Public Prayer: A Brief How-To Guide
There’s more to public praying than just heeding some “thou shalt nots.” For example, thou shalt not use the words ‘Lord’ or ‘just’ as commas between long, run-on sentences: (“We just pray, Lord, that you would just hear our prayers, Lord, and just touch the hearts and souls of the congregation, Lord…”) and thou shalt not […]
Effective Staffing for Vital Churches
Too often, churches get staffing wrong. I know in their heart of hearts they believe that by hiring age-graded directors/pastors/associate ministers they’re staffing to grow, but in today’s culture, especially in our less than optimum giving culture, it’s simply no longer feasible to hire a new staff member for every 100–125 church members (which is […]
Growth Barriers
Yesterday, I wrote about the three changes every pastor needs to go through when a church moves through a growth barrier. Although there are many interpretations of what these barriers are in our book, Effective Staffing for Vital Churches, we dealt with the broad barriers of 100, 200, 500, and 1000 and beyond. Passing through […]
The Leadership Process
Every time a leader goes through a church barrier, three changes have to take place in the leader’s life: Developing a new skill set Changing his or her value system Changing the way he or she spends their time. My partner and I wrote extensively about these three changes in our new book, Effective Staffing for Vital […]
The Four Core Processes
I mentioned two things when I spoke one Thursday afternoon in Baltimore: there are only four things that grow a church, and I had never seen a church doing those four things that wasn’t growing. In fact, I challenged my listeners to put those four things in place. I said if they didn’t grow after […]
Delegate, Empower, Grow
If you can learn to delegate and empower others, you can grow a church. Sure, I know … handing off things you think are your responsibilities isn’t easy. In my experience, for most pastors it’s one of the hardest things you’ll have to learn. If you’re like most pastors, you got into this line of […]