Leadership

Why You Can’t Predict Church Growth, But You Can Predict Church Failure (And, Thankfully, Church Health)

Here’s the reality behind church growth. You can predict church failure. Do enough of the wrong things (or not enough of the right things) and almost anyone can predict that a church body is doomed. But you can’t predict church growth.

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8 Benefits Of Investing A Lifetime Of Ministry Into One Congregation

Pastors seem to be staying in their churches longer now than they did in previous generations. Certainly there are challenges to staying so long in the same place. Keeping fresh, not settling in too comfortably, and not repeating the same ideas over and over are constant battles to fight against. (We’ll address those in my

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If There’s No Church Growth Guarantee, Does It Even Matter What We Do?

There’s nothing anyone can do to guarantee that any particular congregation will grow numerically. No, I’m not being pessimistic, I’m being realistic. There are simply no absolutes in church growth. At least not for the numerical increase of an individual congregation. Not every church that uses church growth principles grows as a result of them. If

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Church Growth: Your Results May Vary

The principles that have been discovered by the church growth movement are helpful and important. The methods that have been devised to help us take advantage of those principles are valuable. And the people who promote those principles and methods are doing their best to help churches and ministries. In short, the majority of church

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No, Pastor, We’re Not Always Right

Pastors have a special place in my heart. But pastors are as just as subject to the ups and downs of life as anyone else. We make mistakes. We forget important appointments. We misspeak, even when we’re preaching and writing articles. The title of pastor does not confer some special knowledge upon us that isn’t

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Stop Complicating Ministry: The Smaller The Church, The Simpler We Need To Keep It

So, you pastor a small, struggling church. You’re trying to help it become less small and less struggling, but all the “can’t miss” answers from the latest church growth conferences never seem to work for you. You don’t have a big worship team singing new songs, a dynamic small group ministry, a trendy youth group,

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