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,...

What's Wrong with Easter?

So how often do you get to tell the story of someone you know coming back from the dead? And not just sucking air again. Even Lazarus did...

The Top 4 Predictions for 2021!

The closing of a year typically engenders a reflective look back and some prognostication for the next one. I would prefer to not look...

Which Church Muscle Needs The Most Work?

And Which Can Atrophy the Fastest...? Every church has a handful of core mission-critical behaviors…and they typically center around...

The #1 Way To Grow Your Church (It's Not Rocket Science)

Okay, before we reveal this mind-blowing answer, let me offer a disclaimer: this has nothing to do with the size of your church,...