The latest blog post by Bill Easum sparked a number of lively conversations on both our LinkedIn and Facebook accounts. I started to reply there, but as my response grew, it seemed more appropriate to bring it here to the public forum.
The responses mostly included assertions that the church has become too focused or […]
You’ve heard me say it before. If you’ve got to herd cats, you’ll need a bigger mouse.
Your church cats will chase the biggest mouse in the room, and if your Big Mouse Vision is smaller than someone else’s, you’ll lose their attention every time. The wise and successful pastor stays on his/her knees until […]
There’s recently been a wave of interest by judicatories in starting Peer Coaching events among their church leaders. With the inevitable failure of the “Let’s assign the new kid an experienced pastor to mentor them” program, peer coaching seems like the next best thing since frozen Snicker bars. The problem is, although Peer Coaching […]
By
Bill Easum
The following works well in a traditional church.
STEP ONE: Train all staff to identify, recruit, equip, and lead laity into ministry rather than simply doing the ministry for them.
STEP TWO: Require all staff to develop a list of 25 new potential leaders during the year that they will recommend to the Nominating Committee.
STEP […]
Almost everyone commutes. In Seattle, the “experts” say the average commute is 23.8 minutes, but anyone who works in the city will tell you that a twenty-four minute commute is a luxury that only happens on Sunday morning or sometime after midnight. However, even if you never leave your home to “go to work,” […]
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 […]
In my book Dancing with Dinosaurs (1993) I had a chapter in which I said adult Sunday School was coming to an end and was being replaced by small groups that meet in homes. You should have heard the negative letters I received. One person called me a heretic. Another called me stupid. I […]
The golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have done unto you,” has been the hallmark of the church for nearly two millennia. However, the rule has lately been misapplied to mean, “We’ll do unto others as we would have done unto us… so all those ‘others’ will have to like what we […]
Of all the commercials that aired on the last Super Bowl broadcast, one stood out to me. Larry David, the famously crotchety actor known for Curb Your Enthusiasm and his creative partnership with Jerry on “Seinfeld”, plays his cynicism for laughs by mocking humanity’s great innovations. The wheel, he declares, is “a miss.” He […]
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