Church Leadership

Church Leadership equips pastors, elders, ministry staff, and volunteer leaders to lead with biblical conviction, humility, and wisdom. Explore practical, Scripture-shaped guidance on leading teams, developing leaders, casting vision, making decisions, and building a healthy ministry culture. You’ll also find help for navigating conflict, communication, accountability, and the spiritual formation of leaders—so leadership flows from character, not just competence. Whether you’re stepping into leadership for the first time or carrying long-term responsibility, these resources aim to strengthen your leadership for the good of the church and the mission of Jesus.

September 22, 2016

Michael C. Mack

10 Business Books Every Ministry Leader Should Read

By Michael C. Mack We asked ministry leaders to tell us what book written primarily for business leaders they”™ve found helpful in their ministry leadership. “¢ The Contrarian”™s Guide to Leadership, by Steven B. Sample. “It helped me think past the clichés of leadership to practices that reflect what I think is a leader”™s honest self-evaluation before God.” “”Jon Weatherly, professor of New Testament, dean of the School of Bible and Theology at Johnson University, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Kissimmee, Florida “¢ The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business, by Patrick Lencioni. “So much good stuff about why

September 22, 2016

Michael C. Mack

Four Reasons Every Lead Pastor Should Lead a Small Group

By Michael C. Mack Lead pastors who lead a small group create a win-win dynamic. The pastors and the churches they lead both become healthier and grow as a result. Jim Egli, who has served as a senior pastor, associate pastor, missions pastor, and missionary says that regardless of his role, he has always led a group. He offers these four reasons: Small groups are at the heart of church health. Egli says a healthy church lives in authentic, Christ-centered, missional community, and a church that uses healthy groups””the focus being on the word healthy“”will increase its health, effectiveness, growth,

September 17, 2016

Michael C. Mack

How to Control Your E-mail Instead of Letting It Control You

By Michael C. Mack E-mail can be a productivity killer or, if used wisely, a productivity booster. Here are six tricks culled from LearnVest to make it the latter. Keep It Short. According to a 2015 user analysis from e-mail scheduler Boomerang, the messages most likely to get replies were in the range of 50 to 125 words. Productivity expert Chris Bailey, author of The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention and Energy, strategically keeps e-mails to three sentences or less. Anything substantially longer than that should be a phone conversation. ADDENDUM: Keep your e-mail signature short

September 16, 2016

Christian Standard

What Is a Resident Pastor?

By Matt Gugel “Hello, my name is Matt and I”m a resident pastor.” Maybe you read “resident pastor” and think, What in the world is a “resident pastor?“ Good question! I actually live under the stage in the worship center! Obviously””at least, I hope it was obvious””that is not where I live. To help clarify what I mean by resident pastor, think of a person who wants to be a doctor. He spends his time going to school and finally comes to a place where he starts to put what he”s learned into practice. After graduation, that person must become

September 16, 2016

Christian Standard

Lead to Freedom

By Brian Jennings When Israel returned home after 70 years of captivity, their walls lay in ruins, their memories of God”s Law had faded, and their citizens were vulnerable. Without leadership, everything might have crumbled again. Ezra and Nehemiah emerged as two of the greatest leaders in Scripture. While dozens of leadership principles ripple through this story, here are four essential ones for leading people to freedom. 1. Lead by Studying “For Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of the Lord, and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel” (Ezra 7:10). The word

September 12, 2016

Christian Standard

Mission, Calling, Gifts, and Roles: How the Church Gets Things Done

By Jon Weatherly Human beings are social animals. We don”t simply enjoy being together. We need to be together to survive, let alone thrive. For as long as we”ve existed, we”ve lived together””working, serving, sharing, and trading.  We have divided our labors for efficiency and followed leaders for effectiveness. Family, neighborhood, school, business, city, nation””all are humans in community, getting things done. “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). Christ”s church is no less a human community. It is deliberately interactive and communal. It has always divided labor and followed leaders. It has surely succeeded

September 6, 2016

Mark A. Taylor

Shattered Certainties and the Challenge to Change

By Mark A. Taylor Good changes lead to happy results, right? Consider: The alcoholic decides to quit drinking. The dieter sheds unhealthy weight. A family, once separated by a parent”s overseas assignment, is reunited. But then: The addict doesn”t replace the payoff he has been receiving from his fix, and so he returns to his habit. The dieter doesn”t realize he must make a lifelong attitude adjustment about food and exercise, and so he regains the weight. The no-longer-single parent must give up some of her own autonomy now, and the result is conflict. Anyone experiencing or hoping to lead

August 29, 2016

Christian Standard

Leadership Condensed

By Randy Gariss and Ryan Fletcher The actual idea of leadership is profound and indispensable, but as a trendy fad it is often wearisome. The popularity of leadership podcasts, books, seminars, conferences, workshops, and sermons tell us we crave better leadership. The reality is that much of the current offerings on leadership are just spiritualized mush. It seems we”ve taken every leadership book on Amazon, reworded the points to make them sound kinder, attached a Scripture or two, and then thrown them to the church. The only thing missing is the essence of biblical leadership. We, the authors of this

August 28, 2016

Christian Standard

Growing Elders to Lead

By Jim Estep The leaders you want won”t sprout overnight, like weeds in a garden. Here”s how to develop strategies to nurture the crop of new leaders you need. The phone call is all too familiar. An elder begins the conversation stating the obvious, “We need new elders! All our elders are getting older, and no one is stepping up to serve.” I listen, perhaps ask about the church and the strengths of the current leadership; but eventually the inescapable question must be asked, “What have you been intentionally doing to bring up the next generation of leaders in your church?”

August 21, 2016

Christian Standard

The Best Sermon I”ve Ever Heard (14)

By Arron Chambers Christian leaders, some of them preachers themselves, tell us about a sermon they can”t forget””and maybe you won”t either. Dane Voorhees Dane Voorhees is a graduate of Ozark Christian College in Joplin, Missouri. He has been serving as a worship pastor at Rocky Mountain Christian Church in Frederick, Colorado, for the past two years and recently married his beautiful wife, Shelby. He is passionate about leading people to worship Jesus in everything they do. Dane”s Best Sermon: Caleb Kaltenbach, lead pastor at Discovery Church in Simi Valley, California, and author of the book Messy Grace, preached the

August 19, 2016

Christian Standard

From Campus Ministries to Christian Leaders

By Buzz Roberts and Greg Swinney The Facebook post was the perfect picture of stepping out in faith: I can finally make the official announcement. Many of you already know that our family was just accepted into the organization Mission Aviation Fellowship. We are honored to be headed to Papua, Indonesia, to a mission school where I will be teaching. Adel will help with the airplanes and maintenance. I wish I could get with all my friends one last time. Pray for our family as we are selling everything we own, and preparing our house to be on the market.

August 12, 2016

Christian Standard

10 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Christian College Graduate

By David Fincher Will your church hire a recent Christian college graduate? Be careful! In my experience working at a Christian college and knowing many Christian college leaders, I”ve heard some sad stories. Unfortunate hiring decisions have hurt both the church and the young minister. In many cases, the student”s Christian college experience contained warnings. But Christian college faculty can give a reference or warning only if the student has given express written permission. Privacy laws protect a student”s official records, and so employees may not offer completely transparent advice. While attending a Christian college can provide many experiences parallel

August 10, 2016

Christian Standard

Loving Through Listening

By Jim Tune I”m pretty good at talking. It”s a big part of what I do for a living. When I look for leaders, I look for someone who can communicate. I”m convinced, though, that speaking and writing are only part of what it takes to be a great leader. Leading also involves listening. “Listening comes first,” writes Adam McHugh in his new book The Listening Life. We started listening before we were even born. Listening is a key part of what it means to be human. “Somewhere along the way we start to violate the natural order of things,”

August 9, 2016

Mark A. Taylor

How My Church Pointed Me Toward Ministry

By Mark A. Taylor With his list of ways your church can move more young people toward vocational ministry, Matt Proctor implies this is a goal off the radar for too many today. I”m glad that wasn”t true in the congregation I attended while I was in high school. Central Christian Church in Waukegan, Illinois, was a small, simple congregation by today”s standards. Of course, this was almost 50 years ago, when almost every church approached ministry with less sophistication than many today. The Preacher Training Class led by ministers of the church was a simple idea, too. Get some

August 7, 2016

Christian Standard

Unschooled

By Justin Horey As more and more local congregations recruit ministry staff from among their own members, they”re seeking new ways to equip them for ministry. Several traditional colleges and universities are offering nontraditional ways to give professional ministry skills to everyday Christians.  Dave Moses never planned to serve in full-time ministry. He grew up in a non-Christian home in Huntington Beach, California”””Surf City”””playing football and enjoying the Southern California lifestyle. He entered the restaurant business shortly after graduating from high school and worked in the food-service industry for more than two decades, even owning and operating his own successful

August 6, 2016

Christian Standard

10 Ways Your Church Can Move More Young People Toward Vocational Ministry

By Matt Proctor 1. Preach on the need for full-time kingdom workers. All Christians are ministers, no matter their vocation. There is no clergy/laity distinction in God”s church, and all believers are called to witness, lead, and serve. “You got into the ministry when you got out of the baptistery.” May we never water down the biblical teaching on the priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:9). But this too: may we never water down the need for vocational Christian leaders. Preach on the need for those who will give their working lives to leading the church, reaching the lost,

August 5, 2016

Christian Standard

Make the Most of Your Ministry Intern

By Nate Frederick Internship. The word brings back memories for every minister who saw God”s work during ministry internships in their student days. They went on trips, spoke into people”s lives, and saw the kingdom grow. They learned what a kingdom worker looks like and had the opportunity to live that out, either in a local church or on the global mission field. They were placed in an environment that fostered their gifts and were allowed to lead in some context. Their internship was a time of learning and development that could not have been achieved in the classroom. But

August 4, 2016

Christian Standard

How You Can Pave the Way for a New Generation of Leaders

By Lito Solorio What is your church doing to prepare the next generation for leadership in ministry? Several years ago I sat in a gathering of men from area churches and a similar question was floated. Several men offered their thoughts on the current culture and struggles plaguing the church. A gentleman with a walker slowly rose, cell phone in hand, and said, “The problem is we need to reach the kids through this! The kids are all about their cell phones and social media sites.” I very politely shared my disagreement with that thought. You see, I am a

August 1, 2016

Christian Standard

The Best Sermon I”ve Ever Heard (13)

By Arron Chambers Christian leaders, some of them preachers themselves, tell us about a sermon they can”t forget””and maybe you won”t either. SHAWN GRANT Shawn Grant is a walking cliché: born on Saturday, in church on Sunday. His father, Mike Grant, has been preaching in Stone-Campbell churches for more than 35 years, and Shawn decided to follow suit. He became a follower of Christ in elementary school. He received a BA in preaching and Bible from Florida Christian College (now Johnson University Florida), an MA in church history/historical theology from Lincoln (Illinois) Christian Seminary, and a PhD in interdisciplinary humanities

July 22, 2016

Christian Standard

Carrying to Completion

By Earl Winfrey I can”t remember a time when church was not part of my life. I was baptized into Christ at 12 and felt the call to ministry and started pursuing a deeper knowledge of the Bible at the age of 14. Unfortunately, I got mixed up with the wrong crowd during my senior year of high school. I got married two weeks after graduation, and we had our baby five months after the wedding. For the first year and a half, I lived in denial, thinking my marriage was good. Then one day I woke up to find

Help Keep Christian Standard Free & Accessible with a Tax Deductible Donation

We can do more together!

Every gift makes a difference!

No, thank you.
100% secure transactions - receipts provided.
Does Your Church Want to Support Christian Standard?

Would your church consider including support for Christian Standard in its annual missions budget? Your support would help us not only continue the 160-year legacy of this unifying ministry, but also expand the free resources, cooperative opportunities, and practical guidance we provide to strengthen churches in the U.S. and around the world.

We can do more together!

Every gift makes a difference!

No, thank you.
100% secure transactions - receipts provided.
Secret Link