Tag «Outreach & Evangelism»

How Your Church Can Help the Overlooked Children Affected by Abuse and Neglect

The turning point for me occurred at a funeral. I was holding a four-year-old child I did not know. His mother had passed away after overdosing on a dangerous mix of fentanyl and cocaine. The family contacted our church and asked for a pastor to officiate the funeral. I’ll never forget the young boy’s words….

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Four Types of Church Members Based on Their Frequency of Attendance

The New Testament, from Acts 2 to Revelation 3, is about the local church. That is a big portion of the Bible! The local church is God’s plan A to carry out his mission on earth, and He did not give us a plan B. Sure, the local church can be messy. It’s made of…

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What Lottie Taught Me about the Gospel and Social Justice

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…

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One of the Most Powerful Ways to Revitalize Your Church that Almost No One Does

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…

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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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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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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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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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