On Tuesday I shared some of the discussion that I had with one of my former students about his experience with the church over the past decade.  The conversation was triggered by a post on the cooperation between the churches in Portland, and the city’s openly gay mayor. My motivation for writing the original post was not to beat up on the church, but to encourage the church to take responsibility for the reputation that [...]

Last year J.R. Briggs and a team of others launched the Epic Fail Pastor’s Conference.  Realizing the need to deal with our failings and woundings in ministry in a healthy, non-perfect environment the conference allowed pastors (and recovering pastors) the opportunity to be honest, vulnerable, and hopeful with one another, themselves, and the Holy Spirit.  I asked J.R. to share a little of the story behind the conference with us.  Read through to the end to [...]

A few weeks ago I shared about a partnership between the City of Portland and the churches in that city.  Shortly after posting the original article, a former student of mine and I struck up a conversation about that article, and some of his experience over the last few years.  His story is heartbreaking to me, and should be to the church as a whole, as he has found it necessary to step away from the church [...]

A while back I took part in a what has become my most favorite pastoral job interview ever… and I didn’t get the job.  Yeah, you read that right.  The interview lasted all of thirty minutes when one of the two people conducting the interview looked at me and said “I just don’t think that you are the best fit for this position.”  No one likes to hear that phrase, especially thirty minutes into the [...]

One of the challenges of serving in ministry is knowing when and how to pursue new opportunities.  This is especially tricky in an uncertain financial environment.  With this in mind, what questions should a savvy church be asking itself in anticipation of any opportunities that may present themselves? Does your vision dictate your finances, or do your finances dictate your vision? Is your vision compelling enough for your people to support it financially… to give sacrificially [...]

Earlier this week I had a conversation with a friend of mine who works to serve the church in similar ways as I.  As we spoke, we came to the mutual realization that the majority of our conversations are about one of four things: “What you are doing is really cool!” “You really need to connect with my friend ____________.” “You really should think about leaving your current church.” “You may want to consider leaving [...]

Seth Caddell is a Pastor in Yorktown, Virginia… his wife makes legendary enchiladas, and he has a blog that you need to subscribe to (like right now).  I am excited to have him sharing with us today. Why do churches die? That’s the question that haunts many struggling congregations.  To be honest, there are no real answers sometimes for why certain churches die.  Some just do.  But there are a few observations we can make [...]

I had an interesting phone call the other day.  Go Daddy wanted to make sure that everything was ok with me.  Five years ago I registered my first domain name, resilientemergence.com (don’t bother, it redirects you here).  I have since shuttered that blog, but have a soft spot for the domain so each year I renew it after thinking about whether I REALLY need it or not. I renewed again this year and for the [...]

The recent announcement of Kodak’s bankruptcy is a sad ending to the story of a once great company.  Kodak, the innovators responsible for all the bad pictures that your parents showed your high school girlfriends, has gotten to the point where they need to sell off patents in order to stay solvent over the next few months. While it is easy for people to shake their heads, point fingers, and snicker at this “old fashioned” company, [...]

It’s late January, and if you’re like me, a few of your New Year’s resolutions are off to a great start while others have already fallen by the wayside.  Over the last few months, it would seem that the most common New Year’s resolution from the churches that I been working with has been to improve cash flow. At first glance this might seem like a selfish goal, but you are not improving your cash [...]