Recently I was having a conversation with a friend about his church.  He looked at me and said “honestly, we do way too much… we have too many programs going on that keeps us way too spread out.”  I wish this was the first time that I have heard this being expressed, but the truth is that we seem to have an epidemic of “zombie ministries” in our churches. A zombie ministry is a ministry [...]

Reading Ben Stroup’s blog last week I came upon a brilliant video from Tom Peter’s about 18 second listening: As a leader it is easy for us to get so caught up in our dreams, vision, and busyness then steamroll people as they attempt to enter into a conversation with us.  It is incumbent on us who serve in church leadership to discipline ourselves to slow down the gears in our heads enough to listen [...]

Christianity Today had an interesting interview with Billy Graham last week.  Conducted via email due to his failing health the interview deals with aging, dealing with aging parents, and the state of the church.  What I found to be most interesting was the third question: If you could, would you go back and do anything differently? Yes, of course. I’d spend more time at home with my family, and I’d study more and preach less. [...]

Few things in life cause the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as bad as a traffic jam.  Living on Long Island, traffic is a way of life… it is something that is planned around and it is something that impacts your life on a daily basis.  I have learned that getting from my home to the George Washington Bridge takes thirty minutes at 5:30 am or two hours if I [...]

Several years ago while working with middle schoolers in Atlanta we had a large event where we encouraged all of our students to bring their friends.  A typical Wednesday night gathering with this group would have 130 to 150 students worshiping and doing the goofy things that only middle schoolers do, but on this night we saw more than 320 students come out for a night of all out craziness.  As you can imagine our [...]

When better to talk about the pendulum effect than when we are seeing the beginning of a new congressional session… especially considering all the changes that have taken place as a result of the recent election.  With the dramatic shift of power in the House of Representatives there has been talk since November about policy reversals and repeals.  The pendulum in the House has begun its return swing.  Regardless of whether you believe this change [...]

The recent blizzard in New York City has led to some interesting developments. Turn on the radio and you heard complaining residents screaming about how poorly the city had handled snow removal. Seeing an opportunity the head of the sanitation workers union began a media blitz blaming the mayor’s budget cuts for the inability to properly handle snow removal. A day or two later reports began to trickle out saying that there was an orchestrated effort on the part of the union to sabotage removal efforts in order to gain a political edge.

When was the last time that you had a hard conversation with someone? The type of conversation where you had to speak the truth knowing the other person didn’t want to hear it. The type of conversation that could potentially ruin a relationship, but it was worth the risk. No one likes to have tough conversations… but it seems as though over the last several years our culture has made these conversations even more difficult. [...]

Perhaps it is the fact that I was watching Rocky III last night, maybe it is my frustration with all the extra crap of the holiday season, or maybe it is the blog posts that I have been reading lately.  Whatever it is, I am starting to believe that we need a good refocusing. Over the last few months my wife and I have significantly downsized our living space.  We moved from a big, beautiful [...]

A former pastor of mine used to say, “When you find the perfect church, don’t join it. You’ll only ruin it.” That advice rattled around in the back of my mind when I began trying to reconnect with the church after my burn out. Could I find a church that lived up to my ideals? Over the past eight years, I’ve had to rethink the church. And then I had to rethink my rethinking of [...]