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The present love affair with corporate mission statements must be more than a framed eight-by-twelve well-wordsmithed paragraph hung on a wall. It’s one thing to have a clear focus…and another thing to actually do it. I walked into a fast-food chain restaurant years ago that was a hot mess; bad leadership breeds bad service, bad attitudes, and bad atmosphere. Next to the cash register where you placed your order was a framed mission statement, something about “friendly servic

This summer at a nearby amusement park, I rode thirteen rollercoasters in one evening. The granddaddy of them all was Orion—a gigacoaster with a 300-foot drop and speeds over 90 mph. Jaw-dropping. Or should I say, stomach-dropping. And, of course, I had to tell everyone, “You’ve GOT to ride Orion! It’s awesome!” Why do we tell people about those kinds of experiences? It’s not like we’re bragging; anyone can go do it. On the other hand, not many of us would go to a co-work

In the tribe that I pastored in, creating space for worship was very important. It typically meant the musical part of the service, where collectively we sang to God in a flow of uninterrupted songs and choruses from one to the next. In most mainline churches, worship is the entirety of the Sunday service, which might include a liturgy and/or other elements. In either case, we leaders may have inadvertently neutered the New Testament’s fuller view of worship. For instance, Pa

Yeah, I know, I know. It’s a tacky mashup of Pixar and Peanuts. But the point is: do we really need “church consultants”? I have to admit that I had “good/not-so-good” impressions of consultants during my years of pastoring. And now I am one…and with a team of them. Don’t get me wrong—there were key defining moments when we hired consultants and coaches. Some were good, some were so-so, but I always benefitted from having an outside perspective. There are various times when a