Summer Priorities: Prayer Walking

Time spent “prayer walking” is well worthwhile during the summer. Target the immediate streets or neighborhoods, but also specific areas where church members tend to reside, or from which church visitors seem to come. The warmer weather not only makes it easy for you to walk, but the public moves their daily behavior outdoors. […]

How to Pray When God Can’t Keep Your Attention

I was recently interviewed by Janelle Dixon about my book Prayer for People Who Can’t Sit Still. This is the article she wrote …

I was not blessed with a quiet mind. It’s a switchboard of
extemporaneous ideas, thoughts, memories and questions that is always on,
always lit up, always busy. Did I plug in the […]

Is Your Church Really a Light On the Hill?

In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.Matthew 5:16

This is one of those y’all commands – a command given not to an individual, but to the church, the community, the ekklessia (Greek you=2nd person plural, that is “y’all”).

And […]

Reconnecting Missing Members

We hear it at probably 90 percent of the consultations we lead. Some good hearted person asks us if we’re going to make some recommendations on how the church can reconnect and reactivate formerly active church members who have left the church.

No one likes our answer. No one.

“Yes, we’ll be making a […]

Embrace Entertainment

A recent comment about a local big box church (that’s successfully reaching, baptizing, and discipling young adults):

“They’ve given in to entertainment evangelism.”

… as if entertainment was a four-letter, distasteful, disgusting word.

If you’re going to reach young adults I’ve got three words for you:

Get
over
it!

Jesus specialized in entertainment evangelism. He told stories, AKA parables. He captured […]

Make This Father’s Day Service Special

Let’s face it, Father’s Day is the Rodney Dangerfield of holidays. It’s the, “I get-no-respect” little brother to Mother’s Day. Interestingly, the American version of Father’s Day was first proposed in 1909 by a grateful daughter, Sonora Smart Dodd. Her father, a Civil War veteran, singlehandedly raised six children after his wife died in […]

Fear Not

I love watching
movies at Christmastime and there is hardly a holiday season that goes by that
doesn’t have me enjoying, White Christmas, Miracle on 34th street
and It’s A Wonderful Life. Last week A Charlie Brown Christmas aired on
national prime time television for the 53rd time. In a world where the latest
greatest technology is outdated in a […]

Chalk Talk

This week marks the beginning
of Fall and many of us catch a bug this time of year. I’m not talking about the
common cold or the flu. I’m talking about “football fever” that infects
millions of Americans about now. Now I know that this epidemic has reduced some
with the recent controversy over political demonstrations during the […]

New Wine Part 5

Change is difficult. Change in a church is even harder, sometimes, nearly impossible. So what do you do if you are trying to change the culture of a traditional church that is dying? First let me tell you what you don’t do. I most always suggest to churches that they don’t radically change their worship […]