Innovative Ministry

Innovative Churches Have Pastors with a Healthy Curiosity

/ 4 minutes of reading

There are some really boring pastors out there. Boring pastors of bored churches.

At least I assume so, because I’ve heard the tales from their church members – usually former church members.

But, despite all the stories, I haven’t actually met many boring pastors.

Because boring pastors tend not to hang out with other pastors. They don’t come to conferences. They don’t read books or blogs. They don’t do much of anything, because they lack one vital ingredient that’s found in pastors who are always open to new ideas and vibrant relationships. A healthy curiosity.

(To be fair, that’s not the only reason many pastors don’t read the latest books or go to conferences. Many Small Church pastors would read the latest books if they could afford them, and most bivocational pastors would go to conferences if they could get the time off. They’re not the boring ones. They’re the unsung heroes.)

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Church Methods Don’t Matter – Until We Do Them Wrong

/ 5 minutes of reading

We won’t change the world by adopting new methods in the church. We won’t even save the church that way.

What will change the world is a praying church. A loving church. A worshiping church. An outwardly-focused church. A Jesus-centric church.

The Great Commandment and the Great Commission are all that matter. They haven’t changed in 2,000 years because they don’t need to.

But.

I’m going to use new methods anyway.

I’ll tell you why in a moment. But first, a lesson in typesetting. (No, I’m not crazy. My mother had me tested).

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Should the Church Be About Transformation? Or Stability?

/ 4 minutes of reading

Transformation or stability.

Sometimes it seems like every pastor I meet lives in one of those two camps.

On the transformation side are churches with names like Catalyst, Thrive and Elevation. They’re led by pastors who are constantly driving for their church to be an agent of change. Some have even changed the title of “pastor” to “lead catalyst” to reflect that. These churches thrive on finding new, innovative ways to present the Gospel.

On the other side are churches and pastors that are digging in. They’re fighting what often feels like a losing battle against waves of negative societal change. They like to describe their church as bible-believing, fundamentalist, and/or “First (insert your denominational name here) Church”. One church sign I saw recently told everyone who drove by that they were Old-Fashioned, Hymn-Singing and Bible Believing.

So who’s right? The church as change agent? Or the church as a stable foundation?

Both. And Neither.

Both are right, because the church needs to be a transformative community. And the church needs to stand for eternal truths.

Neither are right if they’re picking one side to the exclusion of the other, because we’re not called to be one or the other, but both/and.

Any church that sacrifices eternal truths for current trends is making a big mistake. And any church that refuses to change their methods to reach a new generation with eternal truths is just as wrong.

One is too trendy to last. The other is too stuck-in-a-rut to be relevant.

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Innovation without Compromise: 5 Church Leadership Lessons from the Life of Billy Graham

/ 7 minutes of reading

Most of us have never known a world without Billy Graham.

Graham came to international prominence in the historic Los Angeles Crusade in 1949. So if you are 75 today, he was already famous when you were just ten years old.

Billy is 96 now. His crusade days are long over. But his legacy stills looms large.

Personally, aside from members of my family and Jesus himself, no one has had a longer or stronger impact on my life and ministry that this man whom I’ve never had the privilege of meeting.

Many of us can say the same thing.

Last month, my wife and I had the chance to visit the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina. It is a a fitting tribute. It’s down-home and simple, even corny at times, yet always done with understated excellence.

As we walked through the exhibits, I was struck by the realization that every Christian, and especially everyone in ministry, can learn several lessons from the life of this humble servant whose life still impacts the world.

Especially today, when it seems almost impossible to make a simple statement about faith without offending this or that ideological camp, Graham stands high as someone who set the standard for never compromising, but never causing unnecessary offense either.

As I ate a tasty, nutritious, modestly-priced lunch (of course) in the library’s cafeteria, I jotted down these 5 lessons we could all learn from the extraordinary life and legacy of Billy Graham.

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Church Leaders Need to Stop Playing H.O.R.S.E. with Each Other

/ 4 minutes of reading

I love learning the best ideas, methods and principles that I can find from as many people as possible.

But, no matter how good their idea is, no matter how well it’s working at their church, I’ve learned the hard way that my church isn’t their church. Because of that, I’d like to pass this simple principle on to you today, so you don’t have to learn it the hard way like I did.

We need to stop playing H.O.R.S.E. with other churches and church leaders.

For those who don’t know what that means, H.O.R.S.E. is a game basketball players like to challenge each other with. The first player tries a trick shot, then the other players have to duplicate it. If they do, they stay in the game. If they don’t, they add a letter until they’ve spelled H.O.R.S.E. and they’re out.

This happens in the church all the time.

We go to a pastoral leadership conference, where we hear about a church that’s discovered a new way to do a certain kind of ministry, so we go home and try to duplicate their trick shot, only to fail miserably. Then we wonder “what’s wrong with me and my church that we couldn’t pull it off?”

After trying and failing enough times, many ministers find themselves leaving ministry entirely because they couldn’t duplicate the success of others. But we’re not called to duplicate the success of others.

Learning principles from other churches is great. But trying to copy their methods, programs or style is just the church version of H.O.R.S.E.

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The Problem With “The Problem With the Church Today…”

/ 4 minutes of reading

When people complain that today’s church services aren’t as good as they should be, that our worship is often more about entertainment than participation, that the preaching is often shallow, that discipleship is sometimes non-existent… I have to reluctantly agree.

When they long for the days when we did church better than we do it today… I wholeheartedly disagree.

We’ve never done church better than this.

Sure there have been pockets of greatness. There still are today.

And there are always good, healthy churches to be found of all shapes and sizes. I’ve been in a lot of them and I pastor one.

But the less-than-ideal church service is nothing new.

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God Has Never Done a New Thing Using Old Songs

/ 9 minutes of reading

Every old song used to be a new song.

I wonder who the first worship director was who said “hey, I like that new song John Newton wrote,” before introducing Amazing Grace to the church.

Whoever it was, he probably had to deal with complaints from church members who didn’t think it was as good as the hymns they were used to singing. “In six verses the name of Jesus isn’t mentioned once, but it says ‘me’, ‘my’ and ‘I’ thirteen times! Today’s songs are so self-centered and shallow!”

In a recent post entitled, Six Reasons Some Churches Are Moving Back to One Worship Style, Thom Rainer tells us that, according to some of his recent surveys, the contemporary vs traditional worship wars may be drawing to a close.

I hope new music won.

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Church Members Aren’t Attending as Often – Are They Trying to Tell Us Something?

/ 8 minutes of reading

Church attendance is down in the western world. Why? Because church members don’t attend as consistently as they used to. That’s not the only reason church attendance is down, of course. It’s not even the main reason. But it’s definitely a trend I have seen as a pastor. And it needs to be addressed. But how?

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Big and Impersonal, Or Small and Pathetic: Are Those My Only Church Options?

/ 5 minutes of reading

Big churches have a reputation for being overly programmed and impersonal. Small Churches have a reputation for being backwards and lazy. I’ve always fought against those characterizations, believing them to be unfair caricatures. But a recent conversation made me realize that those stereotypes have their foundations in some sad realities. I was talking with a

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