April 2017
Following a long-term, successful pastorate is one of the hardest callings in ministry.
It should be one of the easiest. After all, if we’re doing pastoral ministry right, we should set up the next pastor for an even greater level of ministry success than we had.
Instead, ...
God doesn’t always show up in our lives and ministries the way we want him to.
Because, even though we want to do great things for God, our definition of great isn’t always the same as God’s definition of great.
We all have great opportunities for ministry. Don't ...
Big churches serve many great roles in the body of Christ. And the church growth movement that spawned many of them has been a great blessing to me and so many others in ministry.
But numerical growth, while great, does not come without challenges.
In my last post, 5 Mistakes ...
Small churches are not just smaller versions of big churches.
Every size has value, but different sizes serve different functions in the body of Christ. They also have different challenges and they tend to make different kinds of mistakes.
Here are 5 mistakes that are more likely ...
Oh my. That question.
“How can you say your church is healthy if it’s not growing?”
If I’ve been asked it once…
But I still don’t know how to answer it.
I wish I did. Because it’s a perfectly valid question.
But life doesn’t tie itself ...
The gospel was built on failure.
What we now know as good news started as very bad news.
It was never supposed to work.
For a long time, it looked like it never would.
It started with a young, pregnant, single girl in a backwater town too small to be mentioned in most ancient records. ...
The New Testament doesn’t emphasize the role of pastor nearly as much as our current church structure does.
In fact, there’s just one passage – one! – in which the role of the pastor (along with apostles, prophets, evangelists, and teachers) is mentioned. ...
Small churches aren’t just smaller versions of big churches. They have unique gifts, challenges and methods of operation.
But not everyone realizes that fact. Including some small church pastors.
This often leads to frustration when we go to ministerial conferences or read ...
I’m taking my family to a bigger church.
I doubt if there’s a small church pastor that hasn’t felt the pain of those words.
I was reminded of that pain while getting re-acquainted with a friend over coffee recently.
My friend is a semi-volunteer staff member at ...
I'm not as old as I used to be.
I just turned 57. A mere 25 years ago, when the average pastor's age was 44, my current age would have made me an older minister.
Today, with the average pastor being 54, I'm in middle age.
In recent years as I’ve traveled and spoken ...
We worship an eternally unchanging God, as seen in a book whose newest parts are almost 2,000 years old. That’s a lot of stability.
So why does it seem like every church leader talks more about the things my church needs to change than the things that need to stay the same? ...
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