Articles on Strategy
Every church needs to have a strategy of how they want to do ministry. Foundational in deriving your strategy is your church’s culture and your place in the church universal in delivering the gospel to the lost. What is your ministry strategy?
Leading the Flock: 5 Tips for Executive Pastors to Become Effective Leaders
Effective leadership boils down to the healthy habits you implement on a consistent basis. But what are those habits? And how do you practically implement them when your calendar is already packed? Holly Tate, [...]
Report Abuse: A Biblical Counseling Perspective
O LORD, you hear the desire of the afflicted; you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of [...]
Password Management and LastPass
I’ve been asked a lot of questions about password managers, especially due to the LastPass hack that started in 2022 and was fully disclosed in 2023. Before getting too far into this, let me [...]
Why Implement a Written Integrity Plan?
Public confidence in nonprofits is declining to dangerous lows. Consider, for example, Gallup’s 2022 study on Confidence in Institutions, which reports that trust in the church has declined to an all-time low. Just 31% [...]
9 Resources on Financial Integrity
A nationwide survey of more than 700 church leaders conducted by Church Law & Tax showed that nearly one-third have served in congregations that suffered from some form of financial misconduct. Half occurred within [...]
Guardrails to Strengthen Pastoral Integrity
My title may seem a little off-putting, perhaps even negative. Why do I need a guardrail? Or better, what is a guardrail for a pastor? This brings another question, If our church incorporated guardrails, [...]
How to Increase Engagement with a Hybrid Church Model
Digital solutions undoubtedly play a significant role in Church today, but the technology churches leverage (and how) continues to evolve. Pushpay recently released its 2023 State of Church Technology report, and findings show that [...]
Know When and How to Delegate
Church leaders have extraordinary demands on their time. So when it comes to experiencing growth in your church, you have to think differently about how you run it—and it starts with effective delegation. First, [...]
Cultivating Hospitality in a Divided Church
Politics. Masks. Vaccines. The reasons churches are dividing are legion. How should we as church leaders cultivate spaces where people who have nothing else in common gather and are willing to put those differences [...]
Keeping Your Marriage Healthy in Ministry
Recent research indicates that high level marital satisfaction is insufficient to keep a marriage healthy by itself. Generations of broken families make it extremely difficult to practice what one has never seen up close [...]
A 5-Year Ministry Plan at Age 90
Gene Getz is 90 years old … going on 91 in March. He miraculously survived Covid even though he spent eight months in the hospital. Gene's doctors suggested that his family meet to say [...]
The Art of Leading Change
Leading change is difficult. The hardest part is not deciding which path to follow. The bigger challenge is found in the messy human dynamics throughout the journey of change. Many resources for leading change [...]
Elder Boards That Work, Pastors Who Thrive: A New Vision for Church Governance
At some point, every lead pastor asks this question: How do we govern this church? Often with little background on the subject, pastors and boards cobble together a system that either works for the pastor [...]
4 Reasons You Don’t Delegate
I don’t have time to teach someone else how to do it. It will be quicker if I just do it myself. Chances are you’ve used one of those excuses when you’ve taken on a task [...]
Prepping New Leaders
Hey Fletch … A woman wanted to start an outreach ministry activity. She has good character and a right heart for the target audience. Now she’s drowning under the weight of being at the [...]
Leading Creatives
There is a tension between leaders and creatives within any organization. Leaders cast clear vision. Creatives craft subjective art. Leaders push for advancement. Creatives push the envelope. There isn't a complete binary difference between [...]
California Law on Sexual Abuse May Impact Other States
Your state could be impacted by the new California sexual abuse prevention legislation. Assembly Bill Number 2669 modifies the requirements of AB506. What did AB506 require? Which AB506 requirements are modified by AB2669, and how? What potential error [...]
Multisite New Normal
The multisite model changed the trajectory of the church in America at the beginning of the 21st century. But what about today? What is the new normal for multisite in the post-pandemic era? Is [...]
Four Ways You Can Be a Godly Leader in a Sports-Crazed World
I love sports. I am an over-the-top Chicago Cubs fan. My license plate says Cubzwin. My three children all played collegiate sports. My wife and I played collegiate sports. I’m in four fantasy football leagues---that’s [...]
Healthy Venting as a Staff
We’ve all inappropriately handled our emotions at work. We’ve either stuffed our emotions when we should have shared them or we’ve spewed emotions when we should have stayed silent. Venting in the workplace is [...]
The African American Family and Developing a Diverse Family Ministry
Whatever the ethic background of your church attenders and staff, you want to understand and develop diversity—especially in your family ministry. James Logan has a rich background in business, as a pastor, and as [...]
Resisters Are Not the Enemy
This article is adapted from Mike Bonem’s forthcoming book, The Art of Leading Change: Ten Perspectives on the Messiness of Ministry. In many arenas of life, we neatly divide people into two groups: friends [...]
Preventing and Resolving Conflict in the Church
Let's talk about how Christian leaders can model, practice and teach the principles of relational wisdom. This is a gospel-based form of emotional intelligence, biblical peacemaking and Christian conciliation. You can do this within [...]
Roles, Responsibilities and Decision Making in 2022
for a Staff Led and Elder Oversight Church Polity This article is from 2022 and expands on Bob's article from 2007 which can be read here. At some point in the life of many churches the [...]