Carey Nieuwhof’s new book Lasting Impact: 7 Powerful Conversations to Help Your Church Grow is a great book to help you and your staff navigate change and how cultural shifts will be impacting your ministry in the future. Lots of challenging questions to help diagnose barriers to growth and help identify needed adjustments to reach a new generation. Here’s just a few of the powerful statements that have stuck with me and that I’m sharing with my staff and other church leaders regularly since reading this book:

• In every decision, focus on who you want to reach, not on who you want to keep.
• leaders who value attendance over engagement will see declining attendance.
• You need a flexible on-ramp that allows people to hang in the shadows for a while as they make up their minds and one that allows multiple jumping-in points throughout the year.
• The more you prioritize families, the more families will prioritize Sundays.
• A church that has a white hot sense of mission will almost always have the resources it needs to do what the church is called to do.
• Churches that love their model more than their mission will die.
• If we continue doing what we’re doing today, where will we be one year, two years, and five years from now?

Also, the chapter on Cultural Trends and how Netflix is influencing the culture is worth the price of the book. Must read for church leaders.

You can also find Carey Nieuwhof’s informative podcast on Itunes. Check him out online at http://careynieuwhof.com/.