2015
A lot of people don't like the term 'small church'. Including many small church pastors.
Before I wrote The Grasshopper Myth and started working with other small church pastors, I debated using a different term for churches like ours. After all, I wanted to help small ...
How do we keep Christ in Christmas when Santa is everywhere we look? Can we have fun with the Santa story? Or is that diluting the true meaning of Christmas?
What’s a Christian parent to do?
I have good news. When it comes to Christmas, we really can have it all. Jesus and ...
39 verses. Less than 900 words.
That’s everything Matthew and Luke wrote about the birth of Jesus.
If you add Jesus’ genealogies and the birth of John the Baptist, you can more than triple its length. But if you go the other direction and remove the Magi who, as we ...
Sin is real.
But grace is stronger.
Hell exists.
But grace is greater.
Justice demands retribution.
But grace is God’s scandalous response.
Why are some Christians so quick to diminish simple statements of grace with a ‘yeah, but’ response?
Whenever ...
When people say we don't go to church, we are the church, I resonate very deeply with them.
The church is not a building or an event. It's people.
But there's a part of me that resists saying we don't go to church. Because we do.
Church is not just who ...
For a guy who doesn’t preach on politics, my recent post about not preaching on politics sure has me talking a lot about politics lately.
Last week, I wrote My Silence Is Not Compliance: Why I Don’t Preach Politics from the Pulpit. It generated some great responses ...
Some people love to complain. Many of them find their way into our churches. They especially like small churches.
In a big church, chronic complainers get lost in the crowd. The pastor may only be aware of them by email (but so many emails!).
In a small church their voice ...
Small churches don't need to make big church choices in order to become great churches.
We need to make better small church choices.
After my last post, Want Your Small Church to Be Great? Make Good Small Church Choices, many readers wanted to know what good small ...
For years, we've been told that the reason so many churches stay small is because they’re making small church choices.
I understand why people say that. Many decisions made in small churches have inhibited their health and growth.
But it’s not entirely ...
Social media has become our face to the world.
When we use it well, it can be a great tool for ministry and relationships.
When it’s done badly, it can cause massive, sometimes irreversible harm – to others, ourselves, our churches and the message of the gospel. ...
I don’t speak on political issues in my church.
I don’t support candidates.
I don’t address legislation.
I never take a side on controversial news items when I'm behind the pulpit.
And I’m tired of being called a coward because of it.
On ...
We want numbers to verify our successes.
There are two huge problems with that sentence – and they’re found in the words numbers and our.
First, not all successes have numbers to verify them.
Second, the successes of the church are not our successes.
We ...
The Pilgrims didn’t plan to change the world. But they did, anyway.
They began as a small church that wanted to worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience. They ended up founding a nation and sparking a revolution.
This week, Americans celebrate ...
Why bother?
Small churches almost never have enough money, people or facilities to be innovative, right?
That’s precisely the reason we must be innovative.
Some of the world’s greatest ideas, products and revolutions came about, not because someone had unlimited ...
Churches can handle change.
If you’ve tried and failed to change things at your church, that may not feel true, but it is.
The problem in many churches isn't that they can't handle change. It's that they don't like being surprised by changes. And ...
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