Church Strategy
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Whine or Adapt?
As I write, my beloved Denver Nuggets are being manhandled by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the NBA playoffs. They are down 2-0 in the series, having lost both games at home. In game 2 they completely melted down, losing by 26 points. Early in the first half the Nuggets’ coach, Mike Malone, made a rare…
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Should Women Preach or Lead in the Church? Maybe…
While being interviewed by key leaders for a teaching pastor position, an elder asked me whether I was a complementarian or egalitarian. I confidently stated that I was a complementarian, and than began down the long list of women pastors on my spiritual journey. The group looked more and more uncomfortable the further I went…
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What if everything we knew about church changed? What then?
Sundays feel weird. Normally Sundays are energizing, challenging and exhausting. On Sundays we get to do the things we are wired to do; preach, lead worship, teach kids, and connect with people we love. Now a typical Sunday consists of watching a pre-recorded service and making small talk in an online chat room. When we…
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Stop counting attendance and start counting care
For the past 30 years the primary indicator of health in churches is weekend attendance. We know that “healthy things grow”, so obviously the faster our church grows the healthier it is. We celebrate the largest and fastest growing churches as the models we all want to emulate. When a new church plant explodes in…
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Why your church needs to be thinking 100 years down the road
Recently I heard the founder of Patagonia, Yvon Choulnard, describe a very difficult season in the early days of the company when growth outpaced revenue and they had to lay off some of the workers. This was incredibly difficult fo Choulnard because he tried to treat his employees like family. The turning point came when…
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Cheerleaders, kiddie pools and middle school accountants; how lead pastors can reach the next generation
Tomorrow morning at a ridiculously early hour I will head to The Orange Conference, a gathering of over 8000 NextGen leaders from all over the world. I have been attending or teaching at this conference for over a decade because I can’t think of a better way to invest than to sow into the people…
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Kicking Camels on the Monday Before Easter
It’s the Monday before Easter, Super Bowl week for the local church. This weekend you will likely see more new faces at church than you’ve seen all year. You and the other leaders at your church are focused on creating the best experience possible for your guests, and praying that at least some will consider…
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Is your event a cul-de-sac or a roundabout?
We love living on a cul-de-sac. We know many of our neighbors, the grandkids can play in the street without a lot of concern and we never have cars speeding through the neighborhood. (If they did they’d wind up in our neighbors front yard.) Cul-de-sacs make a great destination, but a lousy thoroughfare. The opposite…
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Is This the Best a Man Can Get?
There has been a great deal of controversy around Gillette’s commercial in which they address “toxic masculinity” played out in a “boys will be boys” mindset, bullying and objectification of women. Whether you agree or disagree with the viewpoint of the commercial, I think it raises an important question for church leadership, “Is this the…
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You can’t measure Gospel impact
For my pastor friends: I wonder how the speaker felt at the end of the service that night. She and a friend had been so moved by an encounter with the Holy Spirit they decided to travel from town to town in western Oklahoma, sharing the Gospel with whoever showed up. They didn’t own a…