The Evanescent Generation Any young adult living in the Millennial generation has experienced this situation in some form or another, imagine you’re part of it right now. It’s finally the weekend, and your friends are busy preparing an evening out. The five of you haven’t been together in, what feels like, months and you’re eager…
I’ll admit it; I’m a sucker for reality television. There’s just something about sitting in my living room watching you in your living room that is entertaining! Believe it or not, my wife and I were recently featured on a reality TV show where viewers watched us buy a house. Spoiler alert: we chose the third one. Who knew…
Every ministry faces growth barriers. No church grows all the time without facing a plateau or season of struggles. The question isn’t if we will face growth barriers, it’s what will we do when they come? We will all face growth barriers, but we don’t have bow down to them! You can overcome them and…
Much of what we do in children’s ministry involves equipping parents with tools for their most important job: parenting. Communication is a key aspect of parenting, so it’s important that we provide opportunities for parents to learn to communicate more effectively with their children. What a better time to do this than the beginning of…
When it comes to church and youth ministry, numbers matter. They aren’t all that matters though. The question isn’t should we count; it’s what should we count? I don’t see this as a tension to resolve as much as it is a tension to manage. Churches that are anti numbers tend to be uninformed and…
Recently I’ve become bothered by a common theme I’ve encountered among many program-sized and smaller corporate-sized churches (whose average Sunday attendance is between 150-600 people). These are churches that are typically well staffed, with at least one full-time clergyperson and many times two or more. They have either completed a successful capital campaign in the…
Hiring is hard, yet necessary. Few things are more important to the sustainability of a ministry than hiring the right people. Nevertheless, hiring the right people is difficult while finding the wrong ones is easier than catching the common cold. According to Craig Groeschel, the potential of an organization rests on the strength of its people….
Take heart, don’t lose heart. Have you ever found yourself discouraged in ministry? If you’ve been serving in ministry for more than eleven days, I’m going to guess that your answer is “yes”! I hit an all-time low several years ago. The church was growing, and we had just opened a new facility, but volunteers…