Spiritual Gifts: Benefits for Congregants and Church Ministries
Do you belong to a church that is struggling to find enough volunteers to complete ministry tasks? Is it always the same small group of individuals who “volunteer” repeatedly, finding themselves eventually “burning out”? Are you constantly filling “round holes with...
Stop Counting Seats, Start Counting Connections
Every leader keeps score. The only question that matters is whether your scoreboard is telling you the truth. For most of us, the scoreboard is attendance. Count the seats, measure against last year, let the number decide the mood. But if people now belong before they...
The Welcome Is Part of the Gospel
Every pastor wants people to hear the Gospel clearly. But before visitors hear your sermon, they experience your church through the parking lot, the front door, your coffee station, children's check-in, and conversations in the hallway. Long before someone evaluates...
The Most Entrepreneurial People in Your Church May Be Sitting in the Pew
Many churches spend enormous energy recruiting volunteers while overlooking one of their greatest Kingdom resources: entrepreneurs. Every congregation includes men and women who naturally identify opportunities, solve problems, build teams, and create new initiatives....
Spiritual Gifts Journey: An Invitation From God
You may have taken a spiritual gifts class along with a spiritual gifts survey in the past to discover your unique spiritual gifts. All too often, when the class ended, so did your involvement with your spiritual gifts. I invite you to create a spiritual gifts...
The Loneliness Your Church Exists to Answer
Right now, somewhere within a mile of your church, someone is typing into a phone the things they cannot say to a human being. Asking for comfort. Asking if they matter. And something answers, fast and patient and tireless. It just cannot love them, and it never will....
Five Simple Habits That Help Guests Feel Like They Belong
Church leaders often assume hospitality requires a complicated strategy. The truth is much simpler. Guests rarely remember elaborate programs. They remember how people made them feel. Here are five habits every church can begin practicing immediately. 1. Notice before...
Why Community Engagement Is the New Front Door to the Church
For many years churches believed their primary responsibility was to create excellent worship services and effective ministry programs, trusting that people would eventually walk through their doors. Today, however, many churches are discovering that the front door no...
You Do Not Have to Reinvent the Wheel: What Immersion Learning Offers
Most of the significant shifts in my own leadership have not come from books or conferences. They have come from being in the room with someone who is actually doing what I had only read about, watching them navigate complexity with wisdom and grace, and having the...