On Not Being Nice for the Sake of the Gospel
The following is one of our most asked-for blog posts. It was written two decades ago, but it is still as relevant today as it was then. Throughout all my consulting ministry, I have seen a disturbing pattern: most established churches are held hostage by one or two bullies. Either one individual or a small group […]
Three Kinds of Church Members
A family left the church recently because they didn’t like one of the changes in worship. The pastor had been confronted by the board chair who demanded the pastor “Go after them and bring them back.” The pastor kept his cool and gently sidestepped the confrontation, but gave me (his coach) a call the next […]
Stop Losing Staff
“I’m tired of training staff only to see them leave to work in another church.” I heard pastors say this a lot when I was consulting. I always wondered what would happen if they didn’t train them and they stayed long term. “My staff is so competent that I’m afraid some church will steal them […]
No Pain, No Gain
ure, it’s a cliché. No doubt about it. But it doesn’t make it any less true. Although the pastor had been there for a couple years, he was just one in a long line of bullied leaders. No one had any idea what to do about her, but she’d been known to brag about the […]
I Hate Problems
I just got back from two weeks of vacation. I didn’t respond to emails, didn’t answer texts, ignored all social media, and didn’t answer my phone. In other words, I took a “healthy” vacation. But the day before I went back to the church office, I began to wonder what “problems” I’d have to face […]
The Demise of Cash and Checks
The other day I said something online about writing a check and I received guffaws from some of my colleagues. I didn’t understand the intensity of their response to my comment, so I investigated why they responded so negatively to my comment about writing a check. Here’s what I found. U.S. consumers and businesses wrote […]