When Tragedy Strikes a Church
Below is one of the videos I recorded for The Nines conference on the topic of dealing with tragedy in the church. They chose to use the teaching on “How to Gracefully Kill a Church Program” instead of this video, but I thought I would post it here. In January 2011, I was serving as […]
Stories and Heroes
Two weeks ago, Matt Chandler, Josh Patterson, and I led a time of teaching and discussion centered around our new book Creature of the Word. We challenged leaders to center their churches, not merely their confessions, on Jesus. One of the questions from the audience revolved around analyzing and changing the culture of a church. […]
How to Gracefully Kill a Church Program
Last Friday I was privileged to speak at The NINES, an online leadership conference sponsored by Leadership Network. In this five-minute video I talked about how to gracefully kill a church program. After writing Simple Church several years ago, it is one of the questions I have been most frequently asked.
Culture Trumps Everything
Martin Luther referred to the gospel as “this article.” He said, “Most necessary is that we know this article well, teach it to others, and beat it into their heads continually.” Luther knew that we have this proclivity to wander from our foundation. Thus we must constantly and continually beat the gospel into our hearts […]
Culture Reveals What Is Truly Important
Since the 1950s, mountain climbers have traveled to Everest to stand on top of the world. They endure horrific conditions on a grueling climb to the top, including a difficult passage through the “death zone” where lack of oxygen leads to exhaustion and the extreme cold will cause frostbite to any exposed part of the […]
Participation, Not Association
When I fly on an airplane, I am associated with the people next to me. We are in close proximity to each other. We are on the same flight, experience the same bumps, the same views, and the same food. But despite having the same experience and being next to one another, we are not […]
You Are Only as Strong as Your Foundation
Your ability to stand strong is based completely on the strength of what you are standing upon. My daughters make me nervous when they climb on top of something that is not sturdy, something that will give out and cause them to fall. Standing is really not about our ability but the strength of what […]
The Perceived Leaders for a Guest
While serving full-time on local church staff teams, I intuitively knew that the people who we put on the platform/stage would be perceived as leaders in our ministry. But I did not realize the magnitude of that perception until Kaye and I started visiting churches as a non-staff attender. Those on the stage (musicians, singers, […]
Sequoia Tree Faith
A few years ago, I took my wife to San Francisco and we drove up to Muir Woods just north of the city. Muir Woods is filled with sequoia trees, many of them 1,500-2,000 years old. And they are huge. The highest sequoia trees in the world average over 250 feet high. That’s almost as […]
Four Keys to Better Church Hospitality
As my family visited churches upon moving to Nashville, we were blown away by the differences in hospitality to first time guests. In some churches we knew exactly where to park, were graciously welcomed, escorted to the children’s area to drop off our kids, and introduced to several helpful people. In other churches, we had […]