One of the most excruciating congregational projects I’ve ever experienced was a strategy planning process at a church where I served on staff early in my ministry. Over the course of 18 months, I watched as a star-studded leadership group…
Bad information for a young pastor
Looking for new ways to measure ministry?
By Doyle Sager Last month, I wrote in this column about the limitations of the old metrics for tracking congregational vitality: attendance and budgets (or, if you prefer, nickels and noses). These numbers record some things, but perhaps not the most…
Brave church
Brave churches are particularly faithful churches, if you ask me. They make bold choices. They favor holiness over appearances. Their modus operandi is counterintuitive. How brave is your congregation? Your church staff currently consists of two Associate Pastors who are…
Don’t forget to count the non-denoms
In all the hand-wringing about the statistical decline of Baptist congregations in America — which follows similar declines before in the mainline Protestant churches — one important shift seldom gets mentioned. That is the rise of the nondenominational church within…
Is your church enlarging its bandwidth?
It was a simple question from a CHC colleague: “Larry, do you have enough bandwidth to help me with a church staff analysis?” Initially, I had no idea what he was asking. “Bandwidth?” I had to catch up with the…
Tapping the Millennial Imagination: On FAO Schwarz, Don Quixote, and the Dying Church
Millennials are more optimistic than they have any right to be. Does this signal hope for the dying church? Millennials are the “in” generation. Love us or hate us, every day stories scroll across my newsfeed filled with statistics and…
In organized Christianity, some people are gone and others are done
Do we need another category to describe people who are either no longer related to organized Christianity or never were? Probably.
Time for panic or hope?
The Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting wrapped up last week. As usual there have been several statements and statistics which are causing at least minor stirs. Their announcement of a court petition to uphold the traditional definition of marriage may…