A great goal for some churches as we start 2016 is to hire the right people. When it comes to staffing, most leaders start with a person they’re looking to hire. I believe that’s the wrong approach. When you’re looking to add someone to your team, the place to begin is with a job description. This is important when staff come to you and say, “I need help. Can you hire me an assistant?” The first thing that should should happen is for that staff member to write a job description of the position. The key here is to answer … Read More

I love reaching people at Christmas-time. It’s the only time of year that people are singing songs about Jesus in the mall.  The truth is that Christmas is one of the easiest times to reach people with the Gospel in our culture. This year we’re doing Christmas services AND we’re doing a separate Christmas Concert. Our social media and direct mail efforts are in full effect and this is where I see so many churches go wrong. I see their ads to reach people and the biggest problem is this: Clarity. Unclear ads and mailers are dead on arrival. Talk … Read More

I get a lot of questions about how to promote events, especially on social media. And since I’m excited about the new year… I want to share some free church flyers that you can use to reach your community: • Church Cookout Flyer: This is an event that you can do when it’s warm outside.  It doesn’t have to be a holiday to create a big day with good food! • Guest Speaker Flyer: It’s crazy but just announcing a guest speaker at your church can become an event that draws people.  Your congregation has an excuse to invite friends … Read More

2016 is here and there’s lot to plan and pray about. And that includes the church budget. So here’s a few thoughts I’d like to share with church leaders about budgeting for this year: 1. Remember that God’s vision is bigger than yours (Eph. 3:20) 2. Remember the widow’s mite (Mark 12) 3. Money spend on evangelism is not an expense, it’s an investment (Matt. 28:19-20) 4. Ask, “Is this a want or a need?” (Phil. 4:19) 5. Am I being generous to missionaries and other organizations doing important kingdom work? (2 Cor. 8:7) 6. Is the staff being compensated … Read More

Probably dating myself but ok, hands down, my absolute favorite all time Atari game is Pitfall. It was the coolest game ever. You swung on vines. You hopped on the heads of alligators. You jumped on rolling logs. The goal? Get through the jungle and capture all of the treasures before time runs out. When I started playing Pitfall my brother told me, “Whatever you do, don’t fall into the quicksand.” Sure enough, staying out of the quicksand was one of the toughest parts of the game. In similar fashion, I planted my church 14 years ago and staying out … Read More

In 2004 our church was stuck. We had grown at a good rate for our first 3 years and then we hit “the wall”. We got stuck in our growth as a church and for the next 18 months, we grew by 10 people. Ten.individual.humans. Not to sound ungrateful, but we had a whole city to reach and growing by 10 people every 18 months wasn’t going to cut it. At first I believed the “I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing” myth. I learned that doesn’t work. Here’s a leadership lesson (which is a loosely based on an Albert … Read More

Stephen Covey, author of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, wrote: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” Sounds confusing, right?  But what it means is that we have a tendency as people to allow non-essentials to distract us.  So, maintaining focus is key.  And as a pastor, here is the essential focus that has struck me: I need to preach the Gospel every week and give people an opportunity to make a decision to come to know Jesus in our services each week. I think this is really important for several reasons: 1. … Read More

Most Pastors dread the “Summer Slump”. Typically, this is when giving and attendance fluctuate the most in a given year. Yet here’s what I have learned over the last 10 years: 1. Summer is not as bad as people make it out to be 2. You don’t have to take as big of an attendance hit (I’ll talk about in depth later) 3. With planning, you can eliminate the giving slump (More on that later) 4. The key to maximizing the Summer is understanding the trends of the Summer The basic trends of Summer are that people generally go out … Read More

God calls us to be masters of our time, one of the greatest treasures He gives us.  With all you have to do maybe you wish you had a TARDIS to time travel in: If so, today I’ve got time management tips #3, #4 & #5 for you and the first one is cutting down on the procrastination… Tip #3: Eat That Frog! I got this tip from a book by the same title, but the principle is so true! If eating a frog is on your list of things you have to do in a given day, here’s the … Read More