Author: Kenny Conley

Year One: Meet Your Staff

Year One: Meet Your Staff

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For the past five years, I’ve made a lot of new NextGen friends. Most of my NextGen friends have been in the role for less than a year or two. I found myself in a very different situation though. I started in the NextGen role almost ten years ago. If someone had asked me about what to do in the first year, I wouldn’t recommend doing what I did. Honestly, it just took me a little while to figure out the role and there were very few people in the role for me to learn from. My advice would...

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Year One: Culture

Year One: Culture

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So it’s your first year in the role of a NextGen Pastor. Let’s say it’s a new job at a new church. What should you do first? What should you prioritize? This is the conversation I had with Nick Blevin’s on his Family Ministry Podcast. You might talk to 10 different people and get 10 different answers. That’s perfectly fine. However, I found five things to be really helpful to focus on for my first year at my second NextGen Pastor role. Here’s the first. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Peter Drucker I can’t think of many things more...

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Year One

Year One

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A few weeks ago marked the one year anniversary of moving to Gilbert, AZ. After eight years of leading NextGen in Austin, TX – I got to start over. I have to admit, I was pretty excited for round two. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told people, “I wish I knew what I know now when I started as a NextGen pastor.” The first several years were spent learning a new role and figuring everything out. Everything was brand new. It took me five years to build my team. It was the best team I’d ever...

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When do you Promote?

When do you Promote?

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My Promoting NexGen post last week prompted a lot of questions and discussions about when churches promote – before the summer or after the summer? So, I thought I’d share the reasons why I promote when I do. At MISSION, we promote before the summer. We’re actually promoting this Sunday, May 21st. I LOVE promoting just before the summer and I’ll explain why. At my previous church, we promoted in the fall for the first 4-5 years there. There were several obstacles preventing us from moving promotion. I hated Fall promotion, primarily for one reason, which I’ll get to in...

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Promoting NextGen

Promoting NextGen

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When I was a Children’s Pastor, there was one time of the year when the student pastor and I really worked together. Promotion Sunday. Usually, sometime in April, we’d get together for lunch and we’d talk about the rising 6th graders. We’d talk about how they would move up, when it would happen, and details pertaining to the big day. Unfortunately, this was often the extent of our collaboration. It would be years before I’d see the benefits of collaborating on a weekly basis. I would later come to learn that promoting NextGen is bigger than figuring out how...

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