The Pros and Cons of Membership Follow-Up
In an earlier post, a reader asked if I had thoughts about tracking everyone who attends worship, specifically how to do that. I’ll address the how in a moment, but before I do I want to address the why. Attendance tracking is, admittedly, a pain. This is true in small churches where the charter […]
Why the Mainline is Shrinking …
I have the good fortune to be working with a mainline pastor who gets it and is working hard on the transformation process at his church. After he read my blog on my frustrations as a consultant, he wrote me an email that contains the following questions (reprinted here with his express permission). “I was […]
Frustrations of a Church Consultant
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Over the past several weeks I’ve been hither and yon across the country training church leaders in evangelism and church transformation. One would think with the way things are that leaders would be ready to hear what’s working. But by and large, that’s not the case. And the more […]
Five Marks of an Effective Congregation
I got an email from a faithful blog reader last week who mentioned I did a good job pointing out the shortcomings of the church, but that there wasn’t much there in terms of what a healthy, functional, faithful, effective congregation looks like. The fact is, it’s a lot easier to find fault with the […]
The “Magic” of Unspoken Conflict
I received so many responses to my last post on the Top Five Reasons Churches Don’t Grow that I could probably blog a new post on any one of the comments and have almost a month’s worth of writing. However, a comment from TF brought back a flood of thoughts that I thought I’d share. […]
A Christmas Carol
Every time I pick up a mainline hymnal that was printed anytime after 1990 I get just a little bit disgusted. In an effort to save our sensibilities and to be as politically/theologically “correct” as possible, many of the old hyms were lyrically changed. Now, I’m all for inclusive language and all that, but I […]