Discipleship is possible in any size of church by using the most proven, time-tested, successful discipling process of all. The process Jesus, Paul and the early church used. A process called mentoring.
Simple Steps For Discipling Believers In A Thriving Small Church Read More »
Could mentoring be part of the answer to the current wave of people – especially younger people – leaving the church in record numbers? The possibility is worth considering.
The Best Method For Discipling Believers In A Thriving Small Church Read More »
When people are justifiably concerned about being in the same room together, we need to meet and exceed their expectations. Online and in-person both matter. We can’t neglect one for the other.
Scarcity Creates Value: Why In-Person Church Is Becoming More Important Read More »
Church health is not about making our current ministries better, it’s about doing better ministry.
Quit Trying To Fix Your Church’s Ministries – Until You Do This First Read More »
When healthy small churches grow, they become healthy big churches. When unhealthy small churches grow, they become unhealthy big churches. So instead of telling struggling churches to get bigger, let’s help them become healthy.
Bigger Fixes Nothing (What Reality TV Taught Me About Healthy Churches) Read More »
What do all these quotes have in common?
“People have stopped singing in church. We need to use hymnbooks again.”
“No one wants solid bible teaching anymore.”
“People used to have respect for God’s house. Now they show up late with a coffee in their hand, like they just rolled out of bed.”
“The church started collapsing when we stopped holding Sunday evening evangelistic services.”
“Pastors in this day and age aren’t preachers, they’re entertainers.”
All those quotes have two things in common. Three, actually.
First, they were all said or written by fellow ministers recently.
Second, they’re all backwards-looking.
Third, none of them are true!
The False Idol of “The Way It Used To Be”
Sure, the church of today has problems. But that’s nothing new. The church has always had problems. Half the books in the New Testament were written to address problems in the first century church – a church we’re guilty of over-idealizing to the point of idolatry, sometimes.
It’s a myth that the church was ever an ideal place of pure worship and fellowship. Not in the first century. Not when we were kids.
It’s also a myth that the way to fix the problems in today’s church – both real and imagined – is to go back to the way we used to do things.
Of course we need to constantly re-establish our faith in Jesus, our teaching of the bible and our obedience to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.
But none of those things are old or backwards-looking. They are the most forward-looking, paradigm-shifting, inertia-busting principles the world has ever known.
Every car needs a rear-view mirror. So does every church. But you can’t move forward by staring into it.
The past is gone. The future is coming – fast.
7 Reasons to Stop Staring In Your Church’s Rear-View Mirror Read More »
Change is healthy. Change is good. Change is normal.
All living things change. Or they die.
The church is no exception to that.
No, we don’t change the essential doctrines. They are our foundation. Messing around with the foundation doesn’t bring change, it causes collapse.
As I outlined recently in Kill Your Church Traditions Before They Kill Your Church, everything but our biblical essentials must be subject to change.
Just as churches that change the essentials will collapse, a church that isn’t willing to change on non-essentials will die.
But how do we implement change in a church that has always resisted it? That is one of the great challenges of pastoring.
One key element in that is what I call the ABCS of change – Always Be Changing Something.
Here’s an example.
The ABCS of Church Change (Always Be Changing Something) Read More »
If your church is blessed to own a building, everything you do with it – and especially outside of it – tells people something about your church’s priorities.
For example, last week I was at Starbucks with a church member when he introduced me to a friend. The friend asked me, “so what church do you pastor?”
Me: Cornerstone.
Him: Where is that?
Me: Just around the cor-
Random guy coming up behind him: The one with the skateboard ramps.
Yep, that happened.
If your church is blessed to own a building, everything you do with it – and especially outside of it – tells people something about your church’s priorities.
Our Church Is Too Small
Why is our church known as the one with the skateboard ramps? Because ministering to the youth of our community is a high priority for us. There are a lot of skateboarders around us, but no other skateboard parks in town.
Your see, our church building is too small to hold all the ministry the Lord wants us to do.
Every church building is. But it’s especially true in churches with a small building. Or no building.
If you were to visit our church and sit in the last row, there would be no more than five rows ahead of you – with all the chairs set up. It’s a small room.
For years, I butted my head against a wall (sometimes literally – ouch!) trying to trying to get a bigger building for our church to worship in.
But we live in an expensive city. If we sold our current church property of less than one acre, we could get an easy $3 million for it. But it would cost us an extra $3 million to buy a property double this size, $6 million to triple our size. And we’d still have less than three acres. If we could find three acres – and that’s a big if.
So we started asking ourselves a few questions. If we could find such a facility and if our middle-class church of 200 could somehow raise the extra $6 million, would that be the best use of all that time, energy and money? We decided it would not be.
Do Ministry FROM the Church, Not Just IN the Church Read More »
Our church building wasn’t designed for type of ministry God is currently calling our church to do.
If your church has that challenge, this post is for you. The answer our church found is something I call hauling rocks in a Volkswagen. (Keep reading. It’ll make sense, soon).
This year marks the 50th anniversary of our church facility. That’s not old as far as church buildings go, but it’s old enough to matter.
Back when it was built, most people came to church three or four to a car, wearing suits and ties or dresses. They sat politely in the choir loft or the pews, singing from hymnbooks led by an organ and piano.
Wednesday was family night. Mom and dad sat in the main room hearing a bible study, while the kids went to the back rooms for flannel-graph bible stories and the youth memorized verses for the upcoming Bible Quiz contest.
On Thursday morning, the women met for a quilting club to send blankets to missionaries. On Saturday morning the men met for a prayer breakfast.
Not anymore.
Today, people come one or two per car. Some arrive on bikes and skateboards. Everyone is dressed casually. They bring a coffee cup into church with them, sing worship songs led by a band with drums and guitars, reading the words off a screen. During the sermon, they follow along in the Bible from their phone or iPad, tweeting or Facebooking sermon points as they happen. Those who are sick or travelling check in to our live stream of each service.
Today is better.
Why? Because yesterday is gone and today is happening now.
But today has challenges my predecessors never dreamed of when they built our tiny, landlocked building.
Church Buildings Should Serve People, Not Vice Versa Read More »
Are you frustrated with trying to get people in your church to step up and do ministry?
I know there are churches with bad histories (and a bad present) where this is a legitimate issue. In fact, I pastored one. But in many churches, there may be more ministry happening than many pastors realize.
Pastors must learn to see, then support and promote ministry that’s already occurring within the church membership. But we often miss it because we have a far too limited view of what ministry really means.
Here’s an example.
4 Steps to Find, Support & Grow Your Church’s “Hidden” Ministries Read More »
