Three Hard Choices Effective Leaders Make
Effective church leadership is the most glamourless, thankless, and frustrating job on the planet. I make that emphatic statement based on two observations. First, I’m unaware of any other sector, profit or non-profit, that is seeing 85 percent of all operation centers facing serious decline – and the leaders of course are shouldered with the […]
The Consumer Church Metaphor
Church members don’t generally want to have their church compared to a business, but sometimes they just can’t help themselves and they fall into the metaphor themselves. The board meeting had a motion on the floor to upgrade the brand of Sunday morning coffee to one that was more appealing to the younger generation that […]
Making Disciples in Our Culture
Have you heard? The world is ending September 23. Nibiru, or infamous Planet X, is coming. All humanity shall perish. Okay, Nibiru was also supposed to come in 1995, 2003, and 2012. But… I like to say that Jesus is coming tomorrow. One of these days I’m going to be right! We just experienced an […]
Thinking Like the Unchurched
I used to fish a lot. And one of the things I had to learn was to fish where there were fish. That makes sense. But to accomplish that I had to learn how to think like a fish. Fish don’t think, but if they did they wouldn’t think the way we do. If they […]
It’s “That” Time of the Year Again
That dreaded time for most mainline churches is just around the corner. I’m referring to the fall stewardship drive. If your church is like 90 percent of mainline churches everything in October revolves around securing enough pledges to support next years budget. And for these churches the critical question is “What program do we use […]
Has the Church Been Disassociated?
These verses, 6 and 15, frame a directive of what to do with those who are literally busybodies, people who have nothing better to do than make trouble. Apparently, the Thessalonian church had as high of a mercy gift as churches today. They were tolerating bad behaviors from their members and Paul says, “Stop it!” There […]