How To's

Every church planter eventually asks the same quiet question, usually late at night, usually after another attendance report. How do you actually measure church plant success? Is it numbers? Giving? Survival past year three? Or is it something harder to chart but far more faithful? Church planting lives in the tension between faithfulness and fruitfulness.…

Perhaps the most dangerous place on the church campus is the pastor’s counseling office. When the minister is shut up in a tight space with a vulnerable female who confides in him the most personal things of her life, often the two people do something completely natural and end up bonding emotionally. The bonding process…

Frank Laubach, literacy pioneer and beloved brother in Christ, used to call short prayers “prayer arrows.”  Short sentences sent heavenward to praise, give thanks, intercede or summon the Lord’s assistance have a potency all their own. The hypocrites think they will be heard for their “much speaking.” (Oh, I pray for two hours every morning. You…

The first year church plant experience is equal parts excitement, exhaustion, and holy uncertainty. Every Sunday feels like a new beginning, and every sermon carries weight beyond its word count. Preaching shapes the culture of a new congregation long before programs or ministries take root. That’s why the kind of preaching you offer in these…

It’s funny that the Old Testament’s references to envy focus on God’s people looking outward to the world (“sinners”). They were not to envy wrongdoers. The New Testament’s references, by contrast, are directed inwardly, warning believers against envying each other. For those of us who know the inner workings of church life, we fully understand…

The marks on the back door tell of the growth of the children over the years. The clothing in back of the closet the kids can no longer wear speak of the growth of your young’uns. The escalating cost of schoolbooks as the kids move into high school and then into college bear eloquent testimony…