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 […]
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 don’t […]
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 […]