2016
Show me a spiritually healthy church and I’ll show you a spiritually healthy pastor. Show me a spiritually unhealthy church and I’ll show you a spiritually unhealthy pastor.
If you’ve been the pastor of your church for five years or longer, it’s time to ...
Our churches are filled with normal people.
Normal to us, that is. Normal like you and me.
The church is also filled with freaks and weirdos. Some churches are filled with freaks and weirdos sporting tattoos and piercings. Others are filled with freaks and weirdos in suits and ...
I don’t like meetings.
Planning meetings, board meetings, staff meetings, committee meetings…
If I could jettison one aspect of pastoring, that’s what I would get rid of.
So why do I have them? Because, when done well, ministry team meetings are an essential ...
What would the world look like if all the megachurches disappeared tomorrow? Would it be a better place? Or worse?
I propose it would be worse.
But, by the way some of my fellow small church pastors talk (and the way I used to talk), you’d think that if all the megachurches ...
What kind of culture does your church have?
For many years, the denominational tag told people everything they needed to know before they walked in the door. And not just theologically. Even the style of clothing and music were similar throughout each denomination.
In recent years, ...
Criticism is a valuable tool.
When it’s done right it can, and has, changed hearts and minds.
Martin Luther did it with his 95 Theses. Martin Luther King Jr. did it with his I Have a Dream speech. Long before both of them, Jesus did it with the Sermon On the Mount.
Criticism ...
When did all the preachers become statistics junkies?
I can’t remember the last church leadership book or seminar that didn’t emphasize the value of setting goals for your church, then using some kind of metric to determine whether-or-not we are succeeding at reaching ...
Most small church pastors are shepherds.
It’s not our choice, it’s our calling.
There are good reasons for pastors of large churches to move from the shepherding/pastoring model to the ranching/management model. But most pastors aren’t called to be ranchers or ...
Small churches are not scaled-down versions of megachurches.
We’re different, not just in size, but in methodology. A lot of what works in big churches just won’t work in smaller ones. And vice versa.
But there are some overlapping principles. Starting with the scriptural ...
Small churches receive a lot from our megachurch friends. We read their books, sing their songs, use their curriculum and attend their seminars. And we’re grateful.
But the benefits don’t have to flow only one way. There are important, though less obvious principles ...
I had another one of those Sundays, recently. We started church with more people on the platform than in the congregation. Well, almost.
Sure, it’s summer. People have good reasons to be gone. But it still feels awful.
But why? I’m the small church guy, after all. ...
No church is automatically friendly. Especially not to outsiders coming in.
In some places, friendliness is harder than others. Like where I live, in Orange County California.
The Orange County population is so varied, so new and so busy, we don't develop relationships without ...
I don’t want to pile on. Honest I don’t. So I pray this post doesn’t come across that way.
I was sad when I read the news about Perry Noble being asked to step down from NewSpring church this past weekend. I still am. (If you haven’t heard about it, catch ...
In my last post, Grow It or Close It? Is there a Third Option for Struggling Small Churches?, we established that a struggling small church can become a healthy small church.
But there’s an inevitable question that follows. Namely, how?
How do we help a church move from ...
What are we going to do about all those struggling small churches?
That question has been the subject of endless hand-wringing in the last several decades. A lot of time and money has been invested in conversations, books, seminars and classes attempting to fix this problem.
Struggling ...
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