Innovative Ministry

Diversify or Die? The Future of the Church Is Stronger In Many Baskets

/ 6 minutes of reading

Beyond the surprisingly few essentials, there is no right way to do church.

As soon as we pick any method as the right method, we take a great risk. First, because it causes us to look down on other ways of doing church and, by extension, the fellow believers who worship that way. Second, because as soon as that method becomes stale or irrelevant, the Gospel appears to be stale and irrelevant, too.

The Gospel is always bigger than my, your, or anyone else’s method.

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In Celebration of Quirky Churches

/ 5 minutes of reading

I like quirky churches. And I’m pretty sure God does, too. Just take a look at the astonishing variety of churches in the New Testament.

Quirky churches don’t mess with the fundamentals. And they don’t worry about passing fads. Quirky churches are the ones that dare to do the bible stuff in a way that works for them and the people God is calling them to reach. No matter how strange it looks to everyone else.

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#BestOf2013: Tired of the Show – Hollywood, the Church & the End of the Competition

/ 4 minutes of reading

There’s a growing concern that the church needs to do a better job than we’ve been doing, or we’ll lose the next generation. The good news is that this has been the concern of every generation, yet the church continues to live and thrive.

The bad news is we will lose this generation and the next one (at least) unless we do one thing.

Stop competing with Hollywood (and with other churches) and start doing the Bible stuff better.

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#BestOf2013: The #1 Leadership Key to Spark Innovation in a Small Church

/ 4 minutes of reading

If you want to increase your chances of working with innovators who need guidance, instead of heel-draggers who need motivation, this is the best piece of advice I can give you. I now consider it to be one of my main roles as a church leader.

Find a way to say “Yes”.

Yes to people. Yes to their crazy ideas. Yes to their passion. Yes to something God may be trying to do through them that I just can’t see yet.

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“Sit Back, Relax and Enjoy the Service” May Be Killing Your Church

/ 4 minutes of reading

“Sit back, relax and enjoy the service” may be one of the most dangerous sentences ever uttered in church.

It sits side-by-side on the bad idea shelf with “Let’s erect a building and tell people they have to come here if they want to worship Jesus.”

I expect to hear promises of great customer service in a restaurant, on an airplane or in a movie theater. But the idea that church is a place where we pay others to do ministry as we sit passively, consuming and passing judgment on the product being offered may be the greatest single reason for the anemia of the modern, western church.

The church is not a customer-service-based business. We’re a community for life-transformation. But, like the monkey stubbornly clinging to the apple on the other side of the cage, we’ll never free ourselves to be biblically active communities for life-transformation until we let go of our passive, consumer-driven mindset.

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