Have You Named Your Replacement?

By Naomi Dowdy

 

Most ministry leaders don't think about the dreaded word "successor" until it is too late. They act as if they will live forever. Or they stay in control of their church or organization until they are so old that it's too late to train their replacements.

Naomi Dowdy, a veteran church planter who has worked in Asia for decades, decided to buck this trend. She selected her successor, Dominic Yeo, several years ago, trained him and then set him in place in 2005. Yeo's installation at the 5,500-member Trinity Christian Centre in Singapore was an impressive demonstration of the way church leadership is supposed to work—and it gave Dowdy an opportunity to share her secrets with leaders all over the world.

Ministry Today asked Dowdy to download her secrets to us. We think you'll benefit from her refreshingly practical wisdom.

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Principles for Leading Your Congregation 

By Jack Hayford

 

For nearly two years I've been trying to frame a set of statements, which I've called, "The Essentials." This byproduct of more than 25 years of refining my focus addresses one question: "What are the essential teachings a pastor/leader must cover in order to shape a ministry-minded believer and a spiritually maturing congregation?"

Here's where the list stands right now. But I'm open to input from pastors or leaders who might want to read through, think through and provide feedback on the following outline. My outline's brevity may seem to omit something my expanded version would include, but maybe I've missed something you can help me with.

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Challenge the Process

By Andy Stanley

 

I've never been one to take the obvious path. When I was a teenager, my father gave me the simple job of stacking some firewood as he left for work one day. There was a part of me that resisted facing such a labor-intensive job, but even stronger was the part of me that resisted doing it in an ordinary way.

So as I started moving the wood around, I was gradually overcome by a desire to create something that had never been done before. What should have been a mundane chore soon became a quest. For hours I stacked and restacked, cultivating the vision in my mind. By the time my father returned home, he was greeted by a masterpiece that surprised (and probably baffled) him.

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Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

By Nancy Ortberg

 

Leading through and to change may be one of the most important and difficult things leaders do. They must discern the areas most in need of change—and how much—while balancing the capacity to assimilate and gravitate toward that change.

We’ve all seen leaders who did too much changing too quickly, blowing up their organizations with their lack of finesse and inability to pace well. Other leaders never did more than make slight variations, and then stood by helplessly while the organization lost its effectiveness and ultimately imploded. A healthy median keeps the following in mind:

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Revitalize Your Youth Group

By Danny R. Von Kanel

 

After more than 15 years of working with youth groups, sifting through what works and what doesn't, I have identified 20 tips to help churches effectively reach teens:

1. Be creative. The No. 1 reason teens stay away from youth groups is because meetings are boring. Never let your group know what's coming next. If group programming is predictable, change it.

2. Change the setting. If your group is not coming to you, go where they are.

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