Idealism and the Missional Church
Over the past several weeks I’ve had the opportunity to speak to various crowds of church leaders and talk about church transformational issues. I’ve noticed that I can generally divide the audience into two groups: those who want to get it and so are open to giving the presentation a listen, and those who […]
Confronting the Church’s Fog Horns
I received a question from a recent seminar participant that was buried in one of the comments. I started to answer it there, but when I finished I realized it was way too long to be just a comment … so I repost it here.
The question was “So, how does one confront the “Fog […]
A Delicate Matter … Senior Staff Expectations
I write this post with a good bit of trepidation. Let’s face it, my livelihood pretty much depends on the goodwill and invitation of solo pastors, senior ministers, and senior staff. However, after having a couple of conversations with a colleague, it became clear that there are some who are in need of an […]
Communications and the Church
I recently had a great conversation with an older member of a fast-shrinking congregation. She was looking for resources on how to improve communications within her congregation and she was finding precious few resources … could I help? Sure, I could help. But before we went further, I asked her to tell me what […]
Worship and Learning Styles
Once upon a time, I used to teach. It was a one room schoolhouse with up to twelve kids ages preschool through seniors in high school. I taught the ABCs, 123s, algebra, trig, chemistry, history, social sciences, and pretty much everything else. In order to make this gig work, I was trained in what […]
The High Cost of Tranformation II
Another one bites the dust. If I had a dollar for every pastor who started the transformation process and ended up leaving the church and/or ministry, I could have retired long ago. But here we go again. Earlier in the month I wrote about a church that was embroiled in battle over transformation and […]
Hiring Church Staff
I was involved in a conversation earlier today about hiring a staff member at a church. Hiring staff can be a real sticky situation. In some churches, the denomination does the hiring. That can be a huge issue that I don’t personally “get.” What happens if the Lead Pastor (or in a larger multi-staff […]
52 Hitchhikers and Evangelism
Today I’ve spent all day … well, from 10:30 AM until 4:20 … training fifty-two participants the first half of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Evangelism seminar. I’m exhausted (that’s a lot of time up in front doing a lot of the talking) and yet I’m too wound up to sleep. There’s something about watching […]