Cowboy Church

NBC Nightly News ran a story about cowboy churches last night. You can watch the video on MSNBC and post comments on the Daily Nightly Blog.

Gene Blankenship, a cowboy church planter in Central Florida, gave me the heads up on this.

Outward and Upward Leadership Teams

You know you are supposed to have a leadership team; you have one, now what?

Is your vision team too “pie in the sky” to get anything done? Is your pastoral advisory team too “chicken” to try anything new? Is your sounding board made up of a bunch of “yes men?” It doesn’t matter what you call them; if your team members are not leading in personal and corporate growth, they are a crisis management team. You may know that already, but how do you lead your team to shift its focus away from today’s pressing needs to working toward vision fulfillment?

Adam Johnstone has developed a practical tool for Natural Church Development that is designed to help church leadership teams to personally and corporately grow outward and upward. This non-linear approach to principle-based strategic implementation is what Johnstone calls The Three Color Spiral. Although it is designed for churches that are going through the NCD process, the principles can be found useful by any ministry team. A free PDF version of The Three Color Spiral is available from NCD Australia. Permission is granted to reproduce for local use.