Matthew | July 31, 2012
This weekend I was in this huge church building. Not the church, but a denomination. It was beautiful. It was huge, and had everything that you could dream of for a church building. At first I was so impressed. What a sign of spiritual success? This church must be doing something right. But as I [...]
Matthew | July 30, 2012
Probably most preachers have dreams of growing a congregation. Some might now, often these guys point to examples of faithful men who produced little fruit. But mostly if a preacher is honest with himself, he does desire to be involved in a growing work with a church. It is frustrating to ministers to serve year [...]
Matthew | July 25, 2012
When everyone in the room sounds the same, isolated thinking is taking over. Churches can fall into this thinking quickly. It is easy to do. You start to believe that your thoughts are the only definitive thoughts. Churches naturally do this. You believe your thinking is right, and can be the only right one too. [...]
Matthew | July 24, 2012
I love fantasy sports. I play fantasy hockey and football each year. This is one of my favorite activities, and most years I gain some new virtual trophies for the virtual trophy case on Yahoo. Last year I died in fantasy football, which church members still tease me about, but I did come in first [...]
Matthew | July 19, 2012
My friend Greg Tidwell has introduced me to some of Francis Schaeffer’s materials. I have heard of this well known speaker in the past, but never paid much attention to his work. I read recently his book “The Great Evangelical Disaster” which was excellent, and provided a good commentary on some of the compromises on [...]
Matthew | July 18, 2012
Years ago, if someone called me to speak, there was a instead yes, because mostly, no one ever called me to speak anyway. Yes, maybe a summer series once and a while, but mostly it just did not happen. There would be maybe one or two speaking opportunities. Now it seems that these opportunities are [...]
Matthew | July 17, 2012
VBS season is more than one week. It is of course throughout the year, because of planning and preparation. But it really is for sure a two week process. The week before VBS is a huge work week. People are coming to the building and getting everything ready. There is a ton of work that [...]
Matthew | July 12, 2012
This is one of the best leadership books I have ever read. It is more than a business book, there is a spiritual component to it. The book talks about the difficulty of leadership, and mostly about staying alive in the process. In leadership, you are dangerous to people. The reason is that you are [...]
Matthew | July 11, 2012
Thankfully, I am not a youth minister. Most days I feel so bad for youth ministers. The model of hiring some guy out of college to run the youth group. Poor kid, trying to please parents who are hyper-sensitive about everything. I believe youth ministers have the hardest roles in the church. Well, about once or [...]
Matthew | July 6, 2012
In business literature, there is talk on separating role and person. The role you have is not the person you are. This advice is given to help people not allow attacks to become personal. People can become so connected to a role that there is strong defensiveness toward those who disagree. This seems like great advice [...]
