There are few things on the face of the planet that make a church staff member cringe more than the thought of the church’s annual business meeting.  The horror stories of these meetings are the stuff of legend, from the airing of grievances to pastors getting punched in front of the congregation.  While we all love a good drama every now and again, my assumption is that we would probably prefer to not have it played [...]

Full disclosure: I have a rather large man-crush on Seth Godin. That said, I think that the church could learn a good bit from his new Domino Project book, We Are All Weird.  The idea behind the book is that the bell curve that has for years defined our society is fading away, and that the “mass market” is going the way of the dinosaur.  No longer is one type of coffee, one style of [...]

Last week I asked the question “what will be different in the life of someone attending your church five years from now?” As a youth pastor, as a church planter, and in each of the ministries that I have served in, this is the question that I have asked as I have started to develop our ministry strategy.  In the case of the students and children of the church that I served in north Jersey, [...]

Todd Rhoades posted a video on his blog yesterday that has had me thinking hard about whether I fully understand the affect that the media I consume has on me, and whether I am able to fully process some of the more subtle messages being communicated. The video is a simulated cable news program from around the time that Moses was preparing to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.  The video is well done, fairly accurate, and [...]

I have been following the Occupy Wall Street movement from a distance over the last month or so.  Regardless of your feelings on this movement, and I really have no desire to get into the politics behind it, I think that we are witnessing something incredibly significant. I had lunch last week with a newspaper reporter who wrote a story on Occupy Wall Street for Guardian Media, in Trinidad.  His take on the movement, as is evidenced [...]

It’s budgeting season! Those words may not excite you the way they do me but, whether you’re excited or not, this is a key part of the financial process for any ministry. As you begin working through the budgeting process with your team let’s consider a few things that will make the budgeting season less painful.  This can be the year that you say good-bye to that boring budget and turn it into a better budget [...]

Over the last few weeks we have been talking about the importance of systems in the church.  Through the years, I have found that the church has no shortage of vision.  There are plenty of pastors casting inspiring visions… the issue is actually implementing that vision.  Last week we spoke of how systems are the road map used by a church to achieve their vision.  This week I want to talk a little bit about how [...]

Burn out in the church is something that we hear about far too much.  It seems like every week I hear of a new story of a pastor, staff member, or volunteer who steps down because they are burned out, or on their way to being burned out.  This is why I was intrigued by a post on Michael Hyatt’s blog last week on the Six Organizational Myths That Sabotage Accountability.  The post walks through [...]

While serving as a youth pastor New Jersey I was incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by a phenomenal group of volunteers.  The teams that I was entrusted to lead were made up of some incredibly gifted people who loved our students and our children and invested a great deal of time and prayer in each of them. One of the parents of our students had a phenomenal gift that she would share with us whenever [...]

Over the last ten days, beginning with my trip to Catalyst, I have been involved in several conversations about the state of charitable giving, and how it is affecting churches and church planters.  In one of these conversations I was surprised to hear that giving is down in churches and traditional non-profits, but it is up in para-church ministries.  The conversation went on to reveal that in the church world there are some churches that [...]