Image: Ben White | Unsplash

One of the greatest challenges of pastoring is coming up with something fresh to say to the same people week after week.

As a pastor, I’ve been preaching for over 30 years. Over 4,000 messages. For many years I would regularly run out of things to say – or, more accurately, ...

Image: Mimi Thian | Unsplash

Good leaders have strong opinions.

And they should.

But our decisions should be guided by the mission, not by our opinions.

This is especially true in church leadership. The importance of Christ’s mission should be communicated in everything we do and say. Including in subtle ...

Image: Hannah Busing | Unsplash

Small companies are fueled by passion, innovation and risk-taking. Small churches should be, too.

As companies get bigger, passion is often replaced by profits, innovation by budgets, and creativity by quality control. Big companies tend to take fewer risks because they have ...

Image: Wil Stewart | Unsplash

Pastorates are getting longer.

This is mostly good news for pastors, their families, and the churches they serve. (As we saw in my previous article, 8 Benefits Of Investing A Lifetime Of Ministry Into One Congregation.)

But there are a few inherent dangers to staying in one church ...

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There are a lot of bad reasons churches want to change.

• To keep up with trends
• To get bigger
• To have more available funds
• To appeal to a different group of people
• To break from tradition
• Because we’re bored
• Because we’ll die if we don’t

Some of them seem like good ...

Image: Erik | Flickr

There are two types of churches.

Those on offense and those on defense.

In recent years, I’ve been in hundreds of rooms with thousands of pastors from both types of churches.

Churches on offense are not different from churches on defense in any external way.

They and their ...

Image: Shelley Vaters

Are there any two words more likely to send an audience running for the exits than “PowerPoint presentation?”

That’s why, even though I use PowerPoint almost every time I speak, I don’t do PowerPoint presentations.

I teach. I preach. I talk. I illustrate. ...

Image: Kat Yukawa | Unsplash

A lot of churches get a nice year-end bump in their finances.

During the Christmas season even casual attenders come to church more often, churches hold annual events like Christmas Bazaars that bring in funds, and the week of Christmas often attracts huge crowds – and ...

Image: Paul Skorupskas | Unsplash

Oh, the funnel.

That simple, but immensely valuable piece of human engineering.

With it, you can take massive amounts of material, data or (using the visual funnel we call a lens) visual information and channel it in a way that makes it so much more valuable than when it was random, ...