2018
The mission comes first.
Always.
Ahead of my ideas, my preferences and my well-worn, dearly-loved terminology.
Because of that, whenever an extra-biblical idea or turn of phrase is anything but clear in the way it advances the message, we need to find and use a better manner of ...
I don’t go to church to worship Jesus.
Hear me out. It’s not as bad as it sounds.
Anyone can worship Jesus anywhere, at any time.
We don’t need a special building, a special day or a special time to do it. We don’t come into the presence of God when we enter ...
Great lives are made up of mundane tasks.
- Getting out of bed every morning
- Making sure the kids are clothed and fed
- Going to work
- Thanking a friend
- Being honest
- Helping a neighbor
- Showing up at church
We’re always told to pursue excellence. To accomplish great things. To be world-changers. ...
There are so many great tools available to churches today.
From social media, to audio and video tools, to cool giveaways for first-time guests.
But none of that matters until you’re doing the essentials well.
Be Good, Not Fancy
This week I went to a restaurant with a large ...
Thank you, New York.
You taught me how to be a better Christian, pastor and peacemaker this week.
For the past five days, my wife, my sisters, their husbands and I walked all over New York City with my parents as we celebrated their 60th anniversary.
New York is filled with some ...
Another day, another Facebook scam.
But this one isn’t Facebook’s fault.
Last weekend you may have received a message telling you your Facebook account was duplicated, but you can fix it by copying the warning message and forwarding it to your friends.
Hopefully, you ...
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 ...
The world is changing. In good ways and bad.
If you live in America’s Bible Belt (predominantly the Midwest and South) you are probably feeling the impact of these changes to a greater degree than those of us who live outside it. And those feelings are likely to grow for ...
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 ...
No church is perfect.
Some churches make mistakes but keep growing and moving ahead at lightning speed, while other churches make similar mistakes, but can’t seem to make even the smallest forward progress.
Every pastor of every plateaued church experiences this. And every ...
Big churches and small churches design their budgets very differently.
While large churches spend their time balancing percentages, designing requisition sheets, and tracking an increase or decrease of giving as one measurement of the church’s health, small churches deal ...
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, ...
Are you an underliner? I am. Unless I’m reading for pleasure, it’s almost impossible for me to pick up a book unless I have something to underline or highlight it with.
When people read books, they tend to underline or highlight the sentences they agree with. Give ...
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