It’s a Good Idea … For Someone

When I wrote If You’ve Got to Herd Cats, You’ll Need a Big Mouse, I wrote about the reality that your church members have no end of “good ideas” about the direction their church should go. Those good ideas include what new programs should be started, what the church needs to stop doing, and […]

Obsessions That Have to Go for Multiplication to Happen

The more I study the multiplication movement, the more I realize that for it to be successful, several sacred cows will have to be slaughtered. These sacred cows will be much harder for mainline churches to barbeque than for independents. Let me share the biggest ones.
Seminary training.
Most of the training of church planters is […]

Developing the Leaders Under Your Nose

I suppose it’s out there somewhere, but I’ve never found it: the church that has more leaders than it knows what to do with. In fact, most churches I visit have a leadership vacuum. There appears to be more ministries and missions than there are dedicated disciples willing to lead them.

How can your church […]

Kick Start Growth

The majority of churches in North America have been experiencing over a decade of decline or plateau. Often, common sense prevails and church leaders will endeavor to put church growth plans into place that will grow their church on a slow, and yet consistent, basis. The fact is, though, churches rarely grow slowly and […]

Sermon-Based Small Groups

“What curriculum should my small group use?” More and more vital churches are answering that question by using sermon-based material.

Larry Osborne, pastor at North Coast Church in San Diego, has helped popularize this approach, which makes the weekend sermon the basis for the small group discussion the following week. Not simply a review of […]

5 Ways You Make Your Guests Feel Comfortable

Church visitors come and church visitors go. And most of the time, it’s just like that. In a typical North American church, less than 15 percent of all first-time visitors ever return. Over the years, I’ve spoken with hundreds of business owners and every one of them has agreed – if they only retained […]

Innovation Comes from the Edges

Where does innovation most often occur?  Innovation most often happens on the edges and because of that we need to stay close to those on the cutting edge.

Our NewThing Networks has gone from one network to three networks and doubled the number of churches  in the last year.  And because of our investment in resources and […]

Why I Prefer Antioch over the Jerusalem Church

I believe the primary mission of the local church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ.  If I believe that, then everything my church does should be pointed toward that goal.  If I believe that, then I must also believe that making disciples doesn’t begin inside the church, it begins out in the community […]

How to Get Standing Room Only Crowd for Training

I was asking a DOM recently about doing a conference in his Association. His response was, “No one comes to training anymore.”

The email came at an odd time for me. I had just returned from my third trip to Shiloh Terrace Baptist in Dallas were we had to bring extra chairs in twice to […]