Last year, I took part in a students academic research on the correlation between the presence of an Executive Pastor and churches success. I recently received a copy of that research and wanted to share it more widely. With the authors permission, enjoy this well researched document. You’ll find it at this link below. Enjoy!
Recently, I had the opportunity to preach the sermon in between Christmas and New Years. One of our pastors refers to this as “Youth Pastor Sunday” and there is some truth to the fact that it is rarely the Lead Pastor preaching that week. At Mosaic, we tend to take turns doing it and let’s be honest, nobody really wants to do it. While everyone else is enjoying some extra time with their families at the holidays, the person who draws the short straw has to be prepping a sermon. So, since I knew that I’d be doing this particular Sunday a couple months in advance, I started my prep early and I did something really different. I attempted to practice silence and solitude in a room full of people. And it actually worked rather well!
Recently I taught our church on the subject of Elders from 1 Peter 5:1-5. As someone who has written a book on developing Elders, this is a topic that is close to my heart. I share this sermon with you in hopes that it might benefit your church somehow. I’m also totally willing to send you my manuscript if you email me for it. backstagepastors@gmail.com
I don’t know about you, but in my role as an executive pastor, I am having to simultaneously manage two seemingly conflicting realms. There is the 35,000 foot view, where I must be able to see the vision that needs to be crafted and executed. In addition, there is also the boots-on-the-ground view, where I am involved with the details that help a team arrive at a destination.
If I am not careful, I can easily fall into the trap of consistently giving my thinking and energies to what seems most advantageous at the moment. The result is that I am very liable to miss longterm strategic thinking and planning. There is no lack of busyness, but I end up looking back and thinking “Why didn’t this get done like we planned?”
We recently finished a four week series at Mosaic called “Only Jesus”. In the early planning stages, it was a catch all for a few different things we wanted to unpack with our church. But then it morphed into an incredibly succinct look at what our church is all about. As the communications team joined together with the teaching team to hear from our Lead Pastor on his heart for the series and discuss the felt needs of a congregation whose collective head was spinning from rapid growth, we began to brainstorm on the story that threaded it all together. Pretty soon,
We have some pretty talented story tellers at Mosaic in the area of video. Recently, we tasked them with creating some new videos to use in our Chapter One Class (for new people at Mosaic). It involved a lot of filming over multiple weeks in an effort to catch multiple staff and congregants. As such, it made sense for them to build a little film set that we could use for this and other projects down the road.
Our Student Ministry just did a big Fall Kick Off Event. All the new students that just became old enough were invited and because we’ve grown a lot this year, we had even more students show up for the first time. The team pulled off a high energy event that they called “Glow Night”. Anything that could glow, was glowing that night. Even the band. I walked in to drop off my girls and encourage the team and I was blown away by what they had pulled off with honestly not a very big budget. As I saw all the kids having an absolute blast, I thought “Oh shoot, I wish the video team was here tonight capturing this”. No sooner did that thought cross my mind did I see one of our video team out in the middle of the crowd getting some great shots. Check out this recap video they made of the event. We shared it on social media and people loved it. Videos like this help parents know that Student Ministry is pretty awesome at Mosaic. Don’t spend a ton of time creating an awesome event and then forget to capture photos or video of it for future or current use. Even if it’s all volunteer based, do something with that stuff.
Our church just jumped into the book of Acts again after a little break. Our creative types put together a cool video to use as an intro. I share it here for you to get ideas for your church.
Like many churches, the summer is full with things like VBS, Student Ministry Camp, etc. We decided to celebrate those events with a little video that we showed in the announcement space of our gatherings. It’s just a short punchy video re-cap of our kids events. Doing things like this and showing them in church can help your whole church get on board with the mission. It let’s people in one demographic see what is going on for people in other demographics in the church. Things like this really help build a sense of community and family in a church full of different ages. Enjoy the Video!
At Mosaic Church, we have been blessed with some Godly musicians, vocalists and worship leaders. A goal of ours has been to tell our own story of Gospel transformation through original worship created by our people. It’s something I constantly encourage our worship team to do. But you can’t just encourage it, you have to resource them to do it well by giving them song writing retreats and you have to celebrate them when they complete a song. Recently, our team completed this song and then our video team made a little music video of it. It’s not studio quality by any means, but I think it turned out really well.
At Mosaic, we take caring for Orphans seriously. Check out this video we used recently about one families journey.
I’m all about getting resources that one church leader creates into the hands of other church leaders. Recently, Gabe Forsyth (Mosaic’s Missions Pastor) created a Leader’s Guide for new Missional Community Group Leaders to use with the new group that they just started. It’s meant to be used for the first 12 weeks to lay a foundation of shared vision, values, and identity. And we want to give it to your for free. Enjoy!
Serve the City is all about connecting you to the leaders and organizations in our city who are doing great work to bring justice and mercy to those in need. Come and be inspired and equipped at the first conference ever at the Mosaic Winter Garden Campus on January 26th & 27th! We hope to to see you there! SIGN ME UP!
Mosaic Church just opened it’s new Winter Garden facility. It was a crazy day with nearly 4,000 in attendance (blowing away our usual 2500). I asked one of our story team to capture the day for me and put together a quick video. Here is that video. We posted it quickly on Facebook, etc. within a day of opening so that people could celebrate with us online. Enjoy!
English and Spanish versions available on Amazon in Paperback and Kindle E-book.
Phil Taylor
My name is Phil. I spent 20 years pastoring (mostly executive pastoring) and now I serve churches all over through consulting on buildings and brands at Plain Joe Studios and coaching Executive Pastors. My wife and I have three kids and one grandchild. I’m into running and kayaking.