Download: Leadership Discussion Guide
This is the document to bring into the room when it’s time for leadership to actually decide what this congregation needs. It’s built as a companion to the Deep Study, not a replacement for it — where that document makes the biblical argument, this guide exists to turn the argument into an honest conversation and a concrete plan.
It opens with ten key theological takeaways, meant to be read aloud or distributed before discussion begins, so the whole room shares one definition of faith before it tries to diagnose anything — followed by a correction leadership should be ready to state plainly if it comes up: an earlier, popular distinction between two Greek words for “word” doesn’t actually hold up, and this guide gives the room the short version of why.
From there it turns to diagnosis, and deliberately in two directions. A ten-question congregational diagnostic asks where this church actually stands — not guessed at from the table, but genuinely investigated, with specific leaders assigned to find out. A second, parallel ten-question diagnostic turns the same scrutiny on leadership itself, on the conviction that a team that hasn’t examined its own practice of faith is poorly positioned to diagnose anyone else’s, and that a congregation absorbs what leadership actually does far more than what it says.
The guide then moves into ten discussion questions for the leadership team itself, ten strategic recommendations grouped by area of church life — teaching and preaching, discipleship and small groups, pastoral care, corporate worship, and leadership practice — and an action-plan table built specifically so the meeting doesn’t end with only a shared impression. It ends with a closing reflection meant to be prayed through together, and a suggested date, six months out, to come back and honestly ask whether anything actually changed.
Given how much ground this covers, it’s built for either one extended session of two to two-and-a-half hours, or, preferably, two shorter meetings — one for diagnosis, one for discussion and strategy. Every section can be divided among smaller groups or worked through together, whichever fits your team, but the action-plan table is the one piece worth protecting time for. A meeting that produces a shared diagnosis with no owner, no step, and no date attached hasn’t finished its work.
Like the Deep Study it accompanies, every Scripture reference here carries its full NKJV text and a short summary in the sections meant to be taught aloud, so the room can follow the argument without a Bible app open in every hand — while the diagnostic and discussion questions themselves are left exactly that: open questions for your team to answer honestly, not pre-loaded with a leader’s own conclusions.