Church Leadership
The Bible uses many colorful words to describe the church. It’s a family, a body, a fellowship, a holy people, a flock, and more.
But not a business.
In my previous post, I wrote about Why It's A Bad Idea To Run A Church Like A Business. In today’s post, I want ...
Churches cannot and should not be run like businesses.
I’ve always felt that to be true. But, as a pastor, I only knew it in the abstract.
Then, a few years ago I started my own business. You're reading one of the products of it right now. The writing and speaking I ...
What would you say if someone asked you the question in the title of this post?
“What are you improving at your church right now?”
Would you know what to say? It’s an important question.
In fact, if you can't answer that question with at least one specific ...
So much of what's taught about church methods and structures comes from a corporate mindset.
That's to be expected when most church leadership writers are coming from a large- and megachurch background.
But smaller churches don't operate that way. And they shouldn't. ...
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 ...
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. ...
Is it okay if a pastor’s calling is to help others fulfill their calling? Or, without a big, hairy, audacious pastoral vision, will the people perish?
I’ll come back to those questions soon. But first, this.
You can’t have a great church without a great vision. ...
Life is filled with problems.
Some big, some small. Some emergencies, some petty.
When a big problem presents itself, we want somebody to do something about it. Problem-solving is one of the prime roles of a leader, after all.
So, whether it’s in our families, our churches ...
I’m a pastor.
It’s becoming harder to say that lately.
Sure, there are the usual pressures.
- Dealing with congregation members and their expectations
- Trying to stay ahead of the change curve
- Combatting theological and moral compromise
- Managing a mostly volunteer staff
- Figuring out how to pay for it all on a small, sometimes shrinking budget