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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 […]

Planting Priorities

The other day I got a Twitter question from Phil Longmire, a church planter in Richmond, TX. We were talking about church planting priorities and I was saying how important it is for planters to be out of the office, away from the computer, and out in the public’s eye. So he Tweeted me and […]

The 7-11 Jesus

During Advent, I’ve been reading James A. Harnish’s Advent Calendar of Devotions from Abingdon Press. One of the short passages sent my head reeling and my heart racing: “Jesus was not born in Bethlehem to make the darkness more manageable.” And yet, this is the very gospel we see presented in church after church after […]