your God.

Too often, we simply provide opportunities for people to move through our organization’s “products” (SS, services, ministries, etc). Don’t get me wrong. We should be doing that. But that’s just the first step. That’s just “customer service.” We can move people with compelling experiences that help them to connect with God. When we do that, people will want to be a part of your church.

What are some ways your church can create compelling experiences rather than simply providing customer service?

**As one example, a friend of mine, Paul Hunsaker, died in August of 2008. His wife was very shaken by this event. She asked me to oversee the funeral and I agreed. Some of the ways I tried to go beyond “customer service” was to be with her through the funeral planning meeting with the funeral director. I met with some of her family members to integrate them into the service. The last piece, that is still on-going, I implemented is what I called a “Henrietta Calendar.” I created a calendar that has all of her big days for the next year (birthday, wedding anniversary, death anniversary, holidays, etc). I’ve set my calendar to remind me to contact her on those days. I’ll call her, write her a letter, or take her out to lunch just so she has someone to come alongside of her on those high-emotion days.

See, customer service would have ended after the funeral was over. But compelling experiences lead us into caring for people in sensational ways!**

The third week takes a look at the difference between a church and The Church. There is a little crash course on the Temple that will help people distinguish between a temple mentality and a Church mindset.

Click here to download the meeting notes

Click here to download version 2.0 of the manuscript with media cues (we use versions to track how many times a manuscript has been revised and updated; so check back later in the week for more updates on the manuscript)

[**NOTE** There are two clips: one can be downloaded from wingclips.com. The second is one created by Greg Henry // the file is too big to upload here, but you can get a similar one from sermonspice.com called "Why Don't People Go To Church?"]

Click here to download the message notes.

Click here  to download the PowerPoint.

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to post them.

This week’s message is focused on the idea of unity within the Body of Christ. When all the parts focus on one purpose, the Body can maximize its potential to bring change to the world.

Click here to download the manuscript with media cues.

Click here to download the meeting notes.

Click here to download the PowerPoint.

Click here to download the message notes.

Feel free to leave comments on how to tweak the material for the better or how you intend to use it!

I apologize for being behind this week. The week two manuscript will be completed by 5pm today (Tue). The message notes and Powerpoint will be available Thursday at noon. After this, we’ll be one week out from now on.

I guess being behind is what I get for going to Orlando for 4 days last week! I hope together we can increase our creativity and draw people into a meaningful encounter with God!

On a side note, I’m not sure if you’ve heard of the girl that is selling her virginity. I recently heard about this story and was blown away. Honestly, my initial reaction was one of disgust and shock; then I was immediately checked by the Holy Spirit. He ended up breaking my heart for “Natalie Dylan” (pseudonym she is using) who obviously has no godly guidance in her life.

I want to encourage you: Rather than condemning this girl for making a bad decision, pray for her that she would become sensitive to God’s voice and walk away from a big mistake in her life. While her possible mistake is very public and shocking, it’s no different than any sinful choice you and I have made in our lifetime. I hope you’ll lead your people to pour out compassion for this girl and others like her, rather than judgment and condemnation. Building the kingdom isn’t about being right; it’s about being made right!

Click here to download the manuscript for week one of “What Is the Church: The Church Is A Covenant Community.” Included is media resources and cues.

Click here to download the meeting notes (brainstorming, design of structure, etc).

Right click the picture and choose “save as…” to download the “What Is The Church?” PowerPoint graphic and text graphic.

Click here for the message notes.

Click here for the PowerPoint.

Also, please feel free to leave feedback as to how you used the material, if you used it, how your people responded, and what you thought of the resources. Thanks, and let’s build God’s kingdom together!!