The Secret Sauce for Mega-Growth

I still remember the moment like it was yesterday. I was casting a convincing vision to my leadership team, or so I thought. I introduced the next best model we would incorporate as a church and how this idea was “our missing link”. As I closed, I asked the team if anyone had any questions. A lady put up her hand and boldly asked, “Pastor Kelly, how long are we going to stick with this model before we move on to the next ‘great’ idea?“

I have to admit I was one of those conference junkie pastors, in desperate search for the mega-church secret sauce. I would tirelessly dig for answers into “what” growing churches were doing and then study “how” they did it. I mined through hours of seminars, books, podcasts and anything else I could get my hands on, hoping, longing to snag one good (or God) idea that might spark mega-growth in my own ministry.

When I found a good idea, I would immediately begin introducing it to my church. We tried Bill Hybel’s “Seeker Sensitive” model and used Becoming a Contagious Christian. I taught Rick Warren’s “baseball diamond” from the Purpose Driven Church. I introduced Larry Stockstill’s Cell Church model. We even tried starting our own Brownsville/Toronto type revival. And while all of these models are fantastic, and have produced major results with their originators, they yielded very limited results with us. But the vision seemed so compelling. It seemed destined to work. It seemed right. So, what was I doing wrong? Why didn’t it work? Was I not called to be a leader? Should I just stay satisfied with a small church?

Have you ever felt this way? Have you been searching for your own secret sauce that will produce the results you can only dream of? What are we supposed to be doing? And how do we do it?

What if I was looking in the wrong places? What if I’m asking the wrong questions?

Simon Sinek did a Ted Talk in 2009 that caused me to do an about face (Click Here to watch his brief speech).  He taught about the power of “Starting with WHY.” His premise was that the greatest influencers in the world all think, act, and communicate in the exact same way – and it’s the complete opposite of everyone else. He spoke of people like Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King Jr., the Wright Brothers and more. He called this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides the framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired.

He certainly had my attention. I had to admit that I was looking for the mega-churches secret growth sauce in their programs – WHAT they did. I even tried to copy HOW they implemented these programs as closely as I could. But what if it was deeper than that? What if the secret sauce was hidden in their WHY?

This began a new quest for me. I began to search for my WHY. This search has been so rewarding and has begun producing results I only dreamed about a few years ago. Over the next few Blogs, I want to take you on the journey to my WHY. It is my hope that this will help you discover your own WHY and that you, too, will begin to see results in your own life, business, or church you can only dream about right now.