Today is part two of an interview with Dennis Bachman, who works with younger leaders. If you missed part 1, check out last week’s blog entry.  What are some common stumbling blocks more experienced leaders run into? Impatience and making premature assumptions. Because older leaders often have busy schedules and many responsibilities, we’d like to see progress made quickly. Investing the kind of time necessary is hard, and we get impatient. As a result, we often oversimplify, quickly reading and categorizing people—which leads us into the second common problem: making premature assumptio ..read more

It is possible to mentor younger leaders and make a difference. What strategies are really the most effective? We sat down with Dennis Bachman of ViaCordis, who spends a good deal of his time working with younger leaders with success to find out. Here’s Part 1 of our interview: Dennis, tell us a little bit about yourself and your current ministry. After 30 years at New Song Church in a variety of staff positions, including Senior Pastor, I have now assumed leadership of ViaCordis, a group of disciple-making cohorts. ViaCordis began as a house church movement that Bob Logan helped to found, an ..read more

What’s one of the biggest pitfalls experienced leaders fall into as they mentor and develop leaders from the younger generation? Defaulting to methods instead of principles. It’s so easy for us to think that what worked well for us will work well for someone else. But there are two variables we aren’t taking into account: 1) this is a different generation and ministry context, and 2) this younger leader may be a quite different person from you in terms of gifts, strengths, weaknesses, personality, style, etc. Let’s look at generational context first.  Context matters Each generation need ..read more

One of the biggest questions younger leaders are asking—when faced with the possibility of an older mentor—is, “Do they really care about me as a person? Or is this just part of their job?” Or more cynically, “Are they just using me to fill a slot?” The first step for you, as a would-be mentor of younger leaders, is to be honest about answering those questions within yourself. Do you really want to mentor young leaders? What motivates you to consider mentoring younger leaders? Young people are no longer flattered by interest from established leaders and are not willing to follow blindly. If t ..read more

Who should you invest in? Even when we are willing to spend the time required for real relational investment, sometimes we have a challenge in finding the right people to mentor.  3 Steps to Identify Young Leaders to Invest in  1. Pray with your eyes open The most essential first step, of course, is prayer. Not just, “God, bring me someone to mentor,” or “Make it someone who is interested in X issue,” but real listening prayer. Looking through your acquaintances with God, listening for the voice of the Spirit, paying attention to what he is putting on your heart. For effective praye ..read more

You’re an experienced leader and you’ve learned from that experience. You have discovered some things that work and some things that don’t, and you know how to spot common difficulties along the way. You’d love to be able to share your wisdom with some younger leaders… to help those coming along behind you so they don’t have to learn everything the hard way. That’s a noble ambition, one certainly in keeping with 2 Timothy 2:2: And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.  Encounterin ..read more

If you are a pastor or church leader in the US, you’ve probably come to dread our every-four-year election cycle. Each time the divisiveness and vitriol seem to get worse. Precious time and energy are taken away from serving the community, evangelism, outreach, and growth in discipleship. Instead, your time gets sucked into the vortex of culture wars, anger, and an us-them mentality. No matter which side of the political spectrum you find yourself on, you seem to be spending most of your time on conflict management and fruitless attempts at redirection toward the gospel and the kingdom of God ..read more

There are only so many things you can accomplish—let alone accomplish with excellence. The problem? Too many options! You are completely surrounded and totally outnumbered by options. Good options even, which makes it even harder to say no. But “no” is where you will find the freedom to do what is most important to you. Your Options Most options can fit into 4 main categories: Necessary options – hungry (we eat), worn out (we sleep) Postponable options – dishes – change the oil in car, calling or emailing someone, playing with the kids Unwise options – hitting the snooze button, getting up a ..read more

That title might sound old-fashioned in today’s world. Yet we know it’s something we want for our churches. And a culture of honor is not out of reach. The word honor means “high respect; great esteem.” What would our churches look like if everyone showed high respect and great esteem for others… regardless of differences in gifts, cultures, abilities, perspectives, etc. What an amazing church that would be!  We can do that—maybe not getting everyone on board, but getting enough of a toehold in the culture of our church to make a real difference. Here’s the secret: building a culture of h ..read more

As a ministry leader you have seamlessly endless demands on your time. It’s impossible to fit it all in. However, it is possible to live a life of peace and joy and accomplish all that God has called us to do. There is always enough time to do God’s will. How does that square with all of the demands on your time? And all the cases where you run out of time? 4 Time Bandits 1. Squandering time The temptation—and the consequences are real. In his book, The Effective Executive*, Peter Drucker famously observed that leaders waste 25% of their time. One quarter of what they do could be thrown into ..read more