Church Is Like A Video Game… (sort of)

Bob FranquizGeneral

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

Albert Einstein Could Help Your Church…

Bob FranquizGeneral

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

#1 Habit Of Highly Effective Preachers

Bob FranquizGeneral

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

Maximizing a Pastor’s Summer

Bob FranquizGeneral

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

Pastor Who… A Time Lord for Jesus

Bob FranquizGeneral

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

A Pastor’s Time Machine

Bob FranquizGeneral

Life is getting busier and busier.  Some of us wish we could jump into one of these to get it all done: There are more and more things to distract us and here’s the hard truth… Sometimes Pastors can be the worst time managers. In reality, the nature of our calling demands that we be excellent managers of out time. So this week I’m going to share a few time management tips that have helped me be more productive in the same amount of time.  Basically these are the next best thing to time travel… Tip #1: Bundle similar tasks … Read More