For the life of me I don’t understand why anyone would try to revitalize a church. But I did and I’m glad I did. Still, when I consider that the vast majority of pastors who try either fail or lose their job, I have to wonder why they would try, or why I tried? […]
My post, titled “Is It Time To Drop The Requirement,” resulted in several responses, which prompted me to do a little more digging into the subject of ordination. And after extensive reading on the subject I conclude there is absolutely no mention of ordination in the New Testament. By the second part of the […]
I’ve been watching the trend escalate for the past decade. For centuries, it has been the practice of non-mainline groups. But for the last couple of decades its has been a rising factor in thriving churches.
I’m talking about the rise and effectiveness of non-seminary trained pastors. It used to be that pastors like enormously […]
Why do people resist church so much? Yes, those who are a part of church need to be concerned with the valid aspects of the critique that religious people are hypocrites and out-of-touch with the intersection of faith and daily life. But there is a significant underlying reason. Our culture believes that most everyone […]
If you’re a pastor, you’ve likely heard it. “We need a pastor who is more of a shepherd!”
What does that mean? I interpret that to be the 20th century American fallacy that we pay people to do things on our behalf, including pastors to do the primary ministry activities. Go visit members in need. […]
Two of the most important texts for our time are Matt. 9:36-38 and John 20:21. In this post we will examine why.
I began sharing the faith in the late 1950s. Back then I could share the four spiritual laws and in forty-five minutes lead someone to Christ. It was also the custom that most […]
My denomination, The United Methodist Church, has just initiated a program called “Praying Our Way Forward.” This is a denomination wide program that begins with Phase One, which is encouraging all the Bishops to agree to spend 15 minutes a day between now and mid-November. So far 84 Bishops are signed up.
Now calling for […]
The one ingredient a Level 5 church cannot do without is radical discipleship. Raising up radical disciples is the underbelly of the exponential church planting movement. It’s impossible to exponentially plant churches without greatly expanding the breadth and depth of your disciples. So much of the focus of multiplication is on the raising up and […]
One of the key elements of most discipleship pipelines I’ve seen is what I call missional small groups. The problem is, when most people hear “small groups” they think of Bible studies, which is far from what is meant by missional small groups. So let’s look at the difference.
Most ineffective small groups are primarily […]
I was having a conversation with a church’s staff members the other day and mentioned that the words that church leaders should dread are, “That won’t happen again, will it?” As in, if that happens again – or perhaps just a couple more times – then they will be replaced by someone who will […]
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