Honest thinking
for leaders doing
hard ministry.

Mike woke up on Monday morning, the first quiet day after a chaotic Christmas season, with one question hanging over him like a weight: “How much longer can I keep…

Last week a friend sent me the website of a church he had visited. He asked what I thought of it and what I believed a first time visitor might…

This might sound like a funny thing to say, but sometimes the biggest competition a ministry has is within itself. When Herb walked into the room, I knew we had…

Every pastor knows that feeling: you finish preaching on Sunday, someone says, “Great message, Pastor!” and before you even get to your car you’re already thinking, ‘Okay… now what am…

One of my favorite Christmas movies is Elf. It has everything that a person could want in a Christmas-themed movie: humor, Christmas spirit, Peter Billingsley (Ralphie from A Christmas Story),…

I want to take a detour from strategy and communication today and talk about a concerning observation. It’s something I’ve been noticing for a while in churches and ministries. There…

Is it just me, or does everybody seem mad about something lately? Politically, people are mad. Socially, people are mad. Drivers on the road are mad. Geopolitically, people are mad….

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed from growing up around ministry work and those occasional high school English classes, it’s this… a story usually does one of three things: it…

I don’t usually lead with stories like this, but every now and then, a little vulnerability is worth the awkwardness. So here goes. A few years back, I lost my…

So many times when we get into conversations with ministries about communication, we end up talking about something else entirely: conflict. Sometimes it’s rooted in misunderstandings. Other times it’s tied…

Imagine This With Me… It’s early Sunday morning, and your alarm is going off.
 Beep. Beep. BEEEEEEP. 
You forgot to turn the ringer down last night, and now you’ve been…

Have you ever walked into a new place and felt two things at the same time; hopeful and uncomfortable? It happened to me not long ago when I visited a…

“I wish you still did creative work…” Someone said this to me recently, and I was honestly caught off guard. Because…we never stopped. That comment revealed something important: we hadn’t clearly…

We’ve been told this before: “It’s not about you.”And to be honest, there’s some truth in that. Ministry is, at its core, about the transformative work of Jesus, the big…

The other day, I was in a store and saw a T-shirt that said, “I speak fluent sarcasm.” For a second, I thought about buying it. Then I realized that…

Wow, that’s a strong question. But sometimes, strong questions are exactly what we need to ask. As ministry leaders, we are surrounded by messages. Faith-based initiatives tell us things, and…

Most churches talk about getting new people to come to church. In fact, many churches set goals for visitor attendance, promote invitation Sundays, and encourage their congregation to invite friends…

When I was young in ministry, I had never really gone through any leadership training. We didn’t have any structured development embedded into our church because we were such a…