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What Is Your Weakest Element?

In the Elemental Leaders book, we identified four crucial elements that were maximized in every healthy and effective church we studied....

Mar 10, 20253 min read

But Wait...There's More!

I’ve never done this in our 280(!) posts. Seriously. So give me a little grace. This is a commercial. Sort of. After pastoring at the...

Feb 25, 20253 min read

Leading a Polarized Church

In my meetings with pastors, the current polarized political climate often comes up in our conversations along with how negatively it has...

Feb 21, 20253 min read

Money and Prophets

Buckle up, leaders, this one is going to be a little different. I recently read Brooke Harrington’s excellent book Offshore: Stealth...

Feb 13, 20253 min read

What Our Choices Say

Just prior to his death, Moses addressed the nation of Israel. They were about to enter into some real estate that God had promised...

Feb 3, 20253 min read

Paul, Jack...and Centeredness

I just finished a fascinating audiobook: Malcolm Gladwell interviewing Paul Simon about his songwriting processes in Miracle and Wonder. ...

Jan 25, 20252 min read

What’s Your Church’s First Impression?

Check out the short video above to get your neurons firing about what you do on Sunday morning. Simply put: Are You Rolling Out the Red...

Jan 14, 20251 min read

When Consultants Go Bad

It’s been over eleven years since I stepped down from leading a church that I had been a part of for nearly thirty years. Over those...

Jan 6, 20253 min read

Pain & Possibilities

Not for nothing—and I really don’t know what that phrase means—here’s a list of things I won’t take part in: 1. Roleplaying in...

Dec 31, 20242 min read

Simplify Christmas

Church leaders, I am empathizing with you: we are in the final throes of the Christmas whirlwind. The story is simple, but the context...

Dec 30, 20242 min read

Church Matter

Do you and your church really matter? A quote that has haunted me for years in my work with churches goes like this: “Are you the...

Dec 10, 20242 min read

Urgent Response Required

Way back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, I surrendered my life to Jesus as a twenty-something. The Jesus Revolution and the charismatic...

Dec 3, 20242 min read

A Value Proposition

Last week, a banana taped to a wall was auctioned off as a work of art at Sotheby’s. The bidding became aggressively competitive and...

Nov 26, 20242 min read

Leadership & Obscurity

This week, on November 22, President John F. Kennedy was very publicly and brutally assassinated in 1963 in an open convertible while...

Nov 19, 20243 min read

When Words Become Aliens

Have you ever written down a word and the more you looked at it the more strange it seemed, like some foreign term that didn’t mean...

Nov 18, 20242 min read

Extremists in the Danger Zones

Christians often seem to view life in tight binary ways, suspicious of nuance or grey. How that plays out in our interactions with other...

Nov 6, 20243 min read

What’s Your Church-Type?

I’ve written on this before, but in my work with churches I continue to find one of the most overlooked questions church leaders ask:...

Oct 29, 20243 min read

Can We Talk About Money?

Leaders have to talk about/deal with/disciple/teach…stewardship. By the way, let’s be honest: stewardship is mostly Christian code...

Oct 22, 20243 min read

The War Problem

I once spoke on the sixth commandment—You shall not murder—in which I briefly touched on the tension between Christian pacificism (Walter...

Oct 15, 20243 min read

Any System Is Better Than No System

Suppose Bob walked into your church and had no religious background. The music was okay. The message made him think a little bit. The...

Oct 8, 20244 min read

Potential vs. Perfection

I’ve often reflected on the impact of having someone believe in you—even when you’re not sure you believe in yourself. Two people who...

Oct 1, 20243 min read

Cleanup in Aisle 11...

Yep, it’s a funny meme that’s been around for a while. My friend Don sent it to me and I laughed out loud. And then I got sad. I...

Sep 27, 20242 min read

What Are You Passionate About?

Louis Psihoyos is a documentary filmmaker who won an Academy Award for his film The Cove, an exposé on the brutal slaughter of dolphins...

Sep 23, 20243 min read

4 Stages of Organizational Focus

A Different Organizational Focus Is Critical As Your Church Grows. What Stage is Your Church In? Many of the churches we work with...

Sep 21, 20242 min read