elementals: quick reads to sharpen your leadership edge.

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How Are Your Systems?

Designing, developing, and improving church systems is the unsexy work very few church leaders get excited about. But the reality is:...

Helping People To Become Inviters

This summer at a nearby amusement park, I rode thirteen rollercoasters in one evening. The granddaddy of them all was Orion—a gigacoaster...

Are Apologetics Dead?

Don’t get me wrong: apologetics are important. From the launch of the Church in Acts 2, Christians have proclaimed the uniqueness of...

How Big Is The Church?

Play along with me for a minute and let’s use our imagination. If a twenty-something artist named Michelangelo could create something as...

Inviting People to Follow Jesus

Many years ago when I was in my twenties, I had a “come-to-Jesus” moment. Previously I had no interest in God and would have considered...

“Values, meet Strategy.”

In the early days of our church, founding pastor Steve Sjogren coined a simple phrase for people to use in basic “servant evangelism”...

Tidy Church Litter

The church has always struggled with the tension between evangelism and holiness. I have friends who say when it comes to evangelism,...