Dr. Warren Bird is the Director of Research and Intellectual Capital Support for Leadership Network. He is widely recognized as among the nation’s leading researcher of megachurches, multisite churches, large church compensation and high-visibility pastoral succession. Warren has also authored or co-authored 29 books on church leadership topics like multisite, healthy leadership teams, church planting, pastoral succession, and mergers. His latest release is How to Break Church Growth Barriers.
Key Questions:
Some pastors struggle with the concept of church growth. What is your take on having church growth as a goal?
Can you explain how leadership development might work in a church under 200?
How can a pastor tell if he or she is truly discipling someone?
[SUBSCRIBE] For more ChurchLeaders podcasts click here!Key Quotes:
“Your vision of God’s harvest and what God wants to do through you and through the church that you serve is smaller—far smaller—than the impact that he would like to entrust you with.”
“80 percent of churches in attendance are less than 200.”
“Do you see yourself as the minister or as the maker of other ministers?”
“Pastor, in all your doing of modeling, could it be that you excel in modeling far more than you excel in truly handing the baton to someone else, and saying—as Jesus said to his disciples—‘You feed them. You heal them. You do this.’?”
“If I’m discipling someone, the true test of whether I’m really discipling someone is if they begin discipling someone else. Likewise, if I’m developing a leader…the true test of how I’m doing is whether they are in turn apprenticing, developing another leader.”
“Jesus spent 75 percent of his ministry focused on developing the 12 and helping them then develop the next generation. Not the crowds.”
Mentioned in the Show:
How to Break Growth Barriers by Carl George and Warren Bird