Leadership Reflections

“It’s lonely at the top” is true only if you want it to be.  It doesn’t have to be that way, but when there is no one a leader feels comfortable discussing the really challenging issues with, it truly is lonely.  In that case, it seems inevitable that some day either a challenge or the person’s own blindness [...]

To be a successful ministry, you must ask tough questions about your ministry’s performance. Andy Harrington, Executive Director at Greater Vancouver Youth For Christ (GVYFC), did just that.  His analysis is a model literature review and performance analysis, and best of all, he’s willing to share his report with you. Eleven years ago Andy wrote a thesis [...]

Here, in a nutshell, is the issue about strategic planning in a Christian ministry context: What sets the strategic limitations for your ministry – your circumstances or your mission? It can’t be clearer than that.  Environmental scans and SWOT analysis, the traditional strategic planning tools, focus too much on your circumstances, the reality of the world [...]

Does your commitment to strategic planning quench the Holy Spirit?  Should a Christian ministry do strategic planning at all?  A brief study of Paul’s second missionary trip will provide the answer. Paul’s Example Paul’s first missionary trip was very fruitful due to the many churches he planted in Asia.  Good leadership and strategic planning would dictate a [...]

The average Canadian lives to be 80 years old.  Organizations, however, can potentially live forever, but will they?  Just like humans, they have lifecycles that ultimately end in death.  But unlike humans, organizational death can be avoided by jumping on to a new lifecycle.  The time to jump is: before you need to, before you are desperate, while you are still strong, when [...]