There’s a saying, no one seems to know who said it first, that “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” I try to stay out of those rooms whenever possible. So it wasn’t surprising to me when I found myself in the same room as Will Mancini and […]
I was reading Luke 6 this morning and was struck by verse 12:
One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.
This passage immediately precedes the calling of the twelve apostles and it is one of only two times the Gospels mention Jesus going away […]
I am so tired of fights about church. We laud spirituality over “religion.” Face it, Christianity is a religion. Nothing wrong with religion. What’s wrong is when we get lost, when the world only sees hypocrisy and a disconnect with daily life.
I was recently at a meeting where we talked about conflict in the […]
There are some churches with great vitality in our nation. That is awesome. But most of you who read this, if you happen to go to church, are a part of a congregation that struggles. Welcome to the 21st century American religious reality.
It is mind boggling how quickly the spiritual climate has changed. Fifty […]
There are many leadership skills that are important. But there are two skills that overshadow all the rest. If a staff can master these two skills, there is no way a church can keep from reaching more people for Christ. Want to know what they are? Sure you do. So here goes.
Skill Number One: […]
I’ve been watching the trend escalate for the past decade. For centuries, it has been the practice of non-mainline groups. But for the last couple of decades its has been a rising factor in thriving churches.
I’m talking about the rise and effectiveness of non-seminary trained pastors. It used to be that pastors like enormously […]
Why do people resist church so much? Yes, those who are a part of church need to be concerned with the valid aspects of the critique that religious people are hypocrites and out-of-touch with the intersection of faith and daily life. But there is a significant underlying reason. Our culture believes that most everyone […]
Why do we try to do things on our own in church ministry? Why do we seem to honor being a Lone Ranger? Okay, not even the Lone Ranger did things on his own. There was Tonto.
The greatest professional athletes have coaches. Why do we do ministry relatively alone? Why does the concept […]
Take an “imaginary” trip with me. The year is 2017, but things are different in some subtle ways. The U.S. military uses horses as its main mode of transportation because horses worked so well during the Civil War. Major companies conduct business through the phone party line because that is what worked for a […]
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