leaderINCREASE

Hey Leader!

Meet another leader in our Strategic Church Network!

Dr. John Foster possesses a deep well of skills he brings to FBC Grove City.

He also shares a way to understand where God is leading in your life. The Post-It Note Timeline was created by my good friend and mentor, Dr. Terry Walling.

Here’s an overview:

The "Sticky-Note Timeline" is a foundational leadership exercise popularized by Leader Breakthru that focuses on discovering your life’s calling by charting your history. It involves mapping personal and leadership experiences, both positive and negative, to help you recognize God's hand on your development.

How to Build Your Timeline
Here is the step-by-step framework adapted from timeline exercises often utilized in Christian and marketplace leadership development:

1. Brainstorm Milestones
• Use sticky notes to capture significant people, events, turning points, and defining moments.
• Try to brainstorm a comprehensive list to ensure a big-picture view.
2. Color-Code Your Emotions
• Use one color (e.g., yellow) to write down positive, neutral, or defining experiences.
• Transfer any experiences that were painful or negative onto a different color (e.g., pink) to visually separate seasons of struggle.
3. Organize Chronologically
• Lay out a large piece of posterboard or utilize a large wall space.
• Arrange the sticky notes sequentially from left to right, starting with your early life and leading up to the present day.
4. Reflect and Diagnose
• Step back to see the overarching themes.
• Identify recurring patterns, how you handled transitions, and the ways specific hardships shaped your core values.

If you are interested in how to see where God is leading you, reply to this message with: Personal Cohort. It will open your eyes to see how God has already been at work in your life. Perhaps more importantly, it helps you see the future.

God Bless,
Rich

When our Strategic Church Network looks for church planters, we look for spiritual
entrepreneurs.
Big plusses are: proven leadership ability, large church experience, a strong cultural fit
with the community, and a call from God.
Our leader spotlight
today introduces you to a man like that.
As he launches, this would be a great church plant for your church to support. You can
pray, you can give, and you can send people.
It’s really a great way for a smaller church to be involved.
Mark is one of the
wonderful people God has brought to our network.
God bless,
Rich

God has done a lot through our network of churches…planting churches, operating in multiple cultures and language groups, Strategic Leader Academy, Stowe Mission, encouraging pastors, and connecting pastors.

I believe God wants to do more, increasing our gospel impact in ways that optimize us as a group of churches. This next several years will deepen our gospel impact in ways that would be difficult, if not impossible, for individual churches to do on their own.

This video goes about fifteen minutes. It’s longer than others I do. But I believe it’s needed to give you a good, overarching perspective about where we are headed.

The network is the churches. These gospel-impacting and life-changing processes only happen because of you.

I’d love to hear from you. Just reply or call.

We are in it together, my friend.

Every leader has the benefit of the wisdom of other leaders. Some leaders come up in a church or an organization led by great leaders.

Others of us must go find those leaders. You can find them leading seminars, leading churches, or guiding other organizations.

If you don’t have a great leader where you are, go find one. Offer to take the person to lunch (you pay). Ask him/her questions, and you write answers on your pad while they talk. You may not even know why you are writing it, just write it. You can decipher and debrief with yourself later.

Today’s video shares 5 ways I have learned from leaders. I still use these questions wherever I go.

All leaders I’ve met want it.
I know I do.
I want to be better....get better...produce more God-honoring, Christ’s kingdom expanding results.
God does many incredible things I cannot do. I know that.
I also know there are numerous ways for me to improve. And, when I improve, especially as an organizational leader, the organization/s I lead improve.
Today’s video shares a tried-and-true method. I’ve worked with thousands of leaders in hundreds of organizations.
The most effective ones follow this process. The words/terms may be different, but it follows the same pattern.
Organizations that don’t do well violate one or more of these key components.
Take a look to see how your organization is doing, and how you can lead better.

Your leadership sits totally under your control.
You cannot control outside forces, but you can direct yourself.
Bettering yourself personally makes you a better leader every time.
Today, I share the four ways Jesus continually increased.
I’ve used it as my overarching self-improvement paradigm for several years now.
And, God continues to use me in more impactful ways, I believe.
Ask Him how He wants you to improve in these ways, then apply them as goals for this year.

You cannot separate wisdom from money.
Using money wisely is a fundamental element of wisdom. There are no wise people who are not wise with how they use material resources. We saw that last week.
This week we look at three practical ways to increase your wisdom with money.
Knowing about money does not make you wise. Using money wisely does make you wise.
James 3:13 tells us: Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.
See that? Wisdom is shown in what you do. Wisdom does not culminate in thinking better thoughts. Wisdom comes from doing things wisely.
The key is to put what you know into action, not research a bunch and then not pull the trigger.

You cannot separate wisdom from money.
To a large degree, most every decision in life involves it. Parenting? How much can you afford for your kids? A wiser question: How much should you afford to your kids?
Even the fundamentals of life include finances. Where do you live? What do you eat? What do you do for fun? Where do you work? (Does anyone work a job where they don’t know what the pay is?)
Trying to pretend like “money isn’t important” only leads to unwise decision-making.
It’s central.
That’s why Proverbs includes it. If you want to be wise, learn how money works and how to use it wisely.

This key ingredient to wisdom cannot be overlooked.
You may achieve incredible results if you aren’t obedient. But mark it down, it will catch up and derail your ministry. As we all have seen, some elements of disobedience will wreck our lives.
To live a life characterized by wisdom, you must obey the Lord and His Word. Most of us know that.
Today’s video shares practical ways obedience happens. It’s the every-day, boots on the ground, practical application of obedience.