Church Leadership
I have a confession to make.
As a pastor, I have too much invested in getting people to attend church.
My salary depends on it.
My reputation depends on it.
My sense of self-worth depends on it.
All to a much larger degree than I'm comfortable with.
And I'm not alone.
Lack of planning is a big reason so many small church pastors feel worn out. And why so many healthy small churches feel stuck.
Some of the advantages of annual church planning include:
- Better preparation for events
- More time to think and pray about Sunday sermons
- Better use of volunteer time
Much of today's ministry training takes its lead from businesses.
Maybe businesses should be taking their lead from pastors.
Many successful businesspeople have flamed out trying to plant or pastor a church. Some left a successful business for full-time ministry, only to burn ...
39 verses. Less than 900 words.
That’s everything Matthew and Luke wrote about the birth of Jesus.
If you add Jesus’ genealogies and the birth of John the Baptist, you can more than triple its length. But if you go the other direction and remove the Magi who, as we ...
Some people love to complain. Many of them find their way into our churches. They especially like small churches.
In a big church, chronic complainers get lost in the crowd. The pastor may only be aware of them by email (but so many emails!).
In a small church their voice ...
My heart hurts for Paris and the nation of France.
When I stand in the pulpit on Sunday, the images of horror will be fresh in all of our hearts.
As pastors, many will look to us to set a tone for how to react to such evil acts.
In situations like this, the title of ...
We make church harder than it needs to be.
Why? I think a lot of it has to do with our size obsession.
We’ve convinced ourselves that it’s not possible to become a great church without becoming a big church. But the truth is, any church can become great. No ...
It’s one of the mantras of the church growth movement. "We count people because people count."
It also happens to be true. Most of the time.
But that that’s not the only reason pastors count people.
As I wrote in The Grasshopper Myth, some pastors ...
People become pastors for so many wrong reasons.
They like the status. They like speaking in public. They like arguing theology. They come from a long line of ministers. The list goes on.
If you’re debating becoming a pastor, here's a list of wrong reasons to ...
"So, what do you do for fun outside of pastoring?"
Someone asked me that question many years ago and it stumped me.
I didn't know what to say, because the truth was, I didn't do anything for fun.
What I wanted to tell them was "what do you mean, ...