888-470-2456

About Bill Tenny-Brittian

Bill is the Managing Partner at The Effective Church Group. He began ministry as a church planter in the early 1980s and over the past 35 years he's grown churches from one side of the nation to the other. In 2002 he joined Bill Easum's consultation group and began partnering with churches and church leaders to help them reach their fullest potential. He is the author of nine books and the editor of Net Results magazine. Reach Bill here.

Implementing Your Mission Statement

First a word about most church mission statements.

They’re beautifully word smithed

They’re gorgeous

They’re suitable for framing.

But a mission statement that’s suitable for framing, is rarely a mission statement that’s suitable for much of anything else.

A quick reminder that the founder of the church is the one who set its mission and that mission can be […]

Meet Ray

Ray is twenty-seven years old and works in IT at the local university. He’s been married for three years and he and Jessica just had a baby girl a couple of months ago. Life is pretty good for Ray and Jessica. They own their home – well, the bank owns it, but they bought […]

No One Left Behind

I was watching one of “those” movies the other day. In this case, the space ships were flying and the ground troops were storming the asteroid. Suddenly reinforcements for the axis of evil show up and the good guys have to regroup and retreat to fight another day. Except one of the ground troops […]

It’s a Good Idea … For Someone

When I wrote If You’ve Got to Herd Cats, You’ll Need a Big Mouse, I wrote about the reality that your church members have no end of “good ideas” about the direction their church should go. Those good ideas include what new programs should be started, what the church needs to stop doing, and […]

But SOMEBODY’s Got to Do It!

Church Work is never ending. There’s always something that needs to get done.

The worship slides need to be updatedThe trash needs to be emptiedThe newsletter needs to be editedThe plumber needs to be calledThe copier needs to be replaced (or updated or unjammed …)

In recent weeks, one pastor or another has given me […]

What To Do With Those Who Remain

I’m a big Carey Nieuwhof fan. He produces some of the most thoughtful and relevant content for North American church pastors and I appreciate what he has to say. This morning one of his blogs didn’t just catch my attention, it caused me to pause. In “Why They’re Not Coming Back to Church (and […]

Church in the Post-Pandemic World

The other day, ECG Partner Scott Musselman shot me a note about something I’d written that referenced the post-pandemic church. He said that his church wasn’t post-pandemic yet! And of course he’s completely correct – the Great Pandemic of 2020 hasn’t given up its ghost and doesn’t seem like it will any time soon. […]

When You’re Invisible, Get Noticed

My first church out of seminary had a cute little building on what the B-52s called The Atlanta Highway, better known by the locals as Highway 78. That highway ran between Athens and Atlanta and through both Between (yes, a real town) and Loganville. Ron Levin was pastor of the Between Methodist Church and […]

Reality Check: Pastor Fetch is Unbiblical

Recently, while I was teaching a class on pastoral leadership, a student pushed back hard when I shared that membership care, hospital visitation, and most church administration are not primarily the functions of clergy – that the church members should be responsible for those kinds of ministries.

“I got into ministry to do ministry,” […]