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Showing posts from May, 2009

10 Stupid Things That Keep Churches from Growing

I'm currently reading the book " Ten Stupid Things that Keep Churches from Growing " by Geoff Surratt. I'm just loving it so far. His writing style and personal examples are incredibly easy to relate it. His chapter on the Sunday morning worship service is especially interesting. There he presents a top 10 list to improve your weekend experience. This is great stuff and worth the price of the book alone! Sure, a bunch of them I could have guessed and probably knew already... but having them all in one place definitely makes it a lot easier for pastors to evaluate and improve on their services. Over the next few weeks, I'll be rereading each of those top 10 items and will probably blog about what God is showing me in this. His number 1 is " Ask the Hard Questions ". I LOVE hard questions! I love when I'm asked the hard questions and I love trying to find the answers to hard questions. I think the role of the pastor and the leadership of the church is

Competing or Completing

I LOVE talking to other churches and sitting down with other pastors to discuss how our churches could be working closer together for the glory of God and have a better impact in our community! I really really do. I could do this all day, every day. I love the fact that there are some churches out there that are doing things so incredibly radically different then what I would do. I love that those churches are reaching out to communities and people who I would never be able to reach. I was just listening to a video with Craig Groeschel, pastor of LifeChurch.tv. On it he says " In order to reach people no one else is reaching you have to do things that no one else is doing. But in order to things no one is doing you can't do what everyone else is doing! " I LOVE THIS! What is the difference between most evangelical churches in the area? When you really look at them... they mostly do the same thing: Sunday services, small groups, children's ministry, youth minist

Leader, have you lost your first love?

This morning I'm reading Revelation chapter 2... not because I'm preaching on it or that I have to for school... but because my best bud told me how much it impacted him last week... so I want some of that as well :-) Over the last few weeks I've been chatting with different pastors and church leaders who are struggling. Really struggling. It seems like here in this part of the world (can't speak for anywhere else) there is a huge push from people in the church to get our churches to return to a much more conservative, exclusive type of ministry. This push is a hard, judging, right-or-wrong fight for their way to do ministry. I cried like a child Saturday night as I prayed for the churches who just seem to want to do ministry for themselves... who seem to have no love or grace in their hearts for the hurting and the struggling and the lost. Church leaders who are dealing with this appear (again, just in my limited opinion) to have drifted from their role as leaders and

Dreaming

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Haven't been much in the mood to blog lately...  hard to pin down the exact reasons... but I would guess it's mainly because I just seem to have SOOOO much floating around my head right now that it's incredibly hard to focus on all of it.  It's also hard to decide what to blog about and what God wants me to just sit on and have a private conversation with him and him alone. Ever have that?  Ever feel like God is just revealing so much to you but you're not allowed to share it?  As a guy who loves to talk this is definitely stretching me!!  :) All I know is God is working big time in my dreams.  Seems like every time I close my eyes (whether asleep or awake) dreams of the church and how we should be living our lives as followers of Jesus are just non stop! The trick now is to continue just praying and dreaming and talking to God.  Which dreams does he want for my life?  Which dreams does he want for the church where I serve?  Which dreams are for people around me?  W

Paul's Prayer for Spiritual Empowering

I'm sitting in William's coffee pub, working on my talk that I'm doing for counsellors at a nearby Christian camp this Saturday.  I was reading Ephesians 3 and verses 14 to 21 have REALLY jumped out at me!  I think this is going to be my focus on Saturday to encourage them. When I think of the wisdom and scope of God's plan, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will give you mighty inner strength through his Holy Spirit. And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God's marvelous love. And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Then you will be filled with the fullness of life