According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the top 10 fastest-growing U.S. counties from 2000 to 2006 are:
- 66.7% Flagler, FL
- 61.7% Kendall, IL
- 60.5% Rockwall, TX
- 58.5% Loundoun, VA
- 53.4% Forsyth, GA
- 51.0% Pinal, AZ
- 50.0% Douglas, CO
- 49.2% Henry, GA
- 48.9% Paulding, GA
- 48.5% Lyon, NV
And the top 10 U.S. counties with the highest numerical growth from 2000 to 2006 are:
- 695,784 Maricopa, AZ
- 485,653 Harris, TX
- 481,416 Riverside, CA
- 428,751 Los Angeles, CA
- 401,801 Clark, NV
- 289,898 San Bernardino, CA
- 225,121 Tarrant, TX
- 207,076 Collin, TX
- 168,656 Gwinnett, GA
- 165,950 Will, IL
Anytime a county’s population shifts this drastically, it is likely that the region’s culture has changed as well. Churches must understand how quickly and in what ways their community’s culture is changing. And when culture does shift, they must adequately invest the time to study the new culture and to understand what it will take to relevantly reach it.
Project Management Source has created a list of 27 tips to help you improve your public speaking. Here are 10 that can help you preach better:
1. Know your audience.
“Prepare [a sermon] that is understood and appreciated by those listening.”
4. Personalize your sermon.
“Most people will relate and respond better to your [sermon] when you combine the facts with a collection of interesting tales and examples.”
6. Stick to time limits.
“If you find yourself running late, know beforehand what you can afford to omit. In case you run short, be prepared with additional material that goes with the flow of your [sermon].”
9. Make a strong start.
“Start off on the right foot with your very first words and you’ll find that it’s easy to hold on to your audience’s attention for the rest of the [sermon].”
10. Watch your body language.
“It’s what you don’t say that tells the most about you.”
11. Maintain eye contact.
“Look at your audience, not through or beyond them when you talk.”
12. Pace yourself.
“Speak slowly and steadily so that you are understood.”
20. A few moments of silence are not a crime.
“You don’t have to fill every second with words. It’s acceptable to pause and gather your thoughts or sip water before you resume speaking.”
22. Work on your tone and delivery.
“Know when to raise and lower your tone as well as which words to stress. Your energy is infectious and your audience will react to it. Use the tone of your voice to grab their attention and hold it.”
25. Finish well.
“A perfect finish should not be abrupt or leave the audience wondering if there’s more to come.”
According to results from a recent survey conducted by The Barna Group:
- 33% (almost 100 million) of adults in the United States are unchurched, meaning they have not attended a religious service of any type during the past six months
Who is unchurched?
- 63% Asians
- 49% homosexuals
- 47% political liberals
- 37% single adults
- 34% Hispanics
- 32% Whites
- 31% heterosexuals
- 29% married adults
- 25% African Americans
- 19% political conservatives
Which of these groups is your church trying to reach?
Ed Young Jr. of Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX) shares this essential for great church leadership:
Take people where they need to go, not where they want to go.
Being a great leader is not about pleasing people, it is about helping them. Human nature typically wants to take the easiest route, but the greatest rewards are often the result of the hardest work.
[via Tony Morgan]
This past February 4th, Mount Paran Church of God (Atlanta, GA) launched the grand opening of a new sanctuary for their children’s ministry, Power House.
The new sanctuary was designed and created by Richard Carver and his team at Little Mountain Productions.
 
Claritas offers a free resource called “You Are Where You Live” that enables you to look up the 5 most prominent lifestyles within a specific zip code using any one of the following three sets of segmentation research:
- PRIZM NE: 66 distinct segmentations (lifestyles) based on demographic and consumer behavior data
- P$YCLE NE: 58 distinct segmentations based on demographic factors that have the greatest effect on financial behavior (e.g., income, age, presence of children, home ownership, etc.)
- ConneXions: 59 distinct segmentations based on household consumption of communications products and services
It is a great resource for helping your church better understand the community it is reaching.
According to a research study by The Concours Group and VitalSmarts, 85% of all project failures can be attributed to “organizational silence.”
VitalSmarts also brings to our attention additional online survey research that shows:
- 90% of employees know far in advance when projects are doomed but feel capable of speaking up
- 81% say approaching a key decision maker about the project is nearly impossible
- 78% say they are personally working on a “doomed” project right now
- 71% say they try to speak up to key decision makers but don’t feel they are heard
Are any projects or programs at your church failing because no one communicates?
Delegation to staff and volunteers is an essential task of large, growing churches, but the leaders doing the delegating must not forget to do three things:
- Listen
Make time for gathering feedback. Encourage it. And avoid prideful thinking that your way is the best and only solution.
- Respond
Listening is worthless if you never respond to feedback. Recognize the good ideas and do them. Dismiss the ideas that are not right for your church but be sure to explain the “why” behind the dismissal. And if success requires you doing a specific task, you better do it because no one wants to follow a leader who can not do his part.
- Create a Positive Culture
If your staff latches onto the negative mindset that something is “doomed,” success is far less likely if not impossible. They have already failed in their minds. Create a positive, optimistic work environment. Of course, you still must encourage feedback, but the key to success is how leadership handles the feedback.
[via Project Management Source]
Gary Haugen of the International Justice Mission was recently interviewed on episode 2 of the Fermi Podcast. He spoke of the injustice in the world, and how it tests the authenticity of the Christian faith. As he puts it, the world is watching Christians to see:
- Do they do what they say?
- Are they willing to take it to the place in the world where it is hard?
The world is watching to see if we are reaching out to those in need. It is easy to talk the talk in middle class suburbia, but the world is watching to see how we actually respond to the numerous crises our world is facing. Gary sums up Christians’ responsibility against injustice as:
We can point [hurting people] to God through the way we live because the way we live - what it is we believe - is going to be manifested by the way we actually act.
