2015
I don’t want my church to be small. It just is.
I want my church to grow numerically. But it’s not.
I follow all the how-to lists to get it to grow. But they don’t work.
I’m told to pray more. So I do.
Plan better. So I do.
Work harder. So now I’m burnt ...
The church is in trouble.
It must be. My blog feed keeps telling me it is.
For several years now, barely a day goes by without someone writing about the imminent demise of the body of Christ.
Everyone seems to have a different reason why they think the church is dying: ...
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 ...
“Why do you want churches to be small?” I hear that question a lot.
My answer? I don’t want churches to be small.
Wanting churches to be small is like wanting Hawaii to be sunny, or vegetables to be nutritious. We don’t need to want it. That’s ...
Innovative small church?
Do those three words belong in the same sentence? Can innovation happen in a small church? Is it even possible in an older small church?
Turning a tired, dying congregation into a fresh, innovative church is one of the greatest challenges a pastor can ...
"What am I doing wrong?!"
How many small church pastors constantly torture themselves with that question?
And it doesn't help that someone's always writing another list to tell us about the mistakes and sins we must be committing that are keeping our church from ...
No one ever built a great church by emphasizing what they're against. (Well, no one but Jesus ever built any church, but you get what I mean.)
After all, the word "gospel" means good news.
What you're against may be really bad. And opposing it may be ...
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 ...
When someone goes to a healthy small church for the first time, what should they expect?
That's an easier question to answer for big churches, because they have a lot more in common with each other. Once any group – church or not – is serving 1,000 or more ...
Megachurches are awesome.
How could we not be grateful when thousands of people voluntarily gather together every week to worship Jesus? Everything about that is good.
But … (you knew there was a 'but coming, didn't you?)
But while it's wonderful ...
Transformation or stability.
Sometimes it seems like every pastor I meet lives in one of those two camps.
On the transformation side are churches with names like Catalyst, Thrive and Elevation. They're led by pastors who are constantly driving for their church to ...
Some people have written off the current generation spiritually.
That is a mistake – for the church and for the millennials.
There's growing evidence that this new generation will bring the greatest opportunity for small church ministry in 2,000 years.
Why? Because, as ...
A healthy church does not inevitably mean a numerically growing congregation.
I used to believe that it did.
After all, I've read about the "truth" of inevitable congregational growth in every church leadership book written in the last 30 years. I even taught 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 ...
Recently I met someone who had spent many years on staff at a church of over 4,000. During his entire time at that church, he never met the pastor.
He expressed some frustration about it, because he admired the pastor and would have enjoyed learning from him over an occasional ...
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