Churches that "Get It"

I love reading the thoughts of Todd Rhoades on the Monday Morning Insight blog. He unearths some pretty fun stuff, and is very insightful in his articles.

Today he published an article called Ten Observations from Churches who "Get It". I'm probably biased, but I am proud to be a part of a church that I think gets it--so I thought I'd respond to each of his observations. Are they true at Granger? Here are my thoughts.

1)  Each church has a pastor with a vision. Definitely true at Granger. Mark Beeson bleeds vision. The team around him bleeds vision.

2)  Each church hires almost exclusively from within. True. At last count, 80 of our 82 staff members were hired from within the church. We're still researching to see how they other two got in :).

3)  Speaking of staff, the staff of these churches ‘get it’ too.  Absolutely. This ties directly into #2. By hiring from within, you already know that they "get it." But it is a continual effort. I spend most of my time finding the right staff, and then pouring into them so they embody the vision.

4)  A larger percentage of their staff (or staff wives) are pregnant. Hmmm. I'm not sure. For a statistic like this, I'd typically ask Jami--but she's out on maternity leave.

5)  These churches and pastors don’t have a clue what they’re doing. Very true. We ask a lot of dumb questions, visit other churches all the time, attend conferences and read books.

6)  Since they don’t have it all figured out, these pastors all shared with me their desire to connect with other leaders who can help mentor them. Yes, but we look for leaders who want to partner and enjoy a mutual learning experience. Not leaders who are trying to "fix" us. We have plenty of people locally who are bent on fixing us.

7)  These churches are not shy about sharing resources.  Yes! This is one of the core values in our vision statement. Whatever we learn, whatever success we have--we want to pass it along to others. So for years, we have offered conferences, workshops, books, downloadable documents, series resources and more on WiredChurches.com.

8)  Most all of these pastors are bloggers. We have several bloggers on our team, including Mark (connections), Kem (communications), Jason (tech), Kathy (groups) and others.

9)  These churches are not afraid to make tough calls. This part isn't fun, but it's true. We've fired our friends. We've made decisions that resulted in losing the #1 donor in the church on more than one occasion. We've cut programs that caused dozens to leave. We've delayed ministry expansion when scores of people were excited about it. And we've done it all because of a laser focused vision.

10)  Numbers are important to them.  Guilty. We are passionate about reaching people for Christ. And we want to make sure we're doing a good job. So we count. Everyone. All the time. At every step, every function. At every indication that a person is taking a step toward Christ--we count it. And we do so without apology.

I think Todd got this list pretty right. Read his entire article here.