Tag «Monday/Wednesday Featured»

The Public Nature of Pastoring and the Inescapable Reality You Always Represent Your Church

“. . . 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…

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Ten Suggestions for Church Members When They Read Negative Things about Their Pastors on Social Media

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…

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Five Ways to Honor the Past While Not Losing the Future

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…

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How to Evaluate Your Church’s Discipleship Program

*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…

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20 of the Most Difficult Things Pastors Have Done in Ministry

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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Seven Insights from Churches about the Recent Easter Weekend

We’ve done a lot of listening and learning the week after Easter. We at Church Answers are grateful for consulting and coaching clients and for the large community at Church Answers Central. Though our information is more anecdotal rather than data-based, it is nevertheless insightful. Here are seven key takeaways we gleaned from church leaders…

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Leading a Church When the Wrong People Hold Power

Can you lead a church without proper authority? Yes, but it is more challenging and complex. I’m assuming most church leaders would rather not step into a situation where they have the responsibility to shepherd without the corresponding authority. But there are churches with misaligned power structures in desperate need of good pastors. What if…

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Seven Things We Didn’t See Coming in Churches at This Point after the Pandemic

Admittedly, it’s a tricky thing to find a precise beginning and ending point to a pandemic. We could accept the declaration from the World Health Organization that COVID-19 began on March 11, 2020. But the virus was rapidly spreading around the world prior to that date. The ending date is even more of a challenge…

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Churches Are Getting Less of Total Charitable Giving—Here’s Why (And What You Can Do About It)

For decades, the church has lost ground with overall charitable giving. Charitable giving is up—a near record of $485 billion in 2021, despite surging inflation. Giving to churches has dropped even though giving to non-profits is up by 4%. In the early 1980s, churches received over half of all charitable giving. Today, churches receive less…

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My Greatest Surprise about Churches Seeking Consultations

I’ve done church consulting for decades now. Over the years, I’ve worked with churches of various sizes, multiple denominations, differing polities, and diverse locations. I’ve learned a lot over the years. Some patterns are generally the same among these churches, which doesn’t surprise me. Some examples are that most churches are not doing evangelism well,…

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