Skip to main content

Church Leaders: Please Step Outside of the Church

I did my undergrad at Lincoln Christian University (LCU). For those of you unfamiliar with LCU, it is a legitimate Christian university. It's not one of those that have heritage in Christianity but basically looks and functions like a secular school today. No, it's very focused on Christian ministry. Just look at some of the majors:
  • Preaching ministry
  • Youth ministry
  • Worship ministry
I originally went to LCU with the intentions of becoming a full-time church pastor, and so I majored in preaching ministry for the first two years. Long story short, I found I wasn't really cut out for it, so I switched to Business Administration. (One of the few majors there that isn't specifically church occupational.)

I really appreciated a lot of my education. It was interesting to get everything filtered through a Christian perspective.

But it was also a bit of a detriment.


In switching to Business Administration, I got a taste of the regular business world without a specific Christian lens. We did talk about Christian values in things like business ethics, but for the most part, a marketing or finance class there was pretty much your run-of-the-mill marketing or finance class.

The problem is that I don't think my friends in Christian ministry majors got that same thing. I think everything they got was filtered through the Christian lens. Don't get me wrong, I have no particular biff with Christian studies, but here's the brutal reality:

Most of the best leaders are not in the church, and church leaders could stand to learn from them.

I don't think I've ever heard a pastor recommend a podcast from Tim Ferriss or a book from Seth Godin. It's usually a recommendation of the "latest and greatest" church study or theology book.

It disappoints me because I've read a lot of those recommended books, and most of them aren't all that great. Slapping the name of Jesus on something doesn't automatically make it great.

I wonder if there is this fallacy that something that doesn't have Jesus's name in it isn't good for the church. I don't know that for a fact, but it would certainly make sense.

But it's not good. As somebody who values the church, I want to see it grow. I think there is a ton of stuff out there that church leaders can benefit from that doesn't have the Christian label on it.


My encouragement for church leaders is to step outside the Christian world. Christian books and podcasts are still fine to check out amidst the other stuff, but I would be leery about keep your focus 100% on that. If you want your church to grow, the best strategies are out there waiting for you. Adapt them for your churches.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: "The Dip" by Seth Godin

If you think you've seen this book before, you're probably not mistaken. It's not a new book at all. It came out in 2007, and the first time I read this book was actually back in 2011. For personal reasons, I chose to pick it back up, and I'll talk about that in a separate post. Having been five years since my last read, I'm glad I dug this back up. It's a pretty teeny book, as you can see in the image below. A person can definitely breeze through the entire book in an hour or two. Anyway, this is a book review! How does this book hold up in the nine years since it's initial release? Let's get into it.
Post a Comment
Read more

The Christian Civil War of 2016

There's no doubt that the outcome of the recent election had arguably the most divisive outcome in American history. People have not been afraid to voice their anger and concerns about Trump's election on social media. From what I've seen, the most vocalization has come from the left, and I honestly haven't seen a lot of overt support from the right. (That's another topic altogether.) What has quietly gone unaddressed is another issue that has stemmed from the election: a Christian civil war. As somebody who cares for the church, this something I definitely think needs addressed sooner rather than later.
Post a Comment
Read more

Be Mindful of Invisible Scripts

Whether we like it or not, assumptions pretty much drive our lives. We learn to live not because we have analyzed a certain matter thoroughly. Rather, much of what we know today was ingrained in us in our adolescent development. Some of these are more obvious. Take going to college, for example. When I graduated from high school, something like 90% of my graduating class planned on pursuing some sort of college education. Even if my parents didn't encourage me to go to college (they did), it still seemed like the thing I needed to do. But some things aren't so obvious. There are subtle things people do and say that guide our choices in a way we are oblivious to.
Post a Comment
Read more

Being Transparent about LYEATT's Analytics

I'm going to break off from my usual explanation of whatever trending idea to be open with you all about some stuff. I chose Blogger as the platform for this blog because it's housed under Google, and I find Google to be a trustworthy company. What I did not realize is the extent to which Blogger provides analytics. Obviously, I can't see exactly who is reading this blog, but I can see a number of other things. I can see where traffic is coming from, whether from LinkedIn or Twitter. I can also see how many times people have viewed each post. And I can also tell you that I wrote my first zero-view post recently. Also, to date, there has never been a single comment on any post. I'm not going to share which post that is because viewership is not the purpose of this blog, nor am I looking for anybody to comment now. But I will say that it is a little disheartening. This would normally have been the point where I'd shut down the blog and labeled it a failure. Bu...
Post a Comment
Read more

You're Out of Excuses

The Amazon Kindle Fire tablet is $50 and often goes on sale for cheaper than that. You can get free wifi almost anywhere, including most McDonald's locations. The best email platforms, Gmail and Yahoo, are free . Almost all social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, are free . My blog is hosted on the Blogger platform, which is free to use. If you have a library card, you can probably checkout digital ebooks for free via Overdrive. Apps like WhatsApp allow you to make calls to people for free . Interacting with people on social forums like Reddit is free . The barriers to entry have been lowered significantly. You don't have an excuse why you're not making yourself better anymore.
Post a Comment
Read more