November 2018
Sometimes it seems like everyone is leaving the church. But that’s not the case.
While we’re right to be concerned about church-hoppers and church-droppers, people don’t typically go to a church with the plan of leaving soon. Most want to put down roots and ...
It’s hard to leave a church you used to love – and maybe still love.
In previous articles I’ve written from the pastor’s perspective about how hard it is when people leave the church you’re pastoring, and what to consider before leaving a church ...
Why are fewer people going to church? And what can we do about it?
This may be the main topic of conversation among pastors today.
For example, while scrolling through my Facebook feed last weekend, I came across multiple posts with sarcastic takes on how sad/interesting/ridiculous ...
More than any other time of the year, Christmas is filled with traditions.
It’s one of the many reasons we love the holiday season.
It’s also something our churches need to pay closer attention to. Before a church holds any event, program or service, we should always ...
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 ...
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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
There’s nothing anyone can do to guarantee that any particular congregation will grow numerically.
No, I’m not being pessimistic, I’m being realistic.
There are simply no absolutes in church growth. At least not for the numerical increase of an individual congregation. ...
You know those commercials where clients or patients had amazing results, only to hear a hurried voice at the end telling you “individual results may vary”?
It might be helpful if church growth books, blogs, podcasts and conferences had that, too.
The reason those ...
Why does the church exist?
It’s not to get people together for meetings. Or to keep our theology pure. Or to defend our traditions. Or to look cool and appealing to the unchurched.
But it’s easy to fall into one or more of those traps if we’re not constantly ...
Really?
Is this still a thing? People aren’t still arguing about what we wear to church, are they?
Yes. Despite the much more relaxed approach most people have, the debate about appropriate church attire still rages in some circles. So I’m going to weigh in on it.
Where ...
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, ...
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