Cornerstone Pastors Network

“Structure + Culture = A Missional Church”

“If you want your church to be missional, you need to implement a structure that encourages the culture you are trying to develop in your church,” according to pastor, church planter, author, and leading missions researcher Ed Stetzer. “The right structure provides an intentional pathway for people to follow and the culture is what pushes everyone towards that pathway.”

But what if your church does not yet have a missional culture? Can a structural change help in the process of creating a new culture? “Absolutely,” says Stetzer.

Creating the right structure and culture will be the topic of the April 17 Pastor Resource Call with Ed Stetzer.

As President of Lifeway Research, Stetzer studies, teaches, writes and communicates with pastors and ministry leaders in the U.S. and around the globe about what it means to be missional in the 21st century.

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“Leadership Essentials For Smaller Churches”

The average Protestant church in America has between 150-200 members. The determining factor in a smaller church’s ability to impact its community and the world beyond is not size, but pastoral leadership.

While smaller churches and mega churches share the same God-given mission of reaching and discipling people, the scale of leadership is different. What, then, are the leadership essentials for smaller churches?

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“Moving Into God’s ‘More'”

“God’s vision is always MORE than where you are” says pastor and author Dan Southerland.

Moving into the “more” that God has for you involves several things but especially having a long term perspective of ministry.

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“PRIMAL FIRE…A New Way of Understanding Spiritual Gifts and Becoming an Empowering Leader”

The greatest spiritual gift is Jesus Christ himself and the challenge in making disciples is to empower the release of Christ in people rather than to stuff more information about Christ into people.

Neil Cole – pastor, church planter, author, and thought leader to pastors and churches around the world – describes the shift in understanding Christ as the center of five core spiritual gifts and the practical application of how to become an empowering leader in his new book, Primal Fire, Reigniting the Church with the Five Gifts of Jesus. He calls the book, to be released in March, one of the most important books he has written.

Join Neil Cole for a discussion about leadership, the five core gifts and the practical application of releasing the primal fire in your church and community.

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“The Best of 2013 and What’s Ahead for 2014”

We’ve had some great Pastor Resource Calls in 2013 with outstanding ministry leaders such as Dan Southerland, Keith Meyer, Larry Osborne, Carol Davis, Dane Aaker, Sam Williams, Steve Macchia, Dan Reiland, and Neil Cole.

The Cornerstone team – Bill Nicoson, Warren Schuh and Carol Childress will discuss highlights of these PRC’s and preview Cornerstone’s plans for the coming year.

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“The Life Cycle of a Congregation”

Every church, just like every community, has a life cycle and stages of development. From birth to growth through maturity and beyond, knowing where your church is its normal life cycle is essential for a pastor and congregation.

No one has identified and described the life cycle and stages of development of a church better than George Bullard. His model and original writing on the topic have been effectively used by pastors, churches, church planters, consultants and coaches to plant and grow churches across North America.

George Bullard is one of the most respected and experienced church consultants and coaches in the U.S. For four decades, he has used his insight and experience of working with pastors, churches, communities and denominations to help leaders move strategically forward in the work of the Kingdom.

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“The Healthy DNA of a Disciple and Inside Out Change”

The problems our churches face in the West are not structural, strategic or mechanical. The problem is a lack of life in the core…or the lack of a healthy DNA.

If you are wondering where to start, this is it – integrating the DNA into the life of the individual disciple instead of finding it in an agenda, curriculum, program, ministry style or leader’s personality. If you skip this, then everything else will likely be in vain.

Neil Cole is a pastor, church planter, author, teacher, and thought leader to pastors and churches around the world. Join us for a discussion about the healthy DNA of disciples and changing your church organically from the inside out.

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The original call audio can be accessed here.

In introducing Dan Reiland and the topic of the call, Warren Schuh observed that while churches need to have a clear sense of vision or at least a statement about their vision, nothing seems to happen until everything they are doing becomes focused around that and aligned to it. A lot of churches never get there – the vision just stays a statement and that’s all. So how do you get ministries and staff aligned and going in the same direction? And use the Ministry Action Plan or MAP in the process?

Dan Reiland

Warren, your introduction was perfect. I want to open our time with a question, “Which is easier as a pastor – dreaming up vision or developing strategy?”

I have worked with lot of leaders for a long time but rarely are both skills packaged together. Dreaming vision is more about idea, direction, and future. Developing strategy is more about plan, steps and now. These are are sequentially matched – idea vs plan, direction vs steps and future vs now.

I can’t tell you which one is more difficult but I can tell you that by far the most common reason for failure in a local church is lack of strategy. Churches are pretty good at doing the dream part but if we are willing to set aside the skill level and quality of the leader (that’s a big aside!) and be academic and observational for a moment, I have three observations.

Pastors don’t have a problem coming up with a dream but typically they have a problem coming up with a strategy that makes the dream come true. Second, when they do have a plan, they often do not stick to it. Third, often when they do have a plan, they do not break it down into simple, clear, concise, and measurable bite size pieces. We used the language of goals in the 80’s, initiatives in the 90’s and now in the 2000‘s we call it stuff or pieces. I call it “stuff to get done.”

This is where the MAP comes in…the Ministry Action Plan is what really helps things become reality.

Now, I don’t actually believe that 12 Stone can become all it can be because we have reached our goals. Let me explain that statement a little bit. A MAP is not “one more thing for staff to do.” We really believe the staff will become better leaders, better people and better Christians by practicing new skills or practicing known skills at a new level while going after goals. The real secret of a MAP is development. This process helps them gets better. It is a developmental process and not a managerial process.

Warren Schuh: Dan, I appreciate the way you think and operate in developing people around you and that is different mindset for most churches. We tend to think about getting things done – you are always thinking about developing people who get things done.

Dan Reiland

Let me give you the three areas of the MAP – it’s framework – and then the three critical questions that a MAP answers.

The three components we use are Core Responsibilities, New Territory Goals and Leadership Development Focus. All three work together in concert with each other.

The key question for Core Responsibilities is “Are you doing the right things?” Our core responsibilities are the equivalent of many people’s job descriptions. I have never liked the big fat narratives in a job description because no one pays any attention to them. Our core responsibilities look like a series of six or seven or eight or nine bullets with maybe three headings and they are very clear and concise.

New Territory goals are what we are going after in a specific season of the year. The key question is “Does it advance the organization?” Is your church a better church? Is the church advancing, moving toward the mission or the vi

“Aligning Your Ministry Around Vision”

While many churches have a vision, they do not always have their resources – people, ministries and finances – aligned to their vision. So how is alignment accomplished? 

According to Dan Reiland, “Every staff member has to be both a vision caster and a vision carrier.” One way to keep ministry teams moving in the same direction is the use of an individual Ministry Action Plan or MAP. A MAP is also an important tool in developing leaders, both paid staff and volunteers.

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On the December Pastor’s Resource Call, Doug Webster talked about preaching through Advent and Christmas and helping people celebrate but also better understand the theological connection of the Incarnation and the birth of Christ to God’s entire redemptive narrative found throughout the Bible. One suggestion was to use as a preaching text the Scripture found in George Frederick Handel’s majestic work Messiah, often a Christmas musical tradition even though it was originally written for the Easter season.

But it is not just Handel’s Messiah. Without Charles Jennens, there would have been no Messiah.  Every word of Messiah was taken directly from the Bible, primarily the King James version and the entire Libretto was written by a man named Charles Jennens, an English nobleman and frequent collaborator with Handel. He completed the manuscript in July, 1741 in the hope that his friend, George Handel, would compose the music to accompany it. In September, Handel would write day and night for 24 days and produce the masterpiece that is known throughout the world as “The Messiah.”

In December 2010, a well-known seminary president delivered the Fall commencement address using the “back story” of Charles Jennens and the prophetic passage of Isaiah 40 that begins the Messiah.  His address ends with a charge for those in ministry and Christian service.  “The Christian ministry is deadly serious business. The preacher stands to preach — what will he say?

Click here for the full address.