Innovative Ministry
Does your small church have an Organizational (Org) Chart?
If you don’t, relax. You probably don’t need one.
If you do, brace yourself. You may want to get rid of it because they tend not to work in small churches like they work in large churches. In fact, some of ...
Churches have to do more ministry with less money.
That’s becoming truer with every passing year, and it will increase for at least another generation.
For example, 15 years ago, the church I serve was smaller and less healthy than it is right now. By every indication of ...
This summer, in county fairs all over America, people will flock to see tribute bands.
With names like Unforgettable Fire (U2), The Fab Four (Beatles), Heartache Tonight (Eagles), and Simple Man (Lynyrd Skynyrd), they can give us a fun evening, seeing a band that looks and plays ...
Does God’s vision for our life, church and ministry have to be big to be real?
I keep hearing that it does. Sayings like “if your vision isn’t big enough to scare you, it’s not from God” have been popular for quite some time now. Apparently we’re ...
Better churches become bigger churches. Right?
Maybe not.
That’s been the rule of thumb for businesses, too. And it’s no more true there than it is for us.
As it turns out, constant growth doesn’t work for the majority of churches or businesses. Yet they can still ...
The Sunday morning pass-the-plate offering has always been a reliable predictor of the commitment level of church members.
Long before they started leaving – often before many started complaining – people would express their dissatisfaction with a church by stopping ...
A church of 50 people needs to be pastored like a church of 50 people.
You can’t act like a church of 500. Or even 100. The systems, methods and relationship dynamics simply won’t fit.
So how can a church grow, either in its size or effectiveness, if we’re only ...
The pastor’s office is a time-honored tradition whose moment has come and gone for a lot of us.
Over the last 35-plus years of ministry, I have spent thousands of hours in my office. Joyful, frustrating, heartbreaking, boring, wonderful, life-changing hours. Hours spent ...
Yesterday, I was back in my home church after being gone for a month doing conferences and taking some vacation time with my wife, Shelley.
We’ve taken time away before, of course, but this time it was different. Because when I came back yesterday, for the first Sunday ...
Small churches can have a big impact.
Especially today, with the power of social media and other new ways of communicating.
But also, because so much of our lives are lived online, people are having a renewed longing for more personal, tactile, face-to-face experiences. These ...