What Will It Take For Mainline Denominations To Grow Again?
Nobody will argue that mainline denominations are in decline. It doesn’t matter if the decline is 80 percent or 65 percent as suggested by a recent Barna study, mainline denominations are seeing fewer and fewer people in the pews. This decline begs a question – “What will it take to turn this decline around?” Like […]
The Rule of One
The other day I had an inquiry from a pastor I am coaching. Her question was “You said we need to move our 8:30 contemporary service to 9:45 because it is too early to reach young adults. But we have one family who refuses to move. What should we do?” The Rule of One answers […]
Little Fails Can Be Epic
I hear a lot about “epic fails” these days. Typically, that means something has gone very wrong – and ended up on YouTube or Facebook. The truck was too tall for the underpass and it took out the bridge. The boat sank because it took on sixteen too many passengers. The kid broke his arm […]
Two Skills Every Pastor and Staff Must Master
There are many leadership skills that are important. But there are two skills that overshadow all the rest. If a staff can master these two skills, there is no way a church can keep from reaching more people for Christ. Want to know what they are? Sure you do. So here goes. Skill Number One: […]
Reaching Millennials
Remember when it was all the rage in mainline churches to write and preach about how different it was to try to reach Baby Boomers, then Gen Xers? Now we are faced with the same challenge to reach Millennials. It seems that things never change for mainliners – we are always behind the curve, looking […]
Is It Time to Drop the Requirement?
I’ve been watching the trend escalate for the past decade. For centuries, it has been the practice of non-mainline groups. But for the last couple of decades its has been a rising factor in thriving churches. I’m talking about the rise and effectiveness of non-seminary trained pastors. It used to be that pastors like enormously […]