Innovative Ministry
In the last 40 years, church growth has moved from an indefinable mystery to a quantifiable science.
There are innumerable books, conferences, classes, podcasts, magazines and blogs dedicated to the study of church growth. What causes it? What hinders it? What can we do to make ...
You only get one chance to make a first impression.
That’s one of those truisms that’s actually true – in church and in life.
One of the hallmarks of healthy churches is that they work hard at making a good first impression. Helping guests make the leap from ...
The smaller the group, the more likely there will be a higher percentage of members engaged in the goals of the team.
This is true for groups of all types, including churches.
In the last few years I’ve come to appreciate this principle in some very concrete ways. And it’s ...
So, you pastor a small, struggling church.
You’re trying to help it become less small and less struggling, but all the “can’t miss” answers from the latest church growth conferences never seem to work for you.
You don’t have a big worship team singing ...
One of the airtight principles of church leadership is that you can tell what a church’s priorities are by looking at where they allocate their funds.
That is true in some churches, but not in all. Maybe not in most.
Here’s why.
The vast majority of churches are small, ...
Not all change is good.
The church exists to worship the God who never changes, as seen in a book whose newest pages are 2,000 years old. That’s some serious long-term consistency.
But the way that permanent message is delivered always changes. Traditions that we think of ...
Preaching matters.
According to no less an authority than the Apostle Paul, the spoken message of Christ crucified is one the ways God has chosen to bring his message of salvation to the world (1 Corinthians 1:18-25).
Because preaching matters, those of us who are entrusted to ...
Are you a pastor trying to make needed changes in the church, but meeting a lot of resistance every time you introduce something new, like a worship song, curriculum or order of service?
Here’s a universal truth that I discovered through decades of experience trying to ...
Six months ago today, our church made our biggest transition in a quarter century.
After being the lead pastor for 25 years, I stepped aside so that Gary Garcia (the youth pastor who has been with me for that entire time) could take my position, while I became the teaching pastor. ...
There are two different types of churches, organizationally.
Static and dynamic.
As we saw in a previous article, Why Most Small Churches Don’t Use (Or Need) An Organizational Chart, the smaller the church, the less necessary it is to use a static organizational system.
Static ...