Do you find pressure to keep your ministry or business relevant, engaging and innovative? I know I have. However, I have found most of the "real" pressure comes from within. The fear of failure, making mistakes, and people pleasing is where the real pressure comes for me. In the process of attempting to be relevant, engaging and innovative we must not be afraid to fail and make mistakes. In order to stay FRESH in our organization, I believe it is essential to create a culture that is alloted to make mistakes and isn't afraid of trying new things.
In the current issue of Ministry Today, Ed Young tells about his process to stay relevant, creative, engaging, and innovative within his ministry and leadership, he said, "Every church should be growing because living things grow." To keep a church healthy, active, creative and maturing, Ed offers up seven keys of encouragement:
1. Say it and spray it--often. Ed points out the need to assert what your church is all about and why it does what it does from the pulpit often. This is a must to discover who is truly on board with the vision. Ed points out, "I've discovered that people forget why they do what they do after about three weeks."
2. Go gospel. At the core of every activity within church must have the simple message of the gospel.
3. Pastor your future church. Young encourages leaders to pastor their churches as if they were three of four times their present size. This isn't just for pastors' own sake, but to prepare the entire congregation for future growth.
4. Use what you've got. Use the people in your organization to the fullest - equip, equip, equip.
5. Do only what only you can do. Leaders are good at taking on burdens, whether we have the ability of gifting to resolve them or not. Find those things that you are good at, and assign the rest to those who are more qualified.
6. Be your own best critic. Use people (creative teams) to critique your sermons, meetings, and talks. release insecurity/defensiveness and be open to critique.
7. Grow with subtraction. Every time you go to the next level in your church (organization), there's going to be a new devil, and people are going to go by the wayside. So don't tell me who's coming to your church, tell me who's leaving your church. Because whenever your talk about VISION, people will bolt--and that's OK, because when they bolt, more will be added.