Church Leadership
The gospel is enough.
It has always been enough. It will always be enough.
If we remove anything from it, it's not the gospel any more. If we add anything to it, we don't enhance it, we dilute it.
That’s why almost every young minister has been implored by an older ...
My church doesn’t use a discipleship curriculum.
Instead, as I wrote about in my previous two posts, we mentor people.
- Serious About Discipleship? Mentoring Is Better Than Curriculum
- Mentoring Is Better than Curriculum: Seven Steps to Better Discipleship
Those posts ...
Pastoring a small church is not for the timid.
Even the tools that are supposed to help us can leave us feeling more discouraged.
Discipleship curricuum, for instance. Whether it's designed for kids, youth or adults, most of it seems to target bigger churches. Small ...
“What discipleship curriculum do you recommend for small churches?”
I get asked that question a lot. And my answer almost always disappoints the questioner.
We don’t use a discipleship curriculum in our church.
I’ll get to why – and what ...
Many people think I’m settling for less when I talk about the value of small churches. Yes, they've actually said that to me.
I appreciate their concern. But they don’t need to worry. I’m not settling for less.
I would be settling for less if my entire goal ...
Breaking through the 200 barrier.
Sometimes it feels like that's the only pastoring principle anyone has talked about for the past 30 years.
In case you haven’t heard of it, the 200 barrier is the invisible ceiling a church must break through if it doesn’t ...
TRITE /trīt/ (Adjective) Overused and consequently of little import, lacking originality or freshness.
It’s easy to become trite when you’re a pastor.
After all, we’re in constant output mode. Whether we’re preaching, teaching, comforting or just ...
The 200 Barrier needs to be retired.
We have to erase it from our church leadership lexicon before it does any more harm to good churches and their pastors.
Yes, there is a difference in the way churches behave administratively under and over 200 (give or take 50). It ...
Small church pastors are often told that if our church isn't growing it's because we're not paying enough attention to the numbers.
That's not true.
Small church pastors are very aware of the numbers – sometimes painfully so.
I'll admit that small churches ...