Tony Morgan is a writer, speaker, church consultant, leadership coach and a pastor on the leadership team at West Ridge Church near Atlanta. He has worked similar roles at Granger Community Church in Granger, Indiana and NewSpring Church in Anderson, South Carolina. He is also author of Killing Cockroaches and co-author of Simply Strategic Stuff, Simply Strategic Volunteers, and Simply Strategic Growth.
This ebook is part two in the “Leisure Suit” series and tackles the practicum of helping churches get unstuck . Throughout his more than 15 years of experience, he has seen common problems and patterns in churches that become stuck. No doubt, every church has experienced times (if not now) when their church needs new results. And it’s just like Tony to boil the problem down to systems and strategies.
The gap between vision and execution is the systems and strategies. Broken systems and unclear strategies are at fault. Therefore, it seems logical that unbroken systems and clear strategies will produce the results every church is looking for. Tony shares 8 characteristics of a healthy system.
But before he shares those characteristics, Tony does a good job showing biblical evidence and the need for planning, structure, systems and strategies in a growing age of “organic” and “authentic” church philosophy. His point is not to bash any type of church method nor even to lay out what kind of church the next generation should create. His simple desire is for churches, specifically the leadership that leads that church, to think logically about how they are clearly helping people understand what they need to do.
“If they’re completely clueless as to what they’re supposed to be doing, though, they’ll continue sitting on the bench watching the game clock tick down to a certain loss.”
Helping people understand what they need to do is more than just teaching them what they need to know to do. Tony tackles this current hot topic of the role of teaching in the church. But rather than throwing the teaching “to the back burner” as some would like to, he advocates building systems and strategies around and in support of that teaching.
“…we have to stop leaning so heavily on teaching to produce all the change, while beginning to create healthy systems to support the teaching.”
All in all, it was a good quick ebook for any church leader and their team to read and consider how they are truly helping people move in a positive direction. The discussion questions at the end are a huge value to begin this talk with the team.
My hope, as a pastor too, from this ebook is that leaders don’t sit down to think more business-like or institutionally or blow it off thinking this is about trying to make the church look like a business or an institution. Developing systems and strategies are not nifty ways of getting people excited about participating in more events or signing them up to the next big thing. Developing systems and strategies are more about creating streamlined ways to help broken people become holy and blameless in the presence of God. It’s about helping people be better ambassadors and spokespeople for Christ. That’s the point Tony wants you to get out of his books anyways.
“He’s all about helping people meet Jesus and take steps in their faith.”
You can read this free ebook here at TonyMorganLive.com.
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