ARE:A Renewal Enterprise

Spring Online Leaders Retreat - May 19th

Our spring online leaders event is coming up soon! On the morning of May 19th we'll be hosting a half day event for your leadership teams. The theme is one we get asked about A LOT - "Inviting Others Into God's Work."

We always look forward to these events as it is a chance to get teams from all across the continent online with us at the same time. And people are energized knowing that what they are working on in their place is the same topic others are wrestling with all over.

Check out the full description and consider registering your team by clicking here.

March Webinar - A Renewable Approach to Discipleship

Our upcoming March webinar theme is "A Renewable Approach to Discipleship." With Lent upon us and many Christian traditions thinking about Jesus' journey to the cross and the call to live as disciples who follow him where he leads, discipleship is a focus of the season. We'll explore this topic on March 20th at 12 noon Eastern Time (11 Central/10 Mountain/9 Pacific). The webinar is 40-45 minutes of content followed by 15-30 minutes of online chat to be sure your thoguhts and questions get time, too! There are live registration options or options to get the recorded version and a study guide for use with your leaders at any time you want. Check out registration details at: http://renewablechurchmarch2012.com - and remember that this webinar is free for Renewable Church Online Community Members!

A New Year's Resolution for Leaders

A lot of us are making resolutions this weekend - lose weight, exercise more, get organized, write more blog posts (ok, maybe that's just me!), etc. And a lot of experts (like our friends over at the Harvard Business Review) are making suggestions about what kinds of resolutions we should make.

It occurs to me that, behind every New Year's Resolution, is a desire to do what matters. I'll toast to that. But it also occurs to me that, for most of us, doing what matters also means that we need to figure out how to stop doing things that don't.

Here are 5 purposeful questions you can ask yourself to figure out what doesn't matter anymore:

1. Are we (still) having fun doing it?
2. Is it easy to get people to lead and participate in it?
3. Are people's lives being changed by it?
4. Are we being changed in positive ways by doing it?
5. Would anybody miss it if we stopped doing it?

If you answer no to #1 plus ANY of the other questions, you should stop whatever it is you're doing right now.

If you answer no to any one of these questions, including #1, consider taking a time out from doing it. Take a break. Give it a rest. And see what happens. After a few weeks or months, re-evaluate it and decide whether or not it's worth doing again. Odds are, it won't be.

What New Year's Resolutions are you making this weekend?