2015
Why bother trying to resurrect an old, dying church?
I’ve heard that question a lot.
There was a time when it seemed like every pastor I went to Bible college with was following church growth principles and starting new churches. In a few years they were buying ...
There are broken churches in the world. Broken churches with failing pastors.
Most of those churches are small. Thankfully. But that’s just because 90 percent of all churches in the world are small.
So yes, there are good reasons for failing pastors to leave failing churches. ...
AWESOME /ˈôsəm/ (Adjective) Extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear.
I’ve had it with people trying to tell me how awesome I am. Especially fellow pastors.
We should know better.
I’m not sure exactly when ...
“Delegate, pastor. Delegate.”
I’ve heard that wise advice hundreds of times. Literally hundreds.
During the first few years pastoring my current church, one of my deacons, named Ron Cook, said it to me constantly. Whenever he caught me doing something ...
My church doesn’t use a discipleship curriculum.
Instead, as I wrote about in my previous two posts, we mentor people.
- Serious About Discipleship? Mentoring Is Better Than Curriculum
- Mentoring Is Better than Curriculum: Seven Steps to Better Discipleship
Those posts ...
Pastoring a small church is not for the timid.
Even the tools that are supposed to help us can leave us feeling more discouraged.
Discipleship curricuum, for instance. Whether it's designed for kids, youth or adults, most of it seems to target bigger churches. Small ...
“What discipleship curriculum do you recommend for small churches?”
I get asked that question a lot. And my answer almost always disappoints the questioner.
We don’t use a discipleship curriculum in our church.
I’ll get to why – and what ...
If you’re a long-time, faithful church member who doesn’t like the way your church is changing, I have one thing to say to you.
Thank you.
For what? We’ll get to that soon. But first I want to tell you a short story.
Trying to Keep Up
“What ...
Change is hard.
Don’t make it harder than it has to be.
If I could only give one piece of advice to pastors who are struggling to turn a dying, unhealthy, static church into a fresh, healthy, innovative one, this would be it:
Do the easy parts first.
It’s ...
Adapt or die.
That's especially true in small churches.
The good news is, because of our size, small churches have the ability to adapt more quickly than our larger counterparts. Like steering a speedboat instead of an ocean liner.
Sadly though, that’s not ...
Pastors are used to being misunderstood. It goes with the job description.
But what if the only "facts" we knew about churches and pastors were what we saw on TV and the movies?
Ugh.
Hollywood has been telling stories that include churches and pastors for ...
Just because a church is small doesn’t mean it is stuck.
But the truth is, many small churches are stuck.
If small churches want to keep being vital elements in Jesus' Great Commission strategy, we need to be able to tell the difference between a strategic small church ...
“If a church stays small, they must be doing something wrong. It can’t possibly be healthy.”
This has been an underlying assumption of many in the church growth movement. (Although it’s usually more subtly stated than that.) But, as with any assumption, ...
Many people think I’m settling for less when I talk about the value of small churches. Yes, they've actually said that to me.
I appreciate their concern. But they don’t need to worry. I’m not settling for less.
I would be settling for less if my entire goal ...
Breaking through the 200 barrier.
Sometimes it feels like that's the only pastoring principle anyone has talked about for the past 30 years.
In case you haven’t heard of it, the 200 barrier is the invisible ceiling a church must break through if it doesn’t ...