Saturday Lagniappe: Church Recalibration and Much More

Renewing Your Church: Recalibrating Your Vision to Create Sustainability

I narrowed the process of church recalibration down to four phases. Read More

3 Characteristics of Scrappy Churches

Can the smaller and mid-sized church survive in the world seemingly dominated by larger churches and megachurches? Read More

Marks of a Biblical Church Part 1: What Makes a Church a Church?

Contrasted with a biblical mark (or required attribute), there is no one definitive model for a biblical church that can be prescribed as the way to be the church. Churches need to look different according to their cultural context. Flexibility in our ecclesiology is good and necessary, but there is an innate danger in our flexibility, namely, the inability to define or recognize a biblical church. Read More

Why Christians Don’t Go to Church (and Why They Must)

A new survey finds the reason people avoid going to church is more often for practical or personal reasons, rather than lack of belief. Read More

5 More Reasons To Go To Church In Person: Sight, Sound, Touch, Smell, Taste

When all our senses are involved we learn more, engage more, enjoy more, contribute more and remember more. Read More

7 Reasons People Are Not Leading Who Could Be

Just as there are not enough people working who should be working – there are not enough leaders who should be leading. Read More

What Changes with a Move from a Church of 50 to a Church of 150

All churches have leadership challenges, regardless of size. Small churches are not easier to lead than large churches. Large churches are not easier to grow than small churches. But they are different. When pastors move from one size church to another, they have to adapt. Read More

The Problem with Evangelistic Programs

A strict diet of evangelistic programs produces malnourished evangelism. Just as eating sugar can make us feel as if we’ve eaten when we haven’t, programs can often make us feel as if we’ve done evangelism when we haven’t. So we should have a healthy unease with programs. We should use them strategically but in moderation, remembering that God did not send an event, he sent his Son. Read More

The Solution to American Tribalism is … Belief in Satan

As belief in Satan diminished, it coincided with belief in moral relativism, evil became ephemeral, and we lost any yardstick to measure evil. Even worse, evil became whatever I or my tribe was fighting against, not an instrumental evil, but itself the ultimate evil. Read More