The Missing Ingredient: Apprenticeship in the Local Church
Ask an older pastor how they learned to do the job, and you will usually hear a name before you hear a degree. It will be the senior pastor who let them tag along on hospital visits at 23. The elder who taught them how to read a budget. The mentor who took a phone...
The Coffee Shop Question: Learning From the Places People Actually Gather
Your community has living rooms that are not in anyone’s house. They are the places where people actually gather. The coffee shop where the regulars know each other’s orders. The diner where farmers meet at six in the morning. The laundromat where parents fold clothes...
The First Innovation Is Internal
Scripture “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:10 NIV) David did not start with strategy. He started with himself. The Hebrew word for “create” is the same word used in Genesis 1, the kind of work only God can do. A...
Why Seminaries and Local Churches Need Each Other
There is a conversation happening inside theological education that most pastors have not heard. While pastors navigate the realities of their own congregations, seminary leaders are sitting with hard questions about how the Church forms its leaders. The best are not...
Take a Walk: The Simplest Way to Start Seeing Your Neighborhood Again
The single most underused pastoral tool in the American church is the 30-minute walk. Not a walk for exercise. A walk around the blocks surrounding your church building, slowly, with your eyes open and your phone in your pocket. Most pastors have not done this in...
Comfortable Churches Don’t Make History
Scripture “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” (Revelation 3:20 NIV) Laodicea was a wealthy, comfortable city. Even so, Jesus did not stop knocking on the...
The Pipeline Is Broken (And Your Church Will Feel It by 2030)
You already sense it, even if you have not said it out loud yet. The last pastoral search took longer than expected. The resumes did not quite fit. A church down the road has been looking for 18 months. A pastor you respect just stepped out of ministry. Your associate...
Your Community Changed—And Your Church May Not Have Noticed
Drive around the neighborhood surrounding your church building tomorrow morning and ask yourself one simple, honest question: Who actually lives here now? Not the neighbors who lived here 20 years ago when your current ministries were first designed. Not the families...
Activity Is Not Momentum
Scripture “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.” (Revelation 2:4-5a NIV) If the calendar is full but the heart feels faint, you are not alone. Even...