7 Steps to Rekindle Your Vision Fire — Breaking Free in 2023

This week, we’re discussing how your leadership and organization can break free in 2023.

I’d love everyone to read this post, but I realize you’ve got PLENTY of information and communication flying in and out of your inbox (and mind). If any of the following is happening in your church, organization, or company, you should take a few minutes and read this post:

1. Many people remain present but stay mostly disengaged.
2. The people who leave catch you by surprise.
3. People offer up “good ideas” that are clearly misaligned with your direction.
4. Suggestions to add things to the organization vastly vary and compete with each other.
5. You see irritation and frustration within the staff.
6. Staff members are personally, professionally, and even theologically misaligned.
7. Team members leave for other jobs, but not necessarily better roles.
8. Leadership decisions feel more complex than they used to be.

Again, I believe vision is one of, if not THE, most important aspects of church and organizational leadership.

If you sense any of the above happening, NOW is the time to act.

In this NEW POST, I offer you 7 STEPS TO REKINDLE YOUR VISION TO RE-LIGHT A FIRE UNDER YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL FUTURE.

People Don’t Give To JUST Vision

QUICK NOTE: My next FREE WEBINAR happens later this month. Don’t miss “How to Maximize Year-End Giving.” Learn more and REGISTER HERE: https://gavinadams.com/webinar-growing-generosity/

Now, on to our post…

Have you heard the phrase, “People give to vision”?

As a new lead pastor, I was told to leverage vision to generate giving. More, people told me that my congregation would serve to vision, invite to vision, and connect in groups from vision.

So I studied vision casting. I worked hard to become clear, compelling, and concise. And I assumed, from what I had always heard, that vision would be sufficient to engage our church.

Seventeen years later, I’ve come to believe this is true, but only partially true.

In this NEW POST, I tell you what to do beyond vision to inspire participation. AND, I’ll offer you 6 simple ways to celebrate wins to inspire engagement.

9 Leadership Strategies to Avoid Becoming an Growth Barrier

Every leader hates growth barriers.

The internet is full of suggestions on breaking through barriers.

Some of these articles, blogs, and books are good. But too few focus on the leader as the barrier.

THIS POST IS ABOUT REMOVING YOURSELF AS A BARRIER TO GROWTH.

In this NEW ARTICLE, I outline 9 specific things leaders need to evaluate in light of allowing themselves to be a growth barrier.

Here’s the quick list, but you’ll want to read the article for the details:

1. Solicit feedback about your leadership — often.
2. Surround yourself with great leaders.
3. Systematically replace yourself.
4. Discover your real strengths.
5. Delegate more than you do.
6. Never lead What, How, or Who without Why.
7. Be a learner.
8. Work on your junk.
9. Swallow your pride.

I know you don’t want to accidentally become the growth lid. Give this a read and see if there’s an area where you could use a little more focus.

Talk soon.

Four Benefits of Organizational Confusion

As a leader, I don’t love confusion. But I’m learning to like it quite a bit.

The reason (I give four reasons in this new post): Confusion can equate to progress, innovation, and transformation.

Could Your Growing Ministry be Responsible for Your Shrinking Passion?

What do you do when your pastoring passion is declining?

It happens to us all, so we better have some answers.

Unfortunately, too many of our answers involve walking away from ministry, from our current churches, and from even our families, friends, and ourself.

A loss of passion can happen for many, many reasons. I’d like for us to consider one of the most common and equally hidden of them all. I stumbled upon this truth a year or more ago. I was in a funk. I was partially questioning my role, my responsibilities, and even ministry as a profession. I considered reentering the marketplace. As I began contemplating how I arrived in the funk, I realized over time our church (and everything around it) had grown somewhat substantially. Initially, this realization didn’t connect any dots. But, it did begin to launch a discovery process.

To go back in time a bit… A few years ago we would have our staff meeting in my car on the way to lunch. We were a much smaller church with way fewer resources. The entire staff served as the president and the janitor. We were all needed for basically every element of ministry that happened in and through our church. As we grew, we added staff. We added complexity. We added complications. We added a building. Throughout the change, our roles and responsibilities also changed. As the Lead Pastor, I continued to function as the president, but the janitorial elements the I often did in the past faded away. We had other staff to handle some of the things I used to do.

How Can We Lead From Here to a Preferred There?

Maybe it’s just me, but few things frustrate me more than knowing what could be against what is; yet not making progress.

But I’m guessing that’s not just me – it’s probably every leader reading this post. Most leaders I know have some version of a preferred future in mind with a desire to lead people there over time. In some ways that’s why we are leaders! Leadership is about influence, and in most cases, influence towards something specific. A vision. A destination… A preferred future.

And again, for me, the more untapped the potential, the more frustrated I get when the progress is slow or nonexistent.

Here’s my current example: As a pastor in a large church, one of our greatest untapped potentials is in generosity. In conservative estimations, if every family who attends our church frequently gave ONLY 5% of their household income to their church (that’s half of what we would consider a tithe), our annual revenue stream would increase 400%. And that’s VERY conservative. It could increase 6, 7 or maybe 10 times! In my case, that is millions of dollars – with a capital “M.”

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