Fall 2015
The theme for Fall 2015 is “Excellence.”
Free to Serve: Protecting the Religious Freedom of Faith-Based Organizations
(Brazos Press, 2015)
Religious freedom for Christian organizations is a major news topic today, and a book set to be released in October 2015 speaks directly to those issues in a powerful and compelling way.
In Free to Serve: Protecting the Religious Freedom of Faith-Based Organizations, Dr. Stephen Monsma and Dr. Stanley Carlson-T...
Connecting God's people with God's work
How do you find new givers? Begin a relationship with a potential giver? Motivate a giver to give for the first time? Keep them giving? Ask a giver to increase their giving? I suspect you ask these questions often.
The answer in each situation is to tell your story well. Don't assume that people get it. Don't assume your board members and loyal supporters get it. You need to do the hard work of describing your life-c...
Pursuing continuous and u2028never-ending improvement
Lifesong for Orphans offers adoption financial assistance, foster care support, church and ministry partnerships, and international orphan care. I want to share the story of one particular international Lifesong project - Lifesong Farms in Zambia and Ukraine - and how innovation there supports our ability to help orphans.
Lifesong Farms grows and distributes quality fresh fruit primarily consisting of s...
How servant leaders foster excellence
Are you an excellent leader? What do your followers say about you? If you want to be the leader of excellence, there is one word you must know - serve.
Servant leaders are excellent. They are so fully committed to serving their followers that they allow nothing less of themselves. They are all-in for others and are deeply committed to doing the right things.
Servant leaders are virtuous. These leadership virt...
Creating a culture of excellence
Jesus' interactions with his team of 12 created a culture of excellence that every organization would do well to embrace. In Jesus CEO (Hachette Books, 1996), Laura Beth Jones insightfully observes that "once Jesus began his work in earnest, he wasted no time in forming a teamu2026 Even Jesus knew he could not change the world alone."
Team-building Moments
The Five Dysfunctions of a...
Your ministry's best community buiilder
Every ministry leader I have ever met craves community with their constituents - especially their donors. Yet not one ministry leader I know believes they have remotely achieved this. Why?
Most public companies' annual meetings are attended by less than 100 people and last two hours. Warren Buffett's annual meetings last three days and are attended by over 30,000 people from every continent. Why?
Some would sa...
Establishing international HR excellence
Our Daily Bread's mission is "To make the life-changing wisdom of the Bible understandable and accessible to all." We understand that the Great Commission is a mandate for us to reach all nations for Christ. We have 37 offices working together to distribute more than 60 million resources in 150 countries around the world. Our offices represent the regions of Africa, Americas, Asia Pacific, Australia/Oceania, Canada and Europe...
A leadership lifeline amid a sea of change
The Center for American Progress reports that "the cost of losing an executive is astronomical - up to 213 percent of the employee's salary," according to Suzanne Lucas of CBS MoneyWatch (Nov. 21, 2012).
As millennials move into leadership roles, turnover rates may be even higher and more costly. Cheryl Conner writes in Forbes that the cost of unproductive time and a sense of entitlement are particular ch...
A five-step process
As a Christian leader, how do you measure the excellence of your ministry? What considerations set its direction? All too often the measurement is about common, earthly values instead of eternal kingdom values.
With continual pressure toward production-driven leadership, expansion-focused strategies, earthly oriented metrics, results-based management and a utilitarian view of resource, how is the Christian organization actually to define e...
Excellence through predictive hiring
Hiring right can profoundly impact your success in creating a high performance organization, and yet for many organizations, a "great hire" continues to be elusive. Many organizational leaders still struggle to crack the mystery of a great hire.
I've discovered that many organizations fall short in finding and hiring the right people for the job for two reasons. First, they compromise and settle for less because of imme...