– Good day at Calvary – I didn’t teach. Nice to have the day off from preaching. – Got to talk to a lot of people at church that I haven’t talked to in a while. – Also, got to meet a bunch of new people to Calvary. Love hearing their stories of life change! – Pastor John taught Nehemiah 9-10 – I’m finishing Nehemiah next week. – Finishing Nehemiah will book number 32 that we’ve taught through. One of my life goals is to teach through the entire Bible. Close to 1/2 way there (cue up the Bon Jovi … Read More

Christmas is one of the best times of year to reach people. That’s why on November 15, 16, 17 (that’s this upcoming Tuesday, Wedneday & Thursday) I’m leading a webinar called, “Double your Decisions this Christmas”.  This 35 minute webinar is going to show you 5 simple ways you can double the number of people who respond to the Gospel this Christmas in your services. It’s totally FREE and you can register here.

I’m a certified sermon junkie. I’m not only a preacher, I love great preaching as well. Can’t.get.enough.of.it. I love all kinds of preaching: topical, textual, expository. It’s all good. Her’s why I’ve been thinking about preaching more than usual lately: Christmas is around the corner and we both know that Christmas is one of the easiest times of the year to reach people with the Gospel. As I’ve listened to hundreds of holiday sermons over the years, 1 thing separates the good ones from the great ones. One thing that will either sink your message or cause it to be … Read More

We’re coming up on one of the most important evangelistic opportunities of the year: Christmas Eve. Some are saying Christmas Eve is even bigger than Easter in terms of attendance in their area. I know this: Christmas is a great time to reach people. It’s the only time Christian music is playing in the mall and the unchurched are singing along! But every year I hear about Pastors who missed this golden opportunity to reach people. Why? They didn’t plan far enough ahead. They weren’t ready for the people who made decisions. And the moment was gone. I don’t want that to happen to you. That’s why I’m leading 3 … Read More

Last week we released a brand new resource entitled, “Getting Unstuck: Secrets to Avoiding Growth Barriers and Becoming an Unstoppable Church“.  The response has been incredible!  This 5-CD resource is geared towards helping churches get unstuck and start growing again. Here’s the description for the resource: Getting Unstuck contains over 3 1/2 hours of teaching where I give you the tools you need to break through the barriers that are holding your back. Finally! A resource for breaking growth barriers that eliminate hype and get churches growing again! There’s nothing worse than feeling like your church stuck. It’s like getting caught … Read More

– Great day at Calvary! – We paused from our Nehemiah series to do Commitment Sunday for our capital campaign. – Our goal is to raise money for a down payment on a facility. – I’m blown away by the response of our church. – We don’t have the totals yet (and we aren’t announcing them until November 20th). – It was a great Sunday. – After the week I had, I needed the kind of Sunday we had – The band was great. We don’t normally close in song, but we did today. Loved it! – I didn’t love … Read More

I wish I could say that our growth as a church has always been “up and to the right”. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. We went nearly 2 years (2004-2005) where we were almost 100% flatlined. We made serious changes in our church and over the next year we doubled our church. One of the many things I learned was that there are signs that your church is stuck long before you realize it. I don’t mean the obvious stuff like: – Plateaued attendance – Flatlined giving If you dig below the surface, you’ll find 3 factors that go unnoticed … Read More

My hands down, 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 treasure 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 11 years ago and staying out of the quicksand that gets churches stuck is one of the toughest things about … 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