Category: Church Health
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10 Minutes After Church
What do you usually do immediately after your Sunday morning church service ends? If you’re like most of church-going humanity, you probably have a routine. Upon the final “Amen”, you arise from your regular spot and your body follows a subconscious script. You may go to the nursery to pick up a child, maybe you…
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Empty Pews: 10 Days When Church Attendance is Most Down
According to Thom Rainer‘s research, the 10 Sundays each year when church attendance is most noticably down are: Father’s Day. The Sunday after Thanksgiving day. Memorial Day weekend Sunday. Labor Day weekend Sunday. The Sundays before and after Christmas. The Sunday nearest the Fourth of July. The Sunday nearest to New Year’s Day. Time changes:…
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12 Rules For Promoting Harmony Among Church Members
Thomas Smyth, long-time pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina, during the 19th Century, gave several practical directions in a manual for the members of his congregation (found in Volume 5 of his Complete Works). The following are twelve rules for promoting harmony among church members. These appear to have been taken out of…
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4 Questions Worth Exploring
In this short video (8 minutes), Tim Keller offers four questions he would like to see his denomination (which is also my denomination) – the Presbyterian Church in America – explore in the coming years. The four questions are: How do we create a culture in which pastors pray like they should? How do we…
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Prodigal Church
My thanks to Jared Wilson, not only for another thoughtful book, but for expressing many of the very things I would like to express. In his 2015 book, Prodigal Church: A Gentle Manifesto Against the Status Quo, Wilson has written a book I wish I had written.
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Marks of Revival
I had the privilege last week to meet a man convinced we are headed for revival. He is a gentle man, who thinks often of God, wishing for a return to some semblance of the way things used to be – minus the overt sins of racism and sexism that were so widely tolerated in…
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Illustration of a Healthy Church
If our congregation were to be a church with the gospel, plus a group that enjoys being together in community, but we were not on mission to reach out to our neighbors and the Nations, for the sake of advancing Christ’s Kingdom, then we would just be another social club for people to attend. Gospel…
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Authentic Church: Road to a Re-newed Reality
I have been mulling on something the late Francis Schaeffer said: “There are four things which are absolutely necessary if we as Christians are going to meet the need of our age and the overwhelming pressure we are increasingly facing.” No doubt that the Church, in our culture as well as other cultures, faces increasing…
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Chrysalis Factor
There are times I feel somewhat like a sea captain who took charge of a ship that had experienced unprecedented prosperity under the direction of his predecessor, and then sprung a leak a few months into his tenure. Don’t get me wrong, I love the church where I serve, but some of the challenges came…
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Bounded-Set vs Centered-Set
Some time back I posted a piece titled Numbering Those On the Ranch, exploring the concept of what missiologist Alan Hirsch refers to as a “centered-set” metric for evaluating a church. More recently I stumbled across a post by Bob Thune, of Coram Deo Church in Omaha, explaining his understanding of Centered-Set verses the more…
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In Spirit Produced Corporateness
As I reflect upon the need of our church to constantly cultivate community among those within our congregation, as well as between those already part of the congregation and those who have newly arrived, I am pondering the poignancy of this statement by Stanley Grenz, from his book Theology for the Community of God: “Only…
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Ministry Diagnosis Questions
As a pastor it is not only requisite to be a student of God’s Word, but it is also essential to be a student of the people to whom I preach and teach. This is true for any church or ministry leader. If we do not know the Bible, and sound doctrine, we have nothing…
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To Stop It or Not to Stop It, That is a Question
The ministry web site, ChurchLeaders.com, reported news of an unfortunate event in Colorado, and then asked the provocative rhetorical question: “How would you have handled it?” After a little thought I decided I would take a stab at taking the question, taking it beyond the mere rhetorical, and actually trying to answer it – albeit…
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Three Times a Month
Thom Rainer recently noted that there has been a marked change in the measure of comitment the average Christian had to his or her church. At least there has been a change in one measurable detail: An active church member 15 years ago attended church three times a week. Now it’s three times a month…
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Is Bigger Really Better?
No matter how much I have grown to despise the discussion, it seems I cannot avoid it entirely. Almost any conversation about church, it seems, inevitably gravitates in some form toward the Bigger is Better or Great Things Come in Small Packages debate. It is not always an actual debate. In fact it is probably…
