6 Ways to Safeguard Pastors
Pastors live in the midst of many people. But the secret is they are often lonely and depressed. Pastors suffer from a lack of friends. Be honest, if you are a pastor, are you lonely? If you go to church, do you think your pastor may be lonely? Not only is this an issue for […]
Church Planters Must Be Graciously Ruthless
I tell church planters, “If you can’t show someone the door and go home and sleep well that night, you shouldn’t plant.” One of the things we’ve learned over the years is that planting a church is hard, lonely work. If you can’t let criticism run off your back like water off a duck and aren’t […]
Dare We Peek into the Future?
Recently, I received a phone call from an old client I had not heard from for several years. He called to ask if I had given any thought to making a new list of predictions about the future. He had just re-read my 1993 book entitled Dancing with Dinosaurs and was impressed that the list […]
The Greatest Tragedy in History
If you were asked what you considered to be the greatest tragedy in history, what would you say? Surely some would pick the Holocaust. Others in the U.S. might pick 9/11. Still others would settle on Hurricane Katrina. There might be a few who would reach back in history and choose the Great Plague that […]
Stop Suffering From Mega Church Envy
We live in a time when the nature of church is changing dramatically. There are a few very large congregations, but most churches are quite small. Do I have to be a mega church pastor to be “successful?” What does it mean to be church in our time? Let’s be honest. How do we feel […]
The Top Staff Positions for Churches Reaching Young Adults
A client recently posed a staffing question and asked me to address it. “Why should the first hired staff positions be (1) a worship leader for a non-traditional style worship service; and (2) a children’s director?” The answer is as simple as it should be self-evident. Without a steady influx of young families to the […]