Motivate

There are many things that can motivate someone to do something. I think what makes the someone do the something is the intriguing part. Why does one man achieve great heights of his success ladder while another man wallows in his pit of despair? I think many things can temporarily motivate us. Money, love, self-interest, people, feelings are all things that can motivate someone.

Napoleon said, “There are two levers to set a man in motion, fear and self-interest.” Obviously he had a way of motivating men into action. My disagreement with Napoleon comes because I think there are more than two things that has and will motivate someone. My question today is what motivates you? More importantly, what should be motivating you that isn’t?

Do you have a sense that what you’re doing matters to God and to others? We will only find satisfaction and deeper motivation in what we’re doing when we feel that we are giving our lives to a cause that counts.

Until next time…

Does Your Church “Get It”?

Does your church “get it”? What’s “get it” you may ask? Get it is understanding that what’s most important is reaching people and seeing their lives changed because of what they got. Seems easy enough doesn’t it? So what got me thinking about getting it? Todd Rhoades gave ten observations of great churches he’s visited over the past few months who “get it”. See what you think, and then ask the tough question, “Does my church get it?”

Here are the first 3 to get you started.
1. Each church has a pastor with a vision. And it’s not just that these pastors have a vision… it’s that they have a gift for communicating that vision to their staff and their entire church. While it might not be a surprise to anyone that churches that ‘get it’ have pastors who ‘get it’, it is a glaring similarity among these churches: their pastors are great leaders with a great vision.

2. Each church hires almost exclusively from within. Most every staff member of these churches was hired from within. When asked if this was intentional, most said that it was. Here’s the deal: most of these churches do a tremendous job of training leaders and empowering people in ministry. When that happens, the cream rises to the top, and that’s how they find their best staff people. Most do not have church staff experience, but rather bring their expertise from another area of business or commerce. And, I have to say, these are some sharp people.

3. Speaking of staff, the staff of these churches ‘get it’ too. The staff in these churches are very loyal to their church and to their leadership. These are people that have a long history with the church; and they are totally sold on the mission, vision and values of their church. They also view their job not only as to serve God, and the church; but also to come along side and support the vision and leadership of the senior pastor. These churches have very loyal staff.

Read the enitre article HERE. Thanks Todd for the article.

Until next time.

3 Potent Questions

Craig Groeschel just posted a great article today on LifeChurch.tv’s blog Swerve. He poses 3 important questions that were asked of him, I also will ask the same 3 questions. Find the whole article HERE.

1. If you weren’t on staff at your church, would you worship there?

2. If you didn’t know ANYTHING about Jesus, what would you know about him after a normal weekend at your church?

3. If you had a loved one who didn’t know Christ, and they had one week left to live, would you take them to your church or another?

I like to pick up things (usually sayings) from effetive leaders. Some of my favorites are Blaine Bartel’s “Sweat in Preparation so you don’t Bleed in Battle.” And of course, there’s John Maxwell’s “Everything Rises and Falls on Leadership.” I’m not positve, but I think these questions are going to rank up there with these other quotes. Because these are questions effective churches need to be asking themselves.

These are pivotal questions about the effectiveness of your church. I won’t tell you my answers because I don’t like them. Most of you know I just became Director of Ministries at my church Central Bible Church A/G. I know alot of what needs to be changed and how I’m going to do it. I didn’t completely know how to justify some of the needed changes. These 3 questions are a good start. I challenge you to ask them to yourself and find out what your honest answers are.

It’s not about being BIG, it’s about being EFFECTIVE. Big is just the by-product.

Until next time.

Everything With Excellence

So I learned something pretty early on in my ministry. If you’re going to do something, do it right and with excellence…the first time. I, of course, had that reinforced many times since in different pastoral positions I’ve been in. Back to when I learned to do everything I did in ministry with excellence. The church I was at was a growing church plant with a great senior pastor. I was at the church on a Saturday, helping with the weekly bulletin and in the middle of folding a pile of bulletins. The secretary came out and saw my “less than average” job of folding and explained that the senior pastor “wasn’t going to like it.” So we had to reprint, recut, and refold the bulletins. The pastor came out later and saw the “better” job and gave his praise. Bottom line (that isn’t on the bottom), that wasn’t a one time occurance. Everything was done with excellence. And I have since been “trained”, everything I do in ministry is my best pursuit of excellence.

1. Because It’s for Jesus.
2. Because the world is watching.

And believe me, the world is watching. What makes a seeker want to pursue Christianity? It’s what he/she sees in a Christian. That’s why it is paramount that we always do our best. In EVERYTHING. So it disturbs me when I see Christians with a “sub-par” performance. Which brings me to reason why this post came to fruition. My wife and I were watching some of the tube last night and I was fulfilling my role of channel flipper. Going through the channels I came across a music video with a song I thought I recognized. But the quality was so terrible and the screen kept going to pixelation world, that I had to change it. But my interest had been peaked, as it always is when I see something Christian on television. Especially on local television. (Editor’s note: I thought long and hard about releasing the name of the show and website, but decided not to. Just know that is wasn’t TBN…this time.) So about ten minutes later I gave the show another go around. Same deal, but with teasing this time. It stayed great for about a minute and a half and then went back to pixelation. AAHHH!

My point being, if you’re going to do a ministry, of any sort, do it with excellence. Who got anything out of that show? No one. Especially the audience that I hope it was trying to reach, the seeker. There are many other sub-par things that go on in Christendom. This is just the one that made me write. Why spend all the time and money involved, for no one to get anything out of it. And the website? Not much better. I was stunned though to find out that it was a nationwide show and had stations across the US playing the show. Maybe I just caught a bad night. Now the second and final bottom line.

Whether we want to believe it or not, the world is watching us. What do they see? Everything that we do needs to be in the pursuit of excellence. So hopefully, they see excellence. Join me today in striving for better than average. There’s a whole world out there that needs to see Jesus in us.

Until next time.

Who’s Your Techie?

So I commented on a comment last night. My first. Thank-you. Whether you read the comment or not, it of course, got me thinking. Where is the ‘know-how’ generation in the church today? Of course we have the mega churches and many other churches today that have it down. The vast majority of churches though, are still in Flanograf mode. You know what I mean. The church that introduced the overhead projector 10 years ago (even then behind the time) and still have the same overhead projector, just a different bulb. And let me tell you, those bulbs can be hard to find at 6pm on a Saturday night. Take it from one who knows. FedEx just can’t deliver the bulb that fast!

Back to the know-hows. I believe there are many people sitting in pews today that have the ability to make their church more effective, but for some reason aren’t making a difference. I’ve seen many reasons for that. For some I think they just don’t understand how important their role in the Kingdom and bringing people to Christ is. For others, the leadership in their church is the issue. Not wanting to make the change, or not seeing the importance of the change is crucial in making today’s church more effective. Our changing and being able to adapt to our environment, just like so many other areas of life, is what makes the church effective. How effective is your church? I don’t know about you, but my denominations statistics on salvation experiences are lacking, and it’s supposedly on the higher side of the chart. It all begins with the local church. You leaders can say all they want and initiate all the programs, and do everything in their power, but if it doesn’t make a difference at the local church level, it doesn’t matter.

You see, the church has an issue it needs to deal with. How do we “recruit” (can I say that?) the ‘techies’ in the church and make them a valuable part of our ministry. I don’t think we need to go beyond the church walls(although I’m not opposed to it) to get who we need. I think we just need to focus our vision a little more and see who God has already planted in our congregations to help with this ‘issue’. Look at your congregation today. Who there has some kind of gift that can be used? Let’s not forget about one of the greatest gifts. The gift of “Willing to Learn.” Who is able to be taught and take up the ministry?

The Bottom Line is the same. Let’s face it, we as ministers have a hard enough time as it is. We need to use all available gifts and talents we have in the church, not only to lighten our load(although that’s nice!), but to reach the unsaved. God has given us the gift of technology, we need to use it. However we can, and with whomever we can. I was explaining to my church about how great the new website was and everything we can do with it, as a ministry. I don’t think they got it until I said that we now have the ability to reach everyone in the world through our church. A man in China and a girl in Europe can now all be touched by our church’s ministry at the same time! That’s God’s gift of technology in action! We need to be excited about it!

Who’s in your church, sitting in the pews, untapped? Let’s find a way to be more effective today.

Until next time.

EXTREME MAKEOVER – BLOG EDITION

As some of you may have noticed, the Realtor Blog just had an extreme makeover this past week, as well as IowasRealtor.com. A couple different reasons for that, some more important than others. IR.com was converted to AdamForney.com and blog.iowasrealtor.com converted to AdamForney.net. With all the changing that was going on, I had to make a decision about the blog as well as the website because the blog had been linked.

With all the different issues being brought to my attention, I decided the blog needed a makeover and different focus completely. From here on, you will still see some real estate blogging going on, but the main focus has been shifted to something a little more eternal, the church. Most know of my past with ministry being a youth pastor and such. Eventually I have to realize that it is a part of me that cannot and will not escape. You pastors out there know what I’m talking about.

Most of you know of Thrive Web Group and it’s new partner site, ThrivingDomains.com. Now everything has been brought under one roof with the label of ChurchForward. It’s a way to centralize everything and have future divisions of the company know how it fits into the whole. TWG and TD.com aren’t changing, you still get the quality service from both that you have in the past.

ChurchForward will be able to take all the services we offer in our web suite (i.e. web design, domains, blogs, consultation, etc.) to the next level as we continue to prepare the church for the newest technology that comes out and how we can reach the world through it!

Adam Forney
Founder/CEO
ChurchForward.com
“Fusing together methods to grow the church and reach your world!”