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I heard injustice cry from the trafficked woman who stood beside me at a train station in Asia, her pimp glaring from a few feet away. Everything within me wanted to grab her hand and rescue her. “Just grab her and run,” was all I could think. But our conversation ended abruptly, and I don’t…
The post What Lottie Taught Me about the Gospel and Social Justice appeared first on Church Answers.
Prayer walking can revitalize a church. At Church Answers, we’ve heard some incredible stories of how a church started a prayer walking ministry and experienced revitalization. The problem is not enough churches are emphasizing this spiritual discipline. Those that do are seeing powerful results. What is prayer walking? The concept is simple and can be…
The post One of the Most Powerful Ways to Revitalize Your Church that Almost No One Does appeared first on Church Answers.
After almost 32 years of marriage, my wife and I adopted a rescue dog a couple weeks ago. I grew up with dogs, but Pam has never been around a dog for any length of time. Still, though, we took the plunge after hosting/fostering this dog for three weekends so he could get acclimated to…
The post A Dog, a Confession, and a Prayer Request appeared first on Church Answers.
Most of my recorded sermons are on cassette tapes. I know what you are thinking. I am old. I served as pastor of four churches and as interim pastor of nine churches. Many of the churches recorded my sermons and distributed them via cassette tapes. There are a lot of my sermons out there. I…
The post Please Destroy Any of My Recorded Sermons appeared first on Church Answers.
“. . . because you’re the pastor.” Most pastors have heard the end of this sentence at some point. Perhaps you bristled at hearing it. Maybe your feelings were justified, depending on what preceded the phrase. But there’s truth in “because you’re the pastor.” The call to shepherd a church is a call to shepherd…
The post The Public Nature of Pastoring and the Inescapable Reality You Always Represent Your Church appeared first on Church Answers.
It will happen to most pastors. They will wake up one morning to texts or emails. The wording will say something like, “Pastor, you need to see what Mike Smith wrote about you on Facebook.” The pastor’s day is already messed up. Most pastors will feel the need to read the post. Many will feel…
The post Ten Suggestions for Church Members When They Read Negative Things about Their Pastors on Social Media appeared first on Church Answers.
Who or what do you lead? There are books, conferences, blogs, podcasts, and masterclasses on how to be a better leader, but we often forget that the person we lead first and most is the one in the mirror. It is easy to spend all of our time trying to figure out the next strategy…
The post The Most Important Leadership Tool appeared first on Church Answers.
I once caught a deacon throwing choir robes out of the second-story window into a giant fire on the ground below. “What’s going on?” “Fire hazard.” By the look and smell of the robes, I agreed and went about my business. There were probably one hundred burning robes in the fire—enough for every person in…
The post Five Ways to Honor the Past While Not Losing the Future appeared first on Church Answers.
*This article is an excerpt from Disciple: How to Create a Community That Develops Passionate and Healthy Followers of Jesus. Some months ago, I published the book Disciple: How to Create a Community that Develops Passionate and Healthy Followers of Jesus. In that book, I point out that many churches that think they’re disciplemaking churches…
The post How to Evaluate Your Church’s Discipleship Program appeared first on Church Answers.
The question was straightforward: What are some of the most difficult things you have done in ministry? I asked this question on some of my social media channels, so it was an informal survey. The responses were high, over 600 in the first eight hours. While the quantity of the responses was indicative of the…
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