Articles on Strategy
Every church needs to have a strategy of how they want to do ministry. Foundational in deriving your strategy is your church’s culture and your place in the church universal in delivering the gospel to the lost. What is your ministry strategy?
From Functional to Remarkable: Building the Team Your Mission Deserves
Executive Pastors know that vision alone doesn't move a ministry forward—teams do. Yet many church teams find themselves stuck in survival mode, battling misalignment, disengagement, communication breakdowns, and leadership fatigue. Join Fletch and Slingshot [...]
The Basics of Church Governance
Faithful Structures for Healthy Ministry Most pastors do not enter ministry because they are passionate about writing bylaws, developing policies, or managing organizational systems. They feel called to preach God’s Word, shepherd people, make [...]
What’s the Latest Research on Multisite Churches?
Did you know that last weekend, 5 million Americans were part of a multisite church? That more than 50 U.S. churches have 10 or more campuses? That the larger or faster-growing the church, the [...]
What is the Role of Your Church Board?
Giving Caeser what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s My family loved the growing church in Wisconsin we were attending in 2001. One day the senior pastor pulled me aside and asked, [...]
Grace with Guardrails: Navigating High-Risk Attendance in Church
Churches are called to extend grace—but also to protect the vulnerable. How do you balance redemption with responsibility? This conversation explores the legal boundaries and pastoral challenges of welcoming high-risk individuals like registered sex [...]
Understanding Background Checks
Many churches rely heavily on background checks as the solution for child sexual abuse risk. Is this heavy reliance well-founded? In this webinar, Gregory Love will address the realities of background check effectiveness. Love [...]
Preparing for Summer Programming—A Focus on Peer Sexual Abuse
Summer programs bring energy and growth opportunities, but also unique supervision challenges. In the last few years, Peer Sexual Abuse has been the largest risk in summer programming. In this session, Gregory Love, attorney [...]
Why Healthy Churches Still Feel Disorganized
Understanding the Hidden Architecture Shaping Ministry Introduction In a previous article, Architectural Leadership: The Missing Discipline in Executive Pastoral Ministry, I introduced the idea of architectural leadership—the discipline of designing the underlying structures that [...]
Dreams of Serving Others and the Origins of XPastor
If you have a dream for how to help others, get started. Do it! That’s what Fletch did in 2003 when he launched XPastor. Phil Taylor and Tyler Drewitz interviewed Fletch to talk about [...]
Implementing Great Ideas After a Conference
Did anything change after that Conference? That is Tim Samuel’s question. He has attended the XP-Seminar for many years. Tim offers a practical perspective about coming back from any event and trying to implement [...]
The Road We Must Travel Again
Reaching a Searching World with Courage, Compassion, and Clarity Church leaders are carrying more weight than ever, and still longing for a real movement of God. Spiritual hunger is rising, but trust is falling, [...]
Be as Ingenious as a VW Bug
You face issues, complications and problems all the time in your church. It’s not a question of whether they will be solved; you have to solve them for ministry to go forward. It’s a question [...]
Architectural Leadership: The Missing Discipline in Executive Pastoral Ministry
Introduction I remember sitting alone in my office late one evening after another long staff meeting had ended in quiet frustration. No one had said anything unkind. No one had raised their voice. Yet [...]
Case Study: Team Building Never Stops
How Flatirons Strengthened Their Staff If you lead in a church, you already know the truth: The work of building teams never stops. Team members shift. Ministries grow. Needs evolve. Leaders are stretched into [...]
What Trends Are Shaping Large Churches Right Now?
Can Warren Bird stump David Fletcher? Warren is in the middle of fielding a landmark national survey titled The Future of the Large Church, and has looked at the first 300 churches to participate—churches with [...]
Leader Care and the Impact on Trust
Healthy leadership is crucial to ministry effectiveness and trust. Join Jake Lapp as he delves into ECFA's innovative Excellence in Leader Care Standard. This dynamic workshop will illuminate the vital importance of investing in holistic [...]
The Empathy Advantage: Strengthening Your Leadership, Church, and All Your Relationships
How is empathy an advantage in leadership? Don’t XPs and other Christian leaders need to be careful not to be too empathetic? Doesn’t empathy coddle people and tolerate mediocre performance? Is empathy biblical? In [...]
One Mission. Many Doors—How to approach a Multisite Building Project
As churches expand into multisite models, the question isn’t just where to build, but how to extend your identity. Should a new campus be a replica of the original or reflect something new? This [...]
A Recipe for Good Decisions
Have you ever made a major decision but secretly lacked confidence that it was the right one? Or worse yet, have you ever made a decision you later regretted? Wouldn’t it be great if [...]
3 Ways to Protect Kids for VBS
Simple screening, selection, and supervision tips that will keep your church's kids safer Summer is fast approaching and that means Vacation Bible School (VBS) is coming soon. Church and ministry leaders are already working [...]
Cultivating the Leader Heart of Jesus
For years I avoided reading or learning too much about leadership. The topic made me afraid … afraid to feel inadequate … to become overly ambitious … to feed my ego…to get stressed and over-function. [...]
The Secret of Jesus’ Easy Yoke
A ministry friend of mine was late for his appointment with me. He finally arrived breathless as he explained that 24 hours in a day just isn't enough! He was trying so hard to [...]
Mastering Ministry Stress Before It Masters You
Join us for an enlightening webinar where we will explore practical ways to reduce stress and increase resilience in our daily and ministry lives. Discover how combining wisdom from the Bible with [...]
Mastering the Art of Consistency: Raising Your Habits to Reflect Your Calling
I’m a massive fan of J.S. Bach. Arguably the greatest composer who ever lived, his music fills the room whenever I write. Bach was a man of faith who famously signed each of his [...]