Read These First – The Essentials
Scan the titles and excerpts, then click to read more. They’re listed by the order they were written, but each one stands on its own, so you can read them in any order you’d like.
Three facts sit atop my list of things I wish someone had told me in Bible college.
FACT #1: 80-90 percent of pastoral ministry students will never pastor a church larger than 250 people.
FACT #2: Virtually all of us will pastor a small church for at least some time in ...
Some people love to put others down.
The church is full of them.
For instance, here are some titles of recent online posts:
- ‘10 Serious Problems with (name of new Christian book)’
- ‘The Problem with (preachers name)’
- 'Christians Should Stop Reading (name of Christian blogger)’
A lot of people don't like the term 'small church'. Including many small church pastors.
Before I wrote The Grasshopper Myth and started working with other small church pastors, I debated using a different term for churches like ours. After all, I wanted to help small ...
We make church harder than it needs to be.
Why? I think a lot of it has to do with our size obsession.
We’ve convinced ourselves that it’s not possible to become a great church without becoming a big church. But the truth is, any church can become great. No ...
Well, that was ironic.
Last week I wrote a post, Six Church-Insider Issues I Don't Care About Any More. It resulted in more readers than any previous week this blog has ever had.
Apparently, being passionately apathetic is contagious.
As promised, today's post ...
Is it possible to be passionately apathetic?
If so, count me in.
I grew up in the church. But in recent years I've found myself caring less about many of the issues I used to think mattered so much. I’m not just apathetic about them, I’m passionately apathetic. ...
There is no right format for worship.
This week I spoke at a ministers’ conference. In the closing commissioning service, most of the new ministers who came forward were wearing jeans and short-sleeved shirts. Those commissioning them were dressed the same.
As they ...
Do all healthy things grow? Yes.
Do all healthy churches become big churches? No.
But many of us have been ministering under that false assumption. We've been told there’s one set of ingredients. Use them to become a healthy church and it will inevitably become ...
Why bother trying to resurrect an old, dying church?
I’ve heard that question a lot.
There was a time when it seemed like every pastor I went to Bible college with was following church growth principles and starting new churches. In a few years they were buying ...
There are broken churches in the world. Broken churches with failing pastors.
Most of those churches are small. Thankfully. But that’s just because 90 percent of all churches in the world are small.
So yes, there are good reasons for failing pastors to leave failing churches. ...
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