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How Effective Are Your Processes For Accomplishing Your Church's Mission? I have to smile when people tell me that they are spiritual, but they don’t believe in organized religion. What’s the alternative—disorganized religion? We must have systems to bring structure to our relationships, to apply gifts and skills appropriately, unify our values, and accomplish our corporate purpose. Leaders have to pay close attention to organizational systems, no matter how unsexy or tedious

Christmas is difficult to ignore...but in surprising ways. Each year it seems the Christmas Wars heat up a few more degrees: churches boycott stores advertising “happy holidays” and atheists file lawsuits about nativities creeping onto public spaces. Evangelicals launch their annual “let’s-put-Christ-back-in-Christmas” campaign while the non-religious smirk at the kitschiness of plastic babies in mangers on front lawns. When I was an agnostic, I would flail away at the weirdn

How Much Info Can a Person Retain and Assimilate? Seriously. Full disclaimer: I’m a big proponent of the No-More-Than-30-Minute message. Not that there’s anything magical about 30 minutes, but face it: most of us are not Andy Stanley or whoever we imagine ourselves to be. It’s the rare talking head that can sustain attention beyond 25-30 minutes…and you’re probably not it. But it’s more than that: it’s about retention and how people learn. If our primary job is to make discip