How to Promote Your Church’s Values While Fundraising

Fundraising is a key part of sustaining your church as it provides the resources you need to run your church properly and support your programming. However, at its core, fundraising is about gathering the funds necessary to fulfill your church’s vision and uphold your values.

When you incorporate your church’s values into your fundraising, you […]

How to Boost Discipleship Participation

Way back in the world of Christendom, discipleship was presumed to be a part of what the church did. Back then, most church members had been raised in the church and they would bring their children as a matter of course.

Today, however, the world has changed dramatically. Two generations now exist in the US that […]

Leadership Roles

Confusion frequently abounds regarding the functional role of the official Leadership Team of the congregation. Congregations and leaders themselves seldom seriously consider the diversity of expectations surrounding the roles of church leadership. Think about the different perspectives present within a congregation regarding how leaders, whether that be the elders, council, pastor, session, board, or […]

Coming Out From Under Our Rocks: Returning to Active Ministry (and a few things you might not know about periodical cicadae)

Let me start by saying, “I am not an insect person.” I remember screaming my way into the house during Summers growing up in Pittsburgh, PA because I saw a grasshopper jump in our small yard. I can’t tell you how many times I tested my parents’ patience by refusing to go out to […]

Why Leadership, Not Calling, Determines Ministry Success

Once upon a time, I was a young, optimistic student pastor appointed to a small Methodist church in Hinson’s Crossroads, Florida. The church, nestled at the end of a paved road that gave way to a winding red clay path, had just 38 members. Despite being told that growth was unlikely, I rolled up […]

Online Church Fundraising: 5 Best Practices To Follow

Churches like yours depend on donations from congregation members to not only make their operations possible but also grow the church and its impact on the community. Seeing as 63 percent of donors prefer to give online, your church should focus its fundraising efforts there.

But in an increasingly digital world, there are many players—from […]

Know the Competition

In my community, there are a couple of new church starts kicking off. One’s in my denomination and another is in a denomination not too dissimilar to mine.

I’ve met both pastors. They’re younger than I am. They have more energy than I have (barely!). And they both have denominational funding behind them.

But […]

Small Church – Hope for the Future

This week I’ve been in the midst of a couple discussions about the small church.

It started when a colleague cited a statistic he’d read that 94 percent of churches in North America were small churches. I was tempted to reply that God must love small churches, since the Lord apparently created so many, but […]

Worship in Postmodern World

Worship in a Postmodern Culture

Alan Roxburgh compares the lingering Christendom mindset among relevance-challenged clergy to a pleasure ride on the river Seine.  Picture, if you will, an ecclesiastical barge filled with graying church leaders, who, – between discussions about historical criticism, incomprehensible invocations, and hopelessly obtuse prayers – nod approvingly as the edifices of Christendom’s […]