So, what's with the title?

I'm sure I'll write about more than just leadership, but when you cut me I tend to bleed leadership. I love the local church, and it seems like just about the greatest job on earth would be to help lead a church--and help other church leaders become better. Not just better, but smarter.

LeadingSmart.com will be focused on church leaders, but applicable to others. It will be practical and down-to-earth (remember, I'm from a church in Indiana, that's about as down-to-earth as you can get). I'm as normal as anyone gets. So you're gonna get some pretty normal-guy advice.

Great leadership isn't just about casting great vision. It's not just about drawing a crowd, teaching a compelling message, or exegeting the Scripture with integrity. That's all good stuff, but there's more. More than having a winsome personality or having the capacity to juggle several balls at once.

LeadingSmart is about building teams, finding and leading great people, building consensus, navigating personal preferences and political tension, leading meetings and making presentations, creating systems that actually help, utilizing today's technology, designing organizational structures that enable ministry, pulling off multi-million dollar construction projects without going over budget, and designing services at the strategic level that help people meet Christ.

LeadingSmart means we are learning from the best of business practices. The source of the advice doesn't matter a whole lot to me. I figure what Satan meant for evil, we can redeem and use for good. And it means learning from all kinds of churches and all sorts of church leaders. I'm not interested in being original. When I find stuff that looks like it's working, I'll pass it along.

Here we go, I'm glad you are along for the ride.