Celebrate Forty Days of March Madness

From Ash Wednesday until Easter most churches do some kind of spiritual preparation campaign. In our sports dominated culture, I suggest you use men’s interest in college basketball to attract new visitors to your church.

During college basketball’s championship tourney commonly called March Madness or as CBS television has dubbed it, “The Road to the […]

What Do You Say After “Hello”?

As a church pastor, training your hospitality team to hone their greeting and engagement skills will help grow your congregation. Seeing that your guests are warmly welcomed by many of your members and engaged in conversation by a few will help bring back your first time visitors by treating them as V.I.P. guests.

We trained […]

Your First Impression Greeters

This is Part Two of a Three Part series on effective hospitality. (Part 1)

Help your greeting team to understand the importance of the first impression that they make on your guests. These non-paid ministers on your greeting team are at the heart of your church’s growth. Invest time in training them to offer appropriate […]

Welcoming Your Guests (Part 1)

Every church thinks they are the friendliest church in town.

If your church is like the one I last pastored, it still uses a “Welcome” time in the service.” In this part of the service the expectation is that the people stand and greet those around them. This usually involves people tossing a quick […]

Be a Mentor and Be Mentored

The word “mentor” is defined as “a wise and trusted counselor or teacher.” Throughout my over 30 years of pastoral ministry, I have had many trusted teachers who have counseled me, encouraged me, corrected me and redirected when I had made some poor decisions. In similar fashion I have made it a point […]

No One Left Behind

I was watching one of “those” movies the other day. In this case, the space ships were flying and the ground troops were storming the asteroid. Suddenly reinforcements for the axis of evil show up and the good guys have to regroup and retreat to fight another day. Except one of the ground troops […]

Attracting Men To Your Church

Some years ago, after reading David Murrow’s book, “Why Men Hate Going to Church”, I realized that most people assume that men are just less religious than women, but this is untrue. Other religions have little trouble attracting males and Jesus was a magnet to men. But today, few men are living for Christ, […]

But SOMEBODY’s Got to Do It!

Church Work is never ending. There’s always something that needs to get done.

The worship slides need to be updated

The trash needs to be emptied

The newsletter needs to be edited

The plumber needs to be called

The copier needs to be replaced (or updated or unjammed …)

In recent weeks, one pastor or another has given me […]

Fear Not

A growing church is a byproduct of courageous leadership that prays boldly for a vision from God and then takes bold action that honors the vision God has given. But too many churches have traded in vision for the status quo. They have opted for comfort in doing what we’ve always done before rather than […]