The millennial generation wants to give to your church, but many of them aren’t… a recent Leadership Journal article unpacks the four main reasons why: We’re not a “target demographic” Use your money wisely Impact your community and the world Let us lead In today’s Ministry Briefing we discuss the article, generational habits, and we have the reappearance of cranky Todd. How are YOU engaging the millennials?

Greetings from Orlando! It’s that time of year again… Exponential is here. This year the church planting conference has sold out, meaning that there will be somewhere near 5,000 church planters hanging out at First Baptist Orlando for the week… it’s gonna be a party! If you are here, I’d love to connect, if not you can check out all the Exponential hijinks online, since they are streaming a lot of the sessions for free. Click here for [...]

Today we are trying a little something different: Ministry Briefing Speed Round. We take five topics from the soon to be released edition of Ministry Briefing Disgest. Todd selected five stories at random, and without telling me, and we discuss them in a rapid fire style. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this format, and whether it is something you’d like to see more of. On today’s speed round: Breakaway church loses real estate case [...]

Do you use checks? Do you even know where your checkbook is? (I don’t) Studies suggest that check writing is in rapid decline as people have begun to use them only for large purchases. Mark Brooks shares these stats: Paper check usage declined from 61% of all payments in 2000 to just 26% by 2010. In 2011, the number of checks processed by the Federal Reserve fell at its steepest rate yet, down 17, a [...]

Benny Hinn recently headed to Trinidad and Tobago for one of his crusades, where he asked those gathered to sow a seed of faith for $100 (or TT$600). Considering the economic status of Trinidad and Tobago, this represents a significant sacrifice for many in the crowd, but Hinn let them know what would happen in return: You will produce a harvest for the rest of your life. There will be a miracle in your finances [...]

Day two of Q LA was another day of drinking from the fire hose… It started off with Mark Burnett, finished up with Gabe Lyons, and had a bunch of solid communicators in between. The thought that I am currently stewing on the most has to do with the correlation between the rise of the screen in our day to day lives, the numbing effect that comes from that, and the rise of sex trafficking [...]

Yesterday was the first day of Q LA. The pace has been fast and furious, much like drinking from a fire hose… but it has been good. More notes to follow, but here are a few things that are tinkering with my mind.

We’ve all been in a church business meeting when someone has said it. It’s the goto line to justify ministry expenditures, and according to Scott Cochrane, it is a dangerous lie. The line? “If just one person…” You may have heard it used like this: If just one person takes a big step towards God… If just one person starts reading the Bible regularly… If just one person invites someone far from God into their home… Scott pushes back saying [...]

Last week Matt Appling had a post on his site, The Church of No People, about the way we disagree within the church world. Coining what is now my favorite phrase “everybody’s orthodoxy is somebody’s heresy,” in response to yet another uproar about someone’s perceived theological transgressions. Now, don’t get me wrong, I believe that having a solid grasp of orthodox theology is important… but I also believe that Jesus has called us to love one another in spite of [...]

Scott William’s recently had an intriguing post on his website discussing the need for church leaders to take more time off. Saying: In all seriousness, Sr. Pastors should try to find themselves in the sweet spot of preaching between 35-40 weekends per year (no more.) If they are preaching more than that, they probably aren’t raising up any other leaders/teachers, they probably don’t have adequate relationships with other Sr. Pastors, they are probably stifling the organizational growth [...]