What is your church's 'inviteability' factor? I know it's not a real word, but 'inviteability' is the key piece to growing your church. Don't just tell your people to invite, model it, teach it, train on it, tell stories about it and celebrate it.

Is the church a club for Christians, or is it a force for Kingdom expansion? When Jesus said, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not stand against it” (Matthew 16:18), was He thinking of a Sunday AM service with 40 minutes of singing and 40 minutes of preaching? Was he thinking of an audience listening to one person talk at them?

Would you consider your church relentlessly outbound? Most Canadian churches are not relentlessly outbound. Most church budgets are focused on staff salaries and building costs. Most pastors and staff spend the majority of their time with Christians. We’ve turned into “Christian Training Centres” or “Clubs for Christians” rather than a Missional Movement; a force of Christ-followers on a mission to reach a lost world.

What steps can a pastor take to lead a congregation into missional efforts? Cornerstone Community Church is a testimony that small churches in small communities with small budgets can have ‘big vision’ and big expectations in a big God with incredible results.

I hope to see a movement of churches in Canada across denominations go from plateaued and declining to thriving by reaching lost people in their locale. I pray for an enormous increase in Salvations across Canada with reports of life transformation by the Gospel. I long for churches that make disciples who make disciples who make disciples.

Your church website is the front door of your church. If anyone is thinking about checking out your church, they will go to the website first. Here are 5 things your church website needs now.

It's exciting to think about the untapped potential in the lives of our young people. We are given this opportunity to develop these lives and watch God do incredible things in and through them!

We look at the pattern we see in 1 John chapter 2. As you read through this chapter, you’ll begin to see a pattern that John is developing – “little children” (v12), “young men” (v14), “fathers” (v15). The terms John is using is referring to spiritual development and not actual age.

You want as many people as possible to experience your church on Easter and hear about Jesus, alive and on purpose. What if you could bring to life one idea for Easter that would make it unforgettable? Prayer, promotion, plans, and ideas to help your people reach their community.

If a knife is blunt it continues to be a knife but less effective and useful. It takes iron to sharpen iron. The ABNWT cohort initiative is creating a resourced network of leaders who sharpen up through training, peer learning, and coaching on the biggest internal and external challenges of ministry. Cohorts are a catalyst helping leaders create the capacity to fulfill their calling so they can lead their church in becoming relentlessly outbound.

It's easy to be distracted by challenges beyond our control. Here are four things you can control – four investments to make in seasons of waiting.

What’s your best shot at staying passionate about God’s call on your life? How can you sustain energy to fulfill God’s purposes for you and your congregation? How about a life-giving relationship with a cohort of leaders, who are in step or one step ahead of you? Our aim in the ABNWT is to develop a legion of leaders whose sole focus is to obey the Great Commission, lead prevailing, relentlessly, outbound churches, and raise up the next generation of adaptive pastors.

Gary Taitinger recently shared with our NextGen Cohorts on including younger leaders in all levels of decision-making. This is challenging and time-consuming but the payoff is more than worth it!

Young ministry leaders are aching for mentorship but statistics continue to show that they’re not finding it. The reasons are complex. Older leaders haven’t been mentored themselves or had bad mentoring relationships. They’re busy and need to give their time to others. They may feel that getting this close to an employee is risky. They don’t want to make themselves vulnerable. Possibly, established leaders don’t see the benefits of making this kind of investment, but they need to.

Who are you leaving a trail of jellybeans for?

Do today’s leaders know what it takes to mentor the next generation? Here are four things we all need to influence young leaders.

As church leaders move into the future it would serve us well to be exposed to the diversity of the world. If we aren’t, our default mental models will create a single-story narrative to help us make sense by making simplistic assumptions that ensure our comfort and keep us from having to change.

Great teams learn how to bounce back after a loss. Great people do as well. So, how do you bounce back after a difficult Sunday? Or Board meeting? Or a message you weren’t fully prepared to deliver? Or a volunteer resignation? How do you deal with the raw emotions that surface and work to rise above them? What’s your bounce-back plan?