On Monday, January 25th, we held our first Executive Pastor Coaching Network session of the year. Our speaker Dan Reiland, an author, speaker, and Executive Pastor of 12Stone Church, offered an hour full of thoughtful and timely insights into the art of coaching your team members well.

Get to know a little about our cohort leaders, Taleah Murray, Dennis Richards, Milan Ford, and Trace Rorie.

This year I have revamped the Executive Pastor Coaching Network in light of our virtual conditions. This allows us to do more than we have ever done before. Sign up today and join our first coaching session in January 2021.

I’m inviting Executive Pastors to join me beginning in January for my LeadingSmart Executive Pastor Coaching Network, a monthly coaching community that will be practical in content and will feature peer-to-peer connection every month. Join at any time!

A white man was driving from Montgomery to Birmingham when he was carjacked. The perpetrators took everything he had, including the clothes he was wearing, and beat him unconscious, leaving him nearly dead on the side of the road …

If racial reconciliation is not a part of your spiritual formation then it will never be on your spiritual radar for how you understand the gospel and your part God has called you to play in it concerning racial injustice.

Hey Willow Creek—I can’t wait for you to meet Faith Stevens. I don’t know another human on the planet who is more relational and encouraging. She loves people deeply, and those who end up in her friend circle feel very blessed.

We can’t just acknowledge that the world around us is broken, we must engage and use the God-given influence we have to live out a better way.

It was our first week in the office together, and Dave Dummitt and I were already talking about what succession might look like at Willow Creek. We both acknowledged we are in temporary roles. Hopefully, it will be 15-20 years before the next transition. But however long it is — it will eventually happen.

I think authenticity is a commodity that people crave now more than ever. The more human, the more raw, the more we lean in. And the opposite is true as well—the more polished and scripted and produced…the harder it is to relate.

Rebuilding Willow is not the goal. The goal is to continue the building of a thriving local church where people can take their next step toward Jesus; where those far from God can begin to find their way back; and where the love of Jesus becomes real for people as their human needs are being met. 

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens; building teams, collaboration, and developing leaders, these are a few of my favorite things.

I wonder how many people are actually enjoying this forced stay-at-home season so they don’t have to feel guilty saying no or not showing up. We’ve been known to ask way too much of people. They keep trying and trying, doing and attending, but then life catches up and they feel like they can't ever keep up with our expectations. They feel deflated.

As recently as January of this year, I was asked, “Do you think you’ll ever be an Executive Pastor again?” Without hesitation, I replied, “No, I really don’t see it. I’m enjoying what I’m doing too much.” I can’t explain it or pinpoint it, but that began to change a couple months ago. Something was awakening deep inside me that others noticed before I did.

You've all met the fool. At times they are fun to work with, but other times they suck the life out of the team because of the way they respond to feedback. When a fool runs an organization, people just stop trying to offer feedback, as they know it's futile.

The coronavirus is a new reality and whether your church has 18, 180, or 18,000 every week, your leadership should focus some time on talking about how to help your congregations both practically and spiritually face the fears and realities of this virus.

Lately, Faith and I have been learning more about this amazing tool called the Enneagram. “What if we could find a marriage coach who used the language of the Enneagram to help us understand each other better?” Through a few months of searching, we found @EnneagramAndMarriage on Instagram, and last fall we went through a program led by its’ author and founder.

My friend Mark is sick. He is in a fight for his life and needs your prayers.

For the first 3 years of our marriage, our nest was empty. For the past 26 years, 4 months and 19 days, we’ve been in full-on parenting mode. That all ended last Thursday when we dropped our youngest off for college…

I’ve conducted well over 1,000 interviews and consulted hundreds of organizations. Here are some common mistakes I see managers making when conducting interviews…